Many corporates are stuck with a legacy PBX which is  still under a onerous lease agreement with a number of months still to run, or which may be paid off, but management is reluctant to completely replace because of the sunk costs. A problem arises when new functionality needs to be added. This could be:

 A simple way to do inter-dpartmental charges for telephone usage with Asterisk is a common requirments for many businesses. There are several billing solutions available for asterisk but they are aimed at high end billing requirements for providers who sell calling cards and who need to track airtime or available call minutes for their customers.

Have you ever imagined the possibility of running an integrated SME Server to carter for all of your business requirements, the answer is yes you can. With Linux you can run the following services from one Box: Telephony, FAX, Email, Instant Messaging, Customer relational management(CRM) and DHCP. Linux and open source development has brought so much convenience and cost servings to IT Business.
 

There are very few people in South Africa who are unaware of the many disruptive changes happening  in the telecommunication industry when it comes to the telephony service providers in South Africa. Like me, I am sure that many are expecting to have significant savings from the reduction in call costs that are expected. What is odd though, is that most seem unaware of the massive cost savings that are now possible when it comes to their PBX.

If you recently installed the latest version of your favorite Asterisk distribution and then proceeded to go ahead and configure the drivers for the PSTN interface cards as per usual using the Zaptel drivers and tools, you may have met with a nasty surprise. The Zaptel drivers have been replaced by the newer DAHDI drivers.

Asterisk IP-PBX server  has so many benefits, and such a competitive cost, that it I often take it for granted that people know what these benefits are, but this is not the case. In my last blog I covered the most common mistake companies make when implementing Asterisk, in this blog post I wish to look at the other column, namely: "What are the benefits of Asterisk?".

Asterisk IP-PBX/VOIP server has the potential to drastically cut the cost of telephony infrastructure for any organisation that embraces it. It provides flexibility and features unmatched by any proprietary option, but if the implementation and deployment of Asterisk is not planned and budgeted for correctly, these benefits may not be realised.

The Asterisk podcast I did recently with Darlene Parker from http://www.userful.com, has been released on Hacker Public Radio. The asterisk podcast can be found here . I hope its anyone interested in Asterisk and how it can be deployed in call centres and small and medium businesses.

In this short video I demonstrate some of the steps necessary to setup an Asterisk server for an SME using Duxbury, sinlge port, ICASA approved, BRI cards. These are cheap BRI cards from Duxbury and cost around R300 that can be used to setup a fully functioning IP PBX for an SME. The video demonstration does not cover all the steps necessary as some of this is easier to follow via a written tutorial.

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.