[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users

On Apr 14, 2024, at 12:25 PM, Alex Balashov  wrote:

> Medium to large organisations, in particular, tend to extract labour from 
> consistent (if unextraordinary) output of everyday do-gooders, and not the 
> more stochastic and volatile heroics of open-source superstars.

Sorry, I meant to say "extract value" here, not "extract labour".

But the larger point is that any successful formula heavily reliant on 
open-source is going to be a lot more dependent on culture, and on the 
strengths of individual people and their specific skills, than a formula 
reliant on a third-party vendor, all other things being equal.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 12:26 PM, Mahmood Alkhalil  
> wrote:
> 
> You are right Alex, it is all on premise!
> 
> We were offered to move it to cloud, and yes they asked for a lot…

The economics of public cloud providers depend on oversubscribing physical 
hardware with lots of small, and mostly idle instances. 

Massive instances break the whole mode, by reserving most or all of the 
physical hardware node to themselves. They hate those, and will price them 
punitively to discourage it.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users
You are right Alex, it is all on premise!

We were offered to move it to cloud, and yes they asked for a lot…

From: Alex Balashov via sr-users 
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 7:58:35 PM
To: Kamailio (SER) - Users Mailing List 
Cc: Alex Balashov 
Subject: [SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio 
and other FOSS SIP software


> On Apr 14, 2024, at 11:40 AM, Jawaid Bazyar via sr-users 
>  wrote:
>
> Mahmood, are you paying for that resource in something like AWS? That would 
> be big $$$!

Given that he said:

"... DSP devices for PRI lines and media resources for phones which is using 
almost an entire rack"

I doubt it.

Moreover, the AWS cost of an instance that large, as you allude, untenable.

-- Alex

--
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 12:19 PM, Mahmood Alkhalil  
> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the insights Alex!
> 
> Now that I give it more attention, the need for employees with the required 
> skillset would be challenging to find. And wouldn't like the company to 
> suffer incase skilled personals leave.

It's not impossible, especially now that more tech jobs than ever seem to be 
remote, or substantially remote.

However, highly skilled open-source practitioners in esoteric areas (like IP 
telephony) are in high demand, and usually have strong leverage to pick their 
employers, if not necessarily set their pay. They will often look for companies 
with strong "open-source" DNA/mojo/chi/whatever word you want to use, whose 
technology stack consists of fashionable and interesting languages, frameworks, 
and tools, and have other smart, like-minded people working there to create a 
dynamic, experimentally oriented energy.

This does not describe many established businesses, regardless of whether the 
offering of the business is related to IT. Medium to large organisations, in 
particular, tend to extract labour from consistent (if unextraordinary) output 
of everyday do-gooders, and not the more stochastic and volatile heroics of 
open-source superstars. Thus, in a variety of senses, it's easier to hire 
people "off the street" to do the things involved in the provisioning and 
support of a Broadsoft than it is to hire people who can deftly manoeuvre 
Kamailio or FreeSWITCH. 

This doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for that. That all depends. I think Jawaid, 
Fred and I are both just quick to point out the potential downsides, since we 
all, in one dimension or another, make a living in this stuff.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users
Thank you for the insights Alex!

Now that I give it more attention, the need for employees with the required 
skillset would be challenging to find. And wouldn't like the company to suffer 
incase skilled personals leave.


From: Alex Balashov via sr-users 
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 7:18 PM
To: Kamailio (SER) - Users Mailing List 
Cc: Alex Balashov 
Subject: [SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio 
and other FOSS SIP software

Mahmood,

Alas, the business case for open-source telephony solutions is not self-evident.

Of course, being invested in open-source, we'd all like to think so. But this 
is a reflection of our own competencies.

I have seen open-source telephony succeed massively, and deliver improved 
stability, security, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and I have also 
seen--usually through acquisitions--platforms based on free/open-source 
ingredients fail miserably. Acquisitions of smaller companies for their 
perceived technical capital provide an important lens on this difference, 
because the operational and engineering priors of a FOSS-based smaller company 
may not consumable to the larger acquirer whose institutional knowledge is 
based on traditional, big-brand, proprietary telephony systems.

So, it really depends on the company's "corporate DNA":

1) Appropriate skill set of the engineers who work there now;

2) The ability to hire, recruit and retain such engineers, with a specific view 
to company culture and technology choices;

3) Management understanding of open-source, and the specific idiosyncrasies of 
open-source projects and ecosystems, and which ones work best;

4) Management understanding of the capital and operational expense structure of 
open-source infrastructure, and how this is weighted differently than for 
closed proprietary systems. For example, open-source systems, by virtue of 
being more hand-build and maintained entirely or substantially internally, 
suffer from more entropy, or "bit rot", and so require an ongoing OPEX 
commitment. With a proprietary platform, you pay the vendor for theirs.

