by Bryon D Beilman
One of the original standards of quality for services was dial tone. The original phone system that was implemented let us all believe that as we picked up our phone, we would hear a dial tone and be able to make a call. If the power went out, the phone still worked and you knew you could rely on it. Fast forwarding to today, many people still use this system, but it is safe to say many millions have switched to a system that runs in a bundle with your TV and Internet and provided by your local Cable or perhaps telecom provider. Businesses have been using large phone systems that require special expertise from ATT, Avaya, Nortel or others and have recently moved to expensive IP based options as well.
We now communicate, whenever, wherever, virtually and globally with a flexibility and a low cost that the original phone system could never duplicate. The different types of phone systems, vendors and capabilities can cover multiple volumes of books, but there is a phone system that has been around since 1999 called Asterisk that allows flexibility and value way beyond what anyone could imagine. Asterisk , (think of the * on your phone pad) is based on an open source platform, developed by Digium. Digium and their developers are like Redhat is to Linux. They provide a commercial package, but the core functionality is open source and many people have created easy to use packages to allow you to turn any computer into your own PBX. We have implemented dozens of asterisk implementations for our customers, and now that you have a little background on it, here are 5 reasons to use Asterisk.
Why use Asterisk for your IP phone solution?
1) It is a great value - At it's core, Asterisk is free and there is no license cost and no license cost per phone like there is with other VoIP systems. It runs on commodity hardware and works with a wide variety of high quality phones.
2) It is highly scalable - If you start a company with 5 people and scale to 500, Asterisk will scale with you. All you need are phones a network and IP addresses and the phone system will grow with you.
3) It works with most telecom providers - At it's heart Asterisk is a PBX phone system, so you need a way to talk to the outside world. If you want to use an external SIP provider, T1 or analog phone line, Asterisk will work with all of that. There are PC cards that work and drivers for just about everything.
4) Centralization - It allows centralization of your company on a national or international scale. If you have 50 sales offices in each of the 50 states and a handful in other countries, they can all utilize the same phone system and you can talk between yourselves over the IP network with no long distance or international charges.
5) Easily supports teleworkers - Those businesses who want to have a consistent presence while users work at home. If you use Asterisk, you can send a person home with an IP phone and a laptop and they can work as if they were in the office and your customers would never know. Inbound and outbound calls go through the system as if they were in the office. It also supports modern features for call centers, voicemail to email , call menus and call forwarding to cell phones and other external sources.
There are dozens more reasons to consider using Asterisk as your phone system, and these are merely five reasons to consider. Go Asterisk and don't look back.