[*] [CAnet - news] University deploys open source PBX and VoIP (fwd)

[Ron Dallmeier]

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[Some excerpts from NetworkWorld article -- BSA]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/091206-von-sam-houston.html?t5&twht=09
1106thisweek2

Sam Houston State University is in the process of moving its 6,000 students,
faculty and staff off of Cisco CallManager IP PBXs and a legacy Nortel
Meridian PBX over to Linux servers running Asterisk, which includes call
processing, voicemail and PSTN gateway functionality. The driver for this
project was cost, says Aaron Daniel, senior voice analyst at Sam Houston
State University.

"We thought that it will be more cost effective in the long run to go with
an open source solution, because of the massive amounts of licensing fees
required...," says Daniel, who this week gave a presentation on his
migration project at the VON show in Boston. In the Cisco model, each phone
attached to the CallManager required a separate licensing fee to operate,
Daniel says. In SHSU's Asterisk/Cisco model, where it will keep its existing
Cisco phones but attach them to Asterisk servers on the back end, the phone
licensing costs are eliminated.

More control over the IP PBX software and servers was another reason SHSU
made the Asterisk jump, Daniel says. "We felt we were more susceptible to
hacks," since only Cisco-approved servers updates and patches could be
installed on the Windows Server 2000-based CallManagers, he says. "We have a
lot more peace of mind with the open-source system. If a bad exploit is
found in SIP, we can fix it ourselves."