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 > <sr-users@lists.kamailio.org> 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 > <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: > __________________________________________________________ > 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: -- Alex Balashov Principal Consultant Evariste Systems LLC Web: https://evaristesys.com Tel: +1-706-510-6800 __________________________________________________________ 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:
