Farzal,
This is the exact mind set where the problem starts with Open Source
business model :)
Its plain and simple, If someone is making your life simple by
providing a nice GUI Interface and also providing service and support
to help you run your business instead of worrying for the PBXes, Its
gonna come at some cost. (coz human support costs are always going to
increase, you are running a 50 user organization, do you expect the
people you hire to work for free ?)
Not sure why so much hostility over this question. 50 users or 5, the
underlying system is free, open source PBX called Asterisk. So it's not an
issue of scalability. IF you have a user friendly enough interface, then
creating 5 or 50 users is the same thing.
No its not the same thing, 5 users is less headache, 50 is huge
headache, its like saying whether i hire 5 people or 50 people, my cost
of hiring should be same :)
And really, other than free trixbox, there are many systems for under $1000
in the market that are already going that. Switchvox, fonality, freepbx,
Intuitive, etc.
Did you ever went deep and ask for a quote for 50 user system from any
of these commercial vendors ?
They will say, for 50 users, you cant use our standard system you need
to use our professional / enterprise version + you have to pay us $20
for every IP PHone that you want to add into our system + there will be
a yearly support cost added to it, so your final cost of system would
be nothing less then $5000+, and this is much cheap as compared to hire
an EXPERT Programmer and pay him for the monthly salary and still keep
him interested to do your job all the time (dont you feel pinch of
attrition over there ?)
Also if you are having all the expertise in world, why dont you put it
in and get FreePBX do all the fancy things that you want to do with
your PBX, ITS FREE OF COST, BUT ITS FULL OF CONFIGURATION HEADACHES +
Support always cost.
So, please, I hope to get some good answer. Why does it matter to you, if I
use your software to create 5 users, or 50 users? Why is trixbox free? Why
is fonality and many others selling software+hardware at $1000?
Go try it yourself without external support (which offcourse is costly)
and run it for 3 months and you shall know why fonality and others are
charging :)
I hope that i have tried to address the problem that you have :)
Your budget of $500 is VERY low or probably you just dont care for
support / you may have some alternatives already planned you are the
best judge for that.
Just go out and ask Panasonic / Siemens dealer for a quote for 50 user
system which has IP PBX Functionality and then you shall know the
difference (and still it wont do everything that asterisk is able to do)
Thanks & Regards,
Mitul Limbani,
Founder & CEO,
Enterux Solutions,
The Enterprise Linux Company (TM),
www.enterux.com
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