In short, an open-source platform requires an engineering organisation that is 
largely self-reliant, and a business that has the ability and the motive to 
assume more of the "care and feeding" of its infrastructure. That requires 
having the right mix of people, culture, assumptions and budget.

Not every company is a good fit for this. If prior experience, business 
processes and so on are tailored to certain proprietary platforms, or if the 
company has a largely sales-driven, not especially engineering-heavy 
constitution, for example, open-source telephony may be a poor fit.

-- Alex

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 7:59 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary 
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and how 
> much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
>
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to move 
> away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and 
> technical debt.
>
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if this 
> is not the place to ask for such!
> __
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--
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users
Excellent analysis, Jawaid.

I would add only that, in my opinion, a lot of the argument for open-source 
related to control over one's destiny lies in APIs, connectors and integration 
paths. 

There are some value-added telephony services which rely heavily on these, so 
there is a lot of pressure on that kind of flexibility, because it's a revenue 
driver. 

On the other hand, for a lot of more vanilla business PBX and POTS replacement 
services, these things are relatively unimportant, apart from the obvious need 
to import/export some data from billing, provisioning and other backoffice 
systems. In those cases, the scope of relatively conventional APIs from 
established proprietary platforms is likely to be sufficient, and the case for 
open-source does not turn much on this question.

-- Alex

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 11:29 AM, Jawaid Bazyar via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> Hi Mahmood,
> 
> I think FOSS often trades licensing/purchase costs for operational costs.
> 
> Sure, the software is "free" but because such software is rarely an exact fit 
> for your use case off the shelf, you have to spend time (money) to:
> customize for your operation
> integrate into other operational systems - billing, provisioning, support, 
> etc.
> maintaining that expertise over time - either in-house or contracted out, 
> will cost you $
> 
> Fred and Alex have pointed out some additional things on this.
> 
> But I think arguments can still be made for FOSS in these areas:
> You can control the software, customize it, and are not reliant on a 3rd 
> party software vendor to keep the software current.
> With traditional softswitch vendors like MetaSwitch, Broadsoft, Squire all 
> putting these products on the back-burner and not 
> investing in any more development of them, that could be a big organizational 
> benefit.
> 
> The FOSS options are also, at this point in time, more likely to get future 
> feature development. E.g. Asterisk, FreeSwitch,
> Kamailio all support WebRTC and rich media - and the legacy alternatives do 
> not.
> 
> They all help you build highly fault tolerant systems with any number of 
> architectures to suit your needs.
> 
> They can all be made to scale from thousands, to millions of subscribers, and 
> the legacy alternatives do not.
> 
> I would say, IF there is an off-the-shelf, commercially supported system that 
> suits your needs now and into the future,
> and has a cost model that meets your business needs, and supports your scale, 
> you are almost always better off going with that.
> 
> But if the cost model is detached from your needs (nickel and dimed to death 
> on 'feature licenses'), or, they don't
> support features you need, or, you don't think they are going to be further 
> developed or supported into the future,
> or they won't scale the way you need, then, open source gives you the ability 
> to build your own without having to
> reinvent all the wheels.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 8:52 AM Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary 
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and how 
> much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
> 
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to move 
> away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and 
> technical debt.
> 
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if this 
> is not the place to ask for such!
> __
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-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 11:40 AM, Jawaid Bazyar via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> Mahmood, are you paying for that resource in something like AWS? That would 
> be big $$$!

Given that he said:

"... DSP devices for PRI lines and media resources for phones which is using 
almost an entire rack"

I doubt it. 

Moreover, the AWS cost of an instance that large, as you allude, untenable. 

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Jawaid Bazyar via sr-users
Mahmood, are you paying for that resource in something like AWS? That would
be big $$$!



On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 11:38 AM Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users <
sr-users@lists.kamailio.org> wrote:

