Tectonic Africa's Source for open source news www.tectonic.co.za http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=446
MySchool uses Asterisk to run call centre May 3 2005 Virtual Market Place, the company that drives the MySchool system in South Africa, has installed the open source Asterisk system to run its call centre. The solution was installed by OpenVoice. Adrian Sharpe, technical director of Virtual Market Place, says the company chose to work with OpenVoice because of its experience in open source telephony solutions. "We initially evaluated a number of traditional PBX and VoIP solutions but found that the costs associated with them was prohibitive for a growing call centre. Because of this we looked at open platforms to ensure we were not locked into a single vendor or product and chose OpenVoice." Virtual Market Place required a telephony solution that could not only increase its customer service levels but also give the organisation the ability to manage peak call periods that occur as a result of targeted marketing campaigns. "Asterisk allow various levels of IP telephony infrastructure, from hardware to software, to interface with each other consistently, while maintaining quality of service," says Clayton Hayward, chief technology officer at OpenVoice. "Asterisk is also an efficient and cost-effective platform that can be used with inexpensive hardware and still provide high-level PBX functionality, making it suited to most call centre environments." "Asterisk gives us the ability to route our calls via VoIP or via Telkom's network, as well as giving us access to greater functionality for our environment," says Sharpe. "For us open source is certainly the most cost effective solution available to the call centre sector, as it provides all the rich functionality needed as well as giving a company access to an open platform which makes future growth and development much easier to accomplish," says Sharpe. Hayward says that companies are starting to understand that open source software is a viable business channel, one that can offer them both technical and financial advantages. "Our aim is to help organisations understand the benefits that open source software can have on their long term planning cycles and telecommunications plans -- especially in light of an exploding IP Telephony market." -- * Simon P. Ditner / ON-Asterisk Mailing List / http://uc.org/asterisk *
