Hi All, We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers. There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult. There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at. What we are looking for... 1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms. Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made. Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list. Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :) Cheers, Greg Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109
You may want to check out the Canonical SIP Routing Platform by Evariste Systems. http://www.csrpswitch.com -- Fred
On Jun 20, 2015, at 2:39 AM, Greg Lipschitz <Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au> wrote:
Hi All,
We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers.
There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult.
There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at.
What we are looking for...
1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms.
Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made.
Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list.
Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :)
Cheers,
Greg
Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
You'll be very hard pushed to find any product that doesn't have open source software somewhere in it. It powers the world.
Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that open-source systems are the thing to be avoided, nor that it's necessarily possible to do so. Moreover, the value proposition and trade-offs of open-source systems are quite clear. It seems to me the largest long-term value is in integration paths and connectors; most proprietary, "big iron" boxes just do what they do, and that's all they do, more or less. They may have a lot of features, but that's the feature set, and tying it together into novel, innovative and commercially differentiated third-party services is hard. That said, I think we all know the sort of open source-based system to which the OP was referring. Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are low-hanging fruit, and have invited a lot of bad implementations and poor architectures. There's nothing wrong with using these systems foundationally within a carrier-grade product, as long as the system is architected correctly, in a horizontally scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant way, and that's a fairly complex undertaking of software engineering. Vendors of these kinds of solutions also often do not provide a level of support that comports with telco sensibilities; their reasoning is either that the customer should largely support it themselves, since it's all built on open-source components, or their scope of support is narrow. Consistency and commitment can be an issue. I can only speak firsthand, but in our case it has been very clear to me since the early life of our open source-based, commercial ITSP product that customers expect a high level of service value, and that the vendor relationship, along with the institutional domain knowledge and expertise provided, is as much a part of the value proposition as software itself. It's also been very clear that they expect support for the _entire_ technology stack of which the product consists, much as they would receive from Acme Packet or Sonus. Our customers don't care that our product ties together Kamailio, SEMS, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Redis and, ultimately, Linux, nor do they care about the degree to which we can or cannot exert direct control over bugs in these third-party GPL components. They expect us to configure the installations, maintain them, and troubleshoot, debug and fix as necessary. I don't think this insight is necessarily common among vendors of open source-founded products. I've heard a lot of things like, "Oh, well, that's a bug in Asterisk, that's not a problem with our application." If the vendor sells and supports an Asterisk-based platform, to a large extent, it should be the vendor's problem. They may not be able to resolve it themselves, but they should own it, communicate it efficiently to the appropriate parties through expedient channels, and marshal the appropriate resources in support of fixing it. Not everything is always possible, of course, but many things should be possible most of the time. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Well said Alex. Service providers require support for the *whole* product and that is where open source solutions may falter. I don't necessarily agree with the notion that the big-brands don't integrate. We do a ton of integration with Broadsoft, both with software that we've written and 3rd party software. While they're not perfect (who among us is), and they're not cheap, they are highly scalable, reliable, and yes, extensible. I am also a big fan of open source where it makes sense, but for our core soft switch, no. On Jun 20, 2015, at 11:34, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote: Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that open-source systems are the thing to be avoided, nor that it's necessarily possible to do so. Moreover, the value proposition and trade-offs of open-source systems are quite clear. It seems to me the largest long-term value is in integration paths and connectors; most proprietary, "big iron" boxes just do what they do, and that's all they do, more or less. They may have a lot of features, but that's the feature set, and tying it together into novel, innovative and commercially differentiated third-party services is hard. That said, I think we all know the sort of open source-based system to which the OP was referring. Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are low-hanging fruit, and have invited a lot of bad implementations and poor architectures. There's nothing wrong with using these systems foundationally within a carrier-grade product, as long as the system is architected correctly, in a horizontally scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant way, and that's a fairly complex undertaking of software engineering. Vendors of these kinds of solutions also often do not provide a level of support that comports with telco sensibilities; their reasoning is either that the customer should largely support it themselves, since it's all built on open-source components, or their scope of support is narrow. Consistency and commitment can be an issue. I can only speak firsthand, but in our case it has been very clear to me since the early life of our open source-based, commercial ITSP product that customers expect a high level of service value, and that the vendor relationship, along with the institutional domain knowledge and expertise provided, is as much a part of the value proposition as software itself. It's also been very clear that they expect support for the _entire_ technology stack of which the product consists, much as they would receive from Acme Packet or Sonus. Our customers don't care that our product ties together Kamailio, SEMS, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Redis and, ultimately, Linux, nor do they care about the degree to which we can or cannot exert direct control over bugs in these third-party GPL components. They expect us to configure the installations, maintain them, and troubleshoot, debug and fix as necessary. I don't think this insight is necessarily common among vendors of open source-founded products. I've heard a lot of things like, "Oh, well, that's a bug in Asterisk, that's not a problem with our application." If the vendor sells and supports an Asterisk-based platform, to a large extent, it should be the vendor's problem. They may not be able to resolve it themselves, but they should own it, communicate it efficiently to the appropriate parties through expedient channels, and marshal the appropriate resources in support of fixing it. Not everything is always possible, of course, but many things should be possible most of the time. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Oh, yes, big-brand switches do have integration capabilities, but within a tightly controlled set of parameters. Moreover, these integration paths typically take the form of morbidly obese, bureaucratic SDKs, betraying a common fondness for heavyweight SOAP and Java.? It's not the same as just going into the database and doing whatever you please, bolting on views and triggers from the ?side, etc, nor is it like a lightweight REST API. -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry. ? Original Message ? From: Peter E Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2015 14:47 To: Alex Balashov Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? Well said Alex. Service providers require support for the *whole* product and that is where open source solutions may falter. I don't necessarily agree with the notion that the big-brands don't integrate. We do a ton of integration with Broadsoft, both with software that we've written and 3rd party software. While they're not perfect (who among us is), and they're not cheap, they are highly scalable, reliable, and yes, extensible. I am also a big fan of open source where it makes sense, but for our core soft switch, no. On Jun 20, 2015, at 11:34, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote: Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that open-source systems are the thing to be avoided, nor that it's necessarily possible to do so. Moreover, the value proposition and trade-offs of open-source systems are quite clear. It seems to me the largest long-term value is in integration paths and connectors; most proprietary, "big iron" boxes just do what they do, and that's all they do, more or less. They may have a lot of features, but that's the feature set, and tying it together into novel, innovative and commercially differentiated third-party services is hard. That said, I think we all know the sort of open source-based system to which the OP was referring. Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are low-hanging fruit, and have invited a lot of bad implementations and poor architectures. There's nothing wrong with using these systems foundationally within a carrier-grade product, as long as the system is architected correctly, in a horizontally scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant way, and that's a fairly complex undertaking of software engineering. Vendors of these kinds of solutions also often do not provide a level of support that comports with telco sensibilities; their reasoning is either that the customer should largely support it themselves, since it's all built on open-source components, or their scope of support is narrow. Consistency and commitment can be an issue. I can only speak firsthand, but in our case it has been very clear to me since the early life of our open source-based, commercial ITSP product that customers expect a high level of service value, and that the vendor relationship, along with the institutional domain knowledge and expertise provided, is as much a part of the value proposition as software itself. It's also been very clear that they expect support for the _entire_ technology stack of which the product consists, much as they would receive from Acme Packet or Sonus. Our customers don't care that our product ties together Kamailio, SEMS, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Redis and, ultimately, Linux, nor do they care about the degree to which we can or cannot exert direct control over bugs in these third-party GPL components. They expect us to configure the installations, maintain them, and troubleshoot, debug and fix as necessary. I don't think this insight is necessarily common among vendors of open source-founded products. I've heard a lot of things like, "Oh, well, that's a bug in Asterisk, that's not a problem with our application." If the vendor sells and supports an Asterisk-based platform, to a large extent, it should be the vendor's problem. They may not be able to resolve it themselves, but they should own it, communicate it efficiently to the appropriate parties through expedient channels, and marshal the appropriate resources in support of fixing it. Not everything is always possible, of course, but many things should be possible most of the time. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Also, I cannot agree with the stance than open source technologies are unsuitable for core softswitches. All open source engines out there today are just technology cores; a great deal of middleware, integration and application is required to turn them into service delivery platforms. ?That makes them a lot like the commercial protocol stacks, e.g. Radvision, used in commercial products.? Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support.? -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry.
