I'm starting to read more and more about Asterisk, an open-source phone system software running on Linux. I've seen it in several magazine articles and Chad Dickerson, CTO at InfoWorld, just had an interesting article on Asterisk as well. Chad says he'd switch to Asterisk in a heartbeat if it were up to him. I really respect Chad even though he's a Mac lover ;-) If Chad says Asterisk kicks butt it's time to investigate a little deeper.
The phone system at Granger is an ancient Executone system (it's the same system that you'll see ocassionally on "American Choppers"). There's no documentation aside from the one's I've hand written when we call for support...I always try and pick the tech's brain whenever he's onsite in case he gets run over by a bus and we're left high-dry. I should also note that I'm not a "phone guy"...I don't know much about phones nor do I really like messing with them.
Last year I investigated new phone systems and landed on a Panasonic Unit...a hybrid system that does both PBX and VoIP (though we're not planning to do VoIP at this time). Through some connections we can get this system for a great price and there are several vendors in our area that support Panasonic. Problem is that this upgrade has been on hold since last fall due to budget constraints (even with great pricing phone systems are BIG money)...and looks to remain on hold until next year.
So now I'm seeing more about Asterisk and starting to ponder if it's something we should look into. A new fully functional, leading edge phone system for approx 1/10 the price of any other system!? The problem comes in the area of support, which IMO is generally lacking when it comes to open-source.
Who do you call on when something goes wrong and you max out your knowledge base? Who has time to become a Linux guru and an Asterisk guru? The IT staff at Granger is myself and Ed who's part-time (20hrs). We don't have enough time as it is to accomplish our goals let alone tackle something of this magnitude. But if it meant saving our church $20,000 or MORE maybe it should?
This is still very much just in the "pondering" stage and there's a ton of questions to address before taking it to the next stage. I've not even run this by Ed yet ... I'm sure he's reaction would be similar to mine, "Dude! What are you smokin'?!!!" :-)
I'll keep you updated as we kick this around a bit in the future. My gut says "no way" unless we can find a good support mechanism. Nail down the support issues and I think Asterisk would soon find it's way towards the top of our "to do" list.
What phone system are you using at church? How many phones? Are you doing VoIP? Anyone else investigated Asterisk?
UPDATE 7/6/05: Just discovered one of our uber geek volunteers has been experimenting with Asterisk at home - yep, he's single :-) He's going to take some lead on investigating this closer. Thanks Dustin ... you rock!
I don't remember offhand what system we have, I know it is VoIP capable, but that technology has not made it out to where we are, about 6 or 7 miles from the nearest town. I'd say we have 40-50 phones in our church, never really counted 'em. I know we are close to 40 PC's, with basically 1 phone per PC plus a few more phones around in various places, like kitchens etc.
Posted by: Jim | July 06, 2005 at 10:18 PM
Hey Jason, feel free to call in an I-owe-you if you need any Linux help. I haven't used Asterisk, but I've been doing Linux for years and would be willing to help in any way I can.
I just went out to the Asterisk site and discovered that Digium, the company behind Asterisk, provides commercial support for Asterisk. You might want to check into that.
Posted by: Brian Glass | July 07, 2005 at 10:07 AM
Thanks for the offer Brian.
I was doing some research on Digium last night and it looks pretty good. This is certainly starting to look more like a viable solution.
Posted by: Jason Powell | July 07, 2005 at 11:05 AM