VOIP Asterisk as enterprise phone system?
 

Hello there,

Today my boss come to me and ask me to get a cote to upgrade our old "Cisco call manager" (2004) now "Cisco Unified Communications Manager".

So I was wondering, instead of doing a costly upgrade (over 35 000€), maybe it's time to change...

• Does anyone of you got some insight with Asterisk in an enterprise environment?

• Is it reliable?

• Following you own judgement, what are the + and - ?

• If Asterix worth it, what argument (apart of the price) could I use to help the management turning on my side?

• Will the Cisco 7921 VOIP phone will be able to connect to it? (as we do have over 35 of them)

Enterprise environment:
- 3 sites (VPN interconnected)
- ~35 VOIP phones and ~10 landlines phones

Best regards,
Angel.

We are starting to use Asterisk here where I work and so far so good. We aren't using it for full voice yet, but do have that capability. We started by getting SIP trunks setup between our current CS1000 switch and Asterisk. Our office is now transitioning to Asterisk voicemail as we do not currently have a full voicemail solution in the office.

The Cisco 7921 only supports SCCP from what I understand. This isn't necessarily a problem as there is an SCCP project for Asterisk. I'd recommend going with a SIP capable phone (I'm using the 7960).

Asterisk is very easy to use and has a web interface that makes it simple. THe system logs everything it does so you aren't usually in a fog when there is an issue. One way you could sell it is to offer the ability for softphones without cost. Cisco's softphone was a little heavy for my taste and I presume expensive.

Hope this sheds a bit of insight

Ok, thanks.

Following your comment I've read many more documentation and it seems to be BIG.

Thousand of companies are using it (Big once included).

And it seems to be a success everywhere.

Therefore I'll give it a try in our lab to see how it goes, and what we can do with it :)

I'll also try to find out if there are any companies in Nantes and around that already installed it and try to contact them to get more info.

Thank for you help.

Angel.