Better not use SIP, it is an open standard. Better not use DNS and BIND, it's both an open standard and open source. Better not use nginx or Apache, they are both open source. Better not use MySQL or Postgres, they are both open source. Better not use SMTP or postfix or mailman, they use open standards and are open source. Oh wait, you just did, by sending this email to this list. Your argument that open source software is not good enough for your production environment says you know little about how the production Internet is powered. Amazon Web Services started with Xen and MySQL (and still use it today). I'd say their production environment is pretty critical to much of the Internet. Dismissing all open source software and solutions out of hand seems to miss the understanding about paid support and open source solutions: "If there is a problem, yo, I'll solve it." Not "And I will wait, I will wait for you." of proprietary closed source vendors. "Ice Ice" Mumford Beckman On Sat, 20 Jun 2015, Alex Balashov wrote:
Also, I cannot agree with the stance than open source technologies are unsuitable for core softswitches.
All open source engines out there today are just technology cores; a great deal of middleware, integration and application is required to turn them into service delivery platforms. ?That makes them a lot like the commercial protocol stacks, e.g. Radvision, used in commercial products.
Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support.
-- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States
Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent?from?my?BlackBerry.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman at angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+1 -- Kind Regards, Gavin Henry. Managing Director. T +44 (0) 1224 279484 M +44 (0) 7930 323266 F +44 (0) 1224 824887 E ghenry at suretec.co.uk Open Source. Open Solutions(tm). http://www.suretecsystems.com/ Suretec Systems is a limited company registered in Scotland. Registered number: SC258005. Registered office: 24 Cormack Park, Rothienorman, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, AB51 8GL. Subject to disclaimer at http://www.suretecgroup.com/disclaimer.html Do you know we have our own VoIP provider called SureVoIP?? See http://www.surevoip.co.uk OpenPGP (GPG/PGP) Public Key: 0x8CFBA8E6 - Import from hkp://subkeys.pgp.net or http://www.suretecgroup.com/0x8CFBA8E6.gpg On 20 Jun 2015 20:39, "Peter Beckman" <beckman at angryox.com> wrote:
Better not use SIP, it is an open standard.
Better not use DNS and BIND, it's both an open standard and open source.
Better not use nginx or Apache, they are both open source.
Better not use MySQL or Postgres, they are both open source.
Better not use SMTP or postfix or mailman, they use open standards and are open source.
Oh wait, you just did, by sending this email to this list.
Your argument that open source software is not good enough for your production environment says you know little about how the production Internet is powered.
Amazon Web Services started with Xen and MySQL (and still use it today). I'd say their production environment is pretty critical to much of the Internet.
Dismissing all open source software and solutions out of hand seems to miss the understanding about paid support and open source solutions:
"If there is a problem, yo, I'll solve it."
Not
"And I will wait, I will wait for you."
of proprietary closed source vendors.
"Ice Ice" Mumford Beckman
On Sat, 20 Jun 2015, Alex Balashov wrote:
Also, I cannot agree with the stance than open source technologies are
unsuitable for core softswitches.
All open source engines out there today are just technology cores; a great deal of middleware, integration and application is required to turn them into service delivery platforms. That makes them a lot like the commercial protocol stacks, e.g. Radvision, used in commercial products. Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support. -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman at angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
+10,000, but the complete failure among Bellhead/ex-ILEC/traditional telco types to comprehend this is why we're effectively shut out of that market. :-) -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry. ? Original Message ? From: Peter Beckman Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2015 15:39 To: Alex Balashov Cc: Peter E; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? Better not use SIP, it is an open standard. Better not use DNS and BIND, it's both an open standard and open source. Better not use nginx or Apache, they are both open source. Better not use MySQL or Postgres, they are both open source. Better not use SMTP or postfix or mailman, they use open standards and are open source. Oh wait, you just did, by sending this email to this list. Your argument that open source software is not good enough for your production environment says you know little about how the production Internet is powered. Amazon Web Services started with Xen and MySQL (and still use it today). I'd say their production environment is pretty critical to much of the Internet. Dismissing all open source software and solutions out of hand seems to miss the understanding about paid support and open source solutions: "If there is a problem, yo, I'll solve it." Not "And I will wait, I will wait for you." of proprietary closed source vendors. "Ice Ice" Mumford Beckman On Sat, 20 Jun 2015, Alex Balashov wrote:
Also, I cannot agree with the stance than open source technologies are unsuitable for core softswitches.
