Small businesses looking to:

1. Deploy a PBX;
2. Set-up a voice-mail system
3. Lower maintenance costs
4. Set-up an Interactive Voice Response
5. Enjoy VoIP

can now turn to Asterisk, a software based PBX system that has taken over from traditional PBXs.

Sales of traditional PBXs and key systems have moderated in recent years. Experts attribute this to a variety of factors. Companies, they report, are just keeping their phone systems longer. The wave of Y2K replacements that flooded the market, now almost a decade later, are still in working order. Demand is affected by the economy; enough said. True, these are relevant considerations, but they largely miss the point.

A survey conducted by IDC has revealed that over 50% of IT executives in outh Africa are plaaning to schedule the accelaration of their Linux adoption in 2009.
 
About 72% of the respondents said that either they are actively evaluating or had already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009, with more than 68% making the same claim for the desktop.
 

What is Asterisk?

Asterisk is an open source PBX software that allows attached telephones to make calls to one another and to connect to other telephone services like the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). One major plus of using Asterisk is that its flexibility is only limited to the imagination of the user.
 
Benefits of Asterisk in the office

Most businesses today have adopted IP PBX infrastructure and they are enjoying the following benefits:

1. Scalability - A user can add additional phone connections and extensions
2. Calling on IP telephony is cheaper

Benefits of IP PBX over traditional PBXs:

1. Easy to install
2. No complex wiring
3. Low cost of operation
4. Facilitates hot desking and roaming
5. Easy useability and manageability.