Alex:
I want to add that we know of a large publicly traded organization that uses
Asterisk. The contract agreement states not to disclose the technology
implementation. The point I'm making here is that large publicly traded
organizations do not want the cat out of the bag, even though the cat is out
of the bag... so their competition does not have the competitive edge (or
at least they hope!).
If you have dealt with large and fortune 500 organizations as we have, you
will be surprised the amount of open source apps they use for a variety of
reasons. Bank of America - one of the largest financial institutions in
the US of A, that makes Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank combined together
look like an ant, actively uses Asterisk solutions.
Another publicly traded, fortune 500 organization in the financial sector
has converted one of their existing call centre's (in-bound), into a 100
seat call centre & has saved themselves over a million dollars in hardware
and licensing.
Large organizations not necessarily want to be backed by large enough vendor
to back up the product. The organizations we know of first hand, want
"control" - and I mean "full control" of their telecom system and hence have
chosen Asterisk, so with a little training their internal I.T. team can
control and manage their telecom needs.
You will be surprised the number of organizations already taking advantage
of Asterisk !!! They just don't publicly announce it nor beat their drums
to expose their technology in place. Forget fortune 500!!! 80% of
businesses in Canada comprise of small business owners. They don't have the
money to buy Nortel Gear. They sure have the money to buy Asterisk gear!
There is enough work out there, for each and every member in the BIZ list,
for Asterisk based work. There is enough wealth out there to be made,
without having to cannibalize the other consultant.
We've also rescued 3 medium sized organizations from using Nortel BCM & they
have been convinced to stay away from signing a contract with Bell.
Large organizations are not stupid. They have many intelligent folks on
staff. Large organizations are slowly but surely getting convinced to
convert more products to open source. We've seen MORE organizations in the
last year and half, embracing Asterisk. Large corporations want to increase
"profit". Moving away from proprietary gear and embracing open source
alternatives has allowed them to do so.
We know of another start up who started their virtual PBX solution using
Asterisk. It would have cost them over $150K to simply get started with
proprietary & closed products to allow them to extend their service to their
clients.
I rest my case ;).
Cheers!
Reza.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex @ Kovasys Inc." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jim Van Meggelen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Toronto Asterisk Business Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: [biz] Does open source telephony need an advertising campaign?
Problem is that large institutions do not just need a PBX system, but
they need a unified messaging solution (which Asterisk is far away
from -- in my humble opinion). As well as large company requires this
solution to be backed by large enough vendor who is not going to go
out of business in a few months when something goes wrong because
their business depends on it.
my 2 cents
Alex
VoIPGizmos.ca
