I have small shared suites office building and researched PBX systems in December. I have about 6 tenants (companies) with about 15-20 total employees. Each incoming call has to be answered by the receptionist in the appropriate company’s name, and auto-attendants and voicemails need to operate similarly. I explored Asterisk, but found that it suffered from much of the same jargon and poor UI that proprietary systems do. I ended up buying a Nortel Norstar MICS system because of really wide availability of hardware and consultants. I bought from a distributor, learned and configured as much as I could, and hired an independent consultant to do the rest. I saved about 50-75% off the best quote I got.

But what I really wanted was something that works like a computer network. Plug in a device that works like a router with easy config; plug in another that works like a server (voicemail, etc.); and then a bunch of others a nodes on the network (phones, like computers and peripherals). All of this would be done via a very simple and intuitive web interface that just about anyone could understand (ie, do for office telephony what Apple did for digital music players).

The great thing about Asterisk is that it enables this layer to happen. Hopefully someone will come along and create it.

And if I missed products that do what I’m talking about, can someone point me to them? ;-)

http://www.lostinbrittany.org/dotclear/index.php?2006/08/09/62-digium-recoit-138-millions-de-dollars-en-investissement

“Om Malik vient de publier un billet qui a fait ma journée un peu plus agréable : Le créateur d’Asterisk obtient reçoit 13,8 millions de dollars en investissement.

Digium est la société derrière l’un des meilleurs logiciels libres que j’ai jamais trouvé : le PABX Asterisk…”