CEO at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Vendor
Jul 13, 2017
Hi, this case its pretty simple they are not continuing the development and close shop so stick with asterisk.
but more important in your case if you would approach me personally i would like to understand the reasons behind you looking into a new solution and like to ask a few questions.
Is your current Asterisk implementation lacking anywhere in fulfilling business requirements? or what is the reason or consideration to look into possibly changing your phone infrastructure?
lack of features? lack of support? Quality issues? as well at the same time i wold like to understand more about your setup and infrastructure to understand better if it is capable to even cater for your existing telephony infrastructure? (i have seen a lot cases where companies changed solutions and or providers but did not posses adequate infrastructure that would allow the installed system or any other solution to function properly) Did you provide all the support needed to make that project a success?
and that leaves the last question of course was your solution provider skilled enough to understand your requirements and implement the system to reach or surpass business goals?
based on an understanding of your existing situation and your telephony requirements you can make an informed decision how to move forward and what a possible solution might be. if you want to look into hiring an asterisk expert to analyze any shortcomings and the improve the system or abandon it and to look into a new solution (which might look fancy on a datasheet but will bring surely its fair share of issues too)
Are you asking the right questions? The question in my mind should be what value do I place on my company's telephone communications and how my new telephone system fit into my companies overall goals. Remember "what get's to the dance doesn't keep you dancing with the girl". If your companies priorities are better customer service improved communications with your customer and ease of use and maintenance than a traditional phone system like AVAYA or CISCO are a good choice. As they have many options and work with many different partners to provided solutions. If you are looking for a more innovative approach and have "adequate band" with properly designed to LAN hosted PBX also offer an excellent option. The costs are about the same (if the PBX products use SIP trunking). The most important thing is to get out of the mindset of doing it yourself and get some expert advice for what is right for your company. Reliability and usability are the most important because the loss of labor for one day exceeds the cost of the system as a whole if it is down.
Chief Operating Officer at a comms service provider
Vendor
Jul 13, 2017
Cudatel is discontinued. If you are looking for the same base, check out the FuaionPBX.com project. It's open source but is a very active project, has been around for 10 years and uses the same FreeSWITCH engine as Cudatel. 3cx is also a very good commercial engine. With Asterisk you will need to choose a flavour first. Elastix is now using 3cx. Switchvox is Ok. We also deploy Yeastar which is based on Asterisk and very good.
We do not use Barracuda. If you want a good IP PBX, I recommend 3CX. 3CX can be cloud based or premise based and it works very well. Full featured and priced very well. We use it and promote it to our clients.
Much like the other review, I would not recommend Ring Central (recommended by Barracuda after their own product went end of life). Instead I would stick with Asterisk. If you need support, Digium now offers it for a fee. We have/use Digium Switchvox and it has been the perfect solution for us at a reasonable price point.
Hi, this case its pretty simple they are not continuing the development and close shop so stick with asterisk.
but more important in your case if you would approach me personally i would like to understand the reasons behind you looking into a new solution and like to ask a few questions.
Is your current Asterisk implementation lacking anywhere in fulfilling business requirements? or what is the reason or consideration to look into possibly changing your phone infrastructure?
lack of features? lack of support? Quality issues? as well at the same time i wold like to understand more about your setup and infrastructure to understand better if it is capable to even cater for your existing telephony infrastructure? (i have seen a lot cases where companies changed solutions and or providers but did not posses adequate infrastructure that would allow the installed system or any other solution to function properly) Did you provide all the support needed to make that project a success?
and that leaves the last question of course was your solution provider skilled enough to understand your requirements and implement the system to reach or surpass business goals?
based on an understanding of your existing situation and your telephony requirements you can make an informed decision how to move forward and what a possible solution might be. if you want to look into hiring an asterisk expert to analyze any shortcomings and the improve the system or abandon it and to look into a new solution (which might look fancy on a datasheet but will bring surely its fair share of issues too)
Are you asking the right questions? The question in my mind should be what value do I place on my company's telephone communications and how my new telephone system fit into my companies overall goals. Remember "what get's to the dance doesn't keep you dancing with the girl". If your companies priorities are better customer service improved communications with your customer and ease of use and maintenance than a traditional phone system like AVAYA or CISCO are a good choice. As they have many options and work with many different partners to provided solutions. If you are looking for a more innovative approach and have "adequate band" with properly designed to LAN hosted PBX also offer an excellent option. The costs are about the same (if the PBX products use SIP trunking). The most important thing is to get out of the mindset of doing it yourself and get some expert advice for what is right for your company. Reliability and usability are the most important because the loss of labor for one day exceeds the cost of the system as a whole if it is down.
Cudatel is discontinued. If you are looking for the same base, check out the FuaionPBX.com project. It's open source but is a very active project, has been around for 10 years and uses the same FreeSWITCH engine as Cudatel. 3cx is also a very good commercial engine. With Asterisk you will need to choose a flavour first. Elastix is now using 3cx. Switchvox is Ok. We also deploy Yeastar which is based on Asterisk and very good.
We do not use Barracuda. If you want a good IP PBX, I recommend 3CX. 3CX can be cloud based or premise based and it works very well. Full featured and priced very well. We use it and promote it to our clients.
Much like the other review, I would not recommend Ring Central (recommended by Barracuda after their own product went end of life). Instead I would stick with Asterisk. If you need support, Digium now offers it for a fee. We have/use Digium Switchvox and it has been the perfect solution for us at a reasonable price point.
The Barracuda Phone System was discontinued and they are trying to get people to use Ring Central.
campus.barracuda.com/product/phonesystem/article/PHONE/discontinued
I have customers on Ring Central. I would not recommend Ring Central.