> The cost saving that will be the main reason before licenses is the amount
> of hardware resources currently used, the system we are using in total is
> using around 128 GB of RAM, 64 cores of CPU, and total of 4TB of storage;
> That is for just basic telephony for around 400 phones with call recording
> for some with a mostly non working HA and not to mention the DSP devices
> for PRI lines and media resources for phones which is using almost an
> entire rack.
>
> If such can be reduced for two kamailio nodes and a couple freeswitch
> nodes for any IVR / conferencing / voicemail that would at least lower the
> resources to the half of what being used if not more, keeping in mind that
> Calls per second count and concurrent calls count is really low.
>
> To put this into perspective, to integrate the telephony system with MS
> Teams it will cost 70,000$ USD just for installation and basic
> configuration just to ring a deskphone when someone calls you on Teams..
> --
> *From:* Fred Posner 
> *Sent:* Sunday, April 14, 2024 6:54:49 PM
> *To:* Kamailio (SER) - Users Mailing List 
> *Cc:* Mahmood Alkhalil 
> *Subject:* Re: [SR-Users] Real life examples of cost saving from using
> Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software
>
> I think it’s misguided to approach FOSS as a cost savings move. Of course
> this is an obvious benefit with the main easily detected benefit being the
> lack of any cost for the software itself and no licensing / recurring
> license fees.
>
>
>
> -- Fred Posner
> Sent from mobile
> Phone: +1 (352) 664-3733
> qxork.com
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 2024, at 8:22 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users <
> sr-users@lists.kamailio.org> wrote:
> >
> > 
> > Hi Everyone,
> >
> > I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and
> how much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
> >
> > I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to
> move away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and
> technical debt.
> >
> > Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if
> this is not the place to ask for such!
> > __
> > Kamailio - Users Mailing List - Non Commercial Discussions
> > To unsubscribe send an email to sr-users-le...@lists.kamailio.org
> > Important: keep the mailing list in the recipients, do not reply only to
> the sender!
> > Edit mailing list options or unsubscribe:
> __
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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users
Hello,

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 11:09 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> The cost saving that will be the main reason before licenses is the amount of 
> hardware resources currently used, the system we are using in total is using 
> around 128 GB of RAM, 64 cores of CPU, and total of 4TB of storage;
> That is for just basic telephony for around 400 phones with call recording 
> for some with a mostly non working HA and not to mention the DSP devices for 
> PRI lines and media resources for phones which is using almost an entire rack.

While this sounds like a riotously inefficient use of hardware per unit of 
telephony realised, such inefficiency is not inherent to proprietary systems, 
nor are superior unit economics inherent to open-source. 

What you're using sounds like it's just bad, assuming that hardware is truly 
necessary and isn't just massively overprovisioned. If you're going to make the 
argument that you should switch to something less OPEX-intensive, I don't know 
that I would base it on the mere fact that the proposed alternative is 
open-source.

> To put this into perspective, to integrate the telephony system with MS Teams 
> it will cost 70,000$ USD just for installation and basic configuration just 
> to ring a deskphone when someone calls you on Teams..

Maybe, but--and this is a mere hypothetical, I have no way of knowing--the cost 
in fully burdened engineer compensation to implement all those things yourself 
might be quite a lot more than $70K.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Jawaid Bazyar via sr-users
Hi Mahmood,

I think FOSS often trades licensing/purchase costs for operational costs.

Sure, the software is "free" but because such software is rarely an exact
fit for your use case off the shelf, you have to spend time (money) to:
customize for your operation
integrate into other operational systems - billing, provisioning, support,
etc.
maintaining that expertise over time - either in-house or contracted out,
will cost you $

Fred and Alex have pointed out some additional things on this.

But I think arguments can still be made for FOSS in these areas:
You can control the software, customize it, and are not reliant on a 3rd
party software vendor to keep the software current.
With traditional softswitch vendors like MetaSwitch, Broadsoft, Squire all
putting these products on the back-burner and not
investing in any more development of them, that could be a big
organizational benefit.

The FOSS options are also, at this point in time, more likely to get future
feature development. E.g. Asterisk, FreeSwitch,
Kamailio all support WebRTC and rich media - and the legacy alternatives do
not.

They all help you build highly fault tolerant systems with any number of
architectures to suit your needs.

They can all be made to scale from thousands, to millions of subscribers,
and the legacy alternatives do not.

I would say, IF there is an off-the-shelf, commercially supported system
that suits your needs now and into the future,
and has a cost model that meets your business needs, and supports your
scale, you are almost always better off going with that.

But if the cost model is detached from your needs (nickel and dimed to
death on 'feature licenses'), or, they don't
support features you need, or, you don't think they are going to be further
developed or supported into the future,
or they won't scale the way you need, then, open source gives you the
ability to build your own without having to
reinvent all the wheels.


On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 8:52 AM Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users <
sr-users@lists.kamailio.org> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and
> how much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
>
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to
> move away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and
> technical debt.
>
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if
> this is not the place to ask for such!
> __
> Kamailio - Users Mailing List - Non Commercial Discussions
> To unsubscribe send an email to sr-users-le...@lists.kamailio.org
> Important: keep the mailing list in the recipients, do not reply only to
> the sender!
> Edit mailing list options or unsubscribe:
>
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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users
The cost saving that will be the main reason before licenses is the amount of 
hardware resources currently used, the system we are using in total is using 
around 128 GB of RAM, 64 cores of CPU, and total of 4TB of storage;
That is for just basic telephony for around 400 phones with call recording for 
some with a mostly non working HA and not to mention the DSP devices for PRI 
lines and media resources for phones which is using almost an entire rack.

If such can be reduced for two kamailio nodes and a couple freeswitch nodes for 
any IVR / conferencing / voicemail that would at least lower the resources to 
the half of what being used if not more, keeping in mind that Calls per second 
count and concurrent calls count is really low.

To put this into perspective, to integrate the telephony system with MS Teams 
it will cost 70,000$ USD just for installation and basic configuration just to 
ring a deskphone when someone calls you on Teams..

From: Fred Posner 
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 6:54:49 PM
To: Kamailio (SER) - Users Mailing List 
Cc: Mahmood Alkhalil 
Subject: Re: [SR-Users] Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio 
and other FOSS SIP software

I think it’s misguided to approach FOSS as a cost savings move. Of course this 
is an obvious benefit with the main easily detected benefit being the lack of 
any cost for the software itself and no licensing / recurring license fees.



-- Fred Posner
Sent from mobile
Phone: +1 (352) 664-3733
qxork.com



> On Apr 14, 2024, at 8:22 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
>
> 
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary 
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and how 
> much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
>
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to move 
> away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and 
> technical debt.
>
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if this 
> is not the place to ask for such!
> __
> Kamailio - Users Mailing List - Non Commercial Discussions
> To unsubscribe send an email to sr-users-le...@lists.kamailio.org
> Important: keep the mailing list in the recipients, do not reply only to the 
> sender!
> Edit mailing list options or unsubscribe:
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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Fred Posner via sr-users
I think it’s misguided to approach FOSS as a cost savings move. Of course this 
is an obvious benefit with the main easily detected benefit being the lack of 
any cost for the software itself and no licensing / recurring license fees. 



-- Fred Posner
Sent from mobile
Phone: +1 (352) 664-3733
qxork.com



> On Apr 14, 2024, at 8:22 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary 
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and how 
> much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
> 
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to move 
> away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and 
> technical debt.
> 
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if this 
> is not the place to ask for such!
> __
> Kamailio - Users Mailing List - Non Commercial Discussions
> To unsubscribe send an email to sr-users-le...@lists.kamailio.org
> Important: keep the mailing list in the recipients, do not reply only to the 
> sender!
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[SR-Users] Re: Real life examples of cost saving from using Kamailio and other FOSS SIP software

2024-04-14 Thread Alex Balashov via sr-users
Mahmood,

Alas, the business case for open-source telephony solutions is not 
self-evident. 

Of course, being invested in open-source, we'd all like to think so. But this 
is a reflection of our own competencies. 

I have seen open-source telephony succeed massively, and deliver improved 
stability, security, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and I have also 
seen--usually through acquisitions--platforms based on free/open-source 
ingredients fail miserably. Acquisitions of smaller companies for their 
perceived technical capital provide an important lens on this difference, 
because the operational and engineering priors of a FOSS-based smaller company 
may not consumable to the larger acquirer whose institutional knowledge is 
based on traditional, big-brand, proprietary telephony systems.

So, it really depends on the company's "corporate DNA": 

1) Appropriate skill set of the engineers who work there now;

2) The ability to hire, recruit and retain such engineers, with a specific view 
to company culture and technology choices;

3) Management understanding of open-source, and the specific idiosyncrasies of 
open-source projects and ecosystems, and which ones work best;

4) Management understanding of the capital and operational expense structure of 
open-source infrastructure, and how this is weighted differently than for 
closed proprietary systems. For example, open-source systems, by virtue of 
being more hand-build and maintained entirely or substantially internally, 
suffer from more entropy, or "bit rot", and so require an ongoing OPEX 
commitment. With a proprietary platform, you pay the vendor for theirs. 

In short, an open-source platform requires an engineering organisation that is 
largely self-reliant, and a business that has the ability and the motive to 
assume more of the "care and feeding" of its infrastructure. That requires 
having the right mix of people, culture, assumptions and budget. 

Not every company is a good fit for this. If prior experience, business 
processes and so on are tailored to certain proprietary platforms, or if the 
company has a largely sales-driven, not especially engineering-heavy 
constitution, for example, open-source telephony may be a poor fit.

-- Alex

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 7:59 AM, Mahmood Alkhalil via sr-users 
>  wrote:
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I would like to hear some stories about moving away from proprietary 
> telephony services whether on premises or on cloud to FOSS solutions and how 
> much stable, secure, efficient and cost effective it was.
> 
> I would like to present to my managers such cases to convince them to move 
> away from proprietary telephony as it is just huge amount of cost and 
> technical debt.
> 
> Thanks everyone and really appreciate any insights, also I am sorry if this 
> is not the place to ask for such!
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-- 
Alex Balashov
Principal Consultant
Evariste Systems LLC
Web: https://evaristesys.com
Tel: +1-706-510-6800

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