All open source engines out there today are just technology cores; a great deal of middleware, integration and application is required to turn them into service delivery platforms. ?That makes them a lot like the commercial protocol stacks, e.g. Radvision, used in commercial products.
Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support.
-- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States
Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent?from?my?BlackBerry.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman at angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I assume this was directed at me? I guess you missed the part where I said I am a fan of open source technologies. On Jun 20, 2015, at 15:39, Peter Beckman <beckman at angryox.com> wrote: Better not use SIP, it is an open standard. Better not use DNS and BIND, it's both an open standard and open source. Better not use nginx or Apache, they are both open source. Better not use MySQL or Postgres, they are both open source. Better not use SMTP or postfix or mailman, they use open standards and are open source. Oh wait, you just did, by sending this email to this list. Your argument that open source software is not good enough for your production environment says you know little about how the production Internet is powered. Amazon Web Services started with Xen and MySQL (and still use it today). I'd say their production environment is pretty critical to much of the Internet. Dismissing all open source software and solutions out of hand seems to miss the understanding about paid support and open source solutions: "If there is a problem, yo, I'll solve it." Not "And I will wait, I will wait for you." of proprietary closed source vendors. "Ice Ice" Mumford Beckman
On Sat, 20 Jun 2015, Alex Balashov wrote:
Also, I cannot agree with the stance than open source technologies are unsuitable for core softswitches.
All open source engines out there today are just technology cores; a great deal of middleware, integration and application is required to turn them into service delivery platforms. ?That makes them a lot like the commercial protocol stacks, e.g. Radvision, used in commercial products. Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support. -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman at angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20 June 2015 at 12:17, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Architecture is of the essence. A well-architected, clusterable Freeswitch platform (or, say, Kamailio, as in our case) is much more reliable and capable than a badly implemented commercial platform with crappy vendor support.
And quite important fact: if you have the source, you can poke at it and fix something to your liking and even submit patches back to the project. Closed source will likely listen to you but you're at their mercy to implement whatever you request. Case in point: ssh in windows has been ANNOUNCED within the last couple weeks but I don't know when it will actually happen. -- ------- inum: 883510009027723 sip: jungleboogie at sip2sip.info xmpp: jungle-boogie at jit.si
I agree with Peter. The company's I worked for in the past that deployed open source never made it as they encountered serious issues and bugs and did not have a solid in house talent that could resolve the issues. There is only a hand full of large carriers left with open source cores and they spend more money retaining talent to manage and solve issues vs going with a known canned system that will do the support etc Just my 2 cents for what it's worth Thanks Zak Rupas Tier 3 Voice Vonage
On Jun 20, 2015, at 12:47 PM, Peter E <peeip989 at gmail.com> wrote:
Well said Alex. Service providers require support for the *whole* product and that is where open source solutions may falter.
I don't necessarily agree with the notion that the big-brands don't integrate. We do a ton of integration with Broadsoft, both with software that we've written and 3rd party software. While they're not perfect (who among us is), and they're not cheap, they are highly scalable, reliable, and yes, extensible.
I am also a big fan of open source where it makes sense, but for our core soft switch, no.
On Jun 20, 2015, at 11:34, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that open-source systems are the thing to be avoided, nor that it's necessarily possible to do so. Moreover, the value proposition and trade-offs of open-source systems are quite clear. It seems to me the largest long-term value is in integration paths and connectors; most proprietary, "big iron" boxes just do what they do, and that's all they do, more or less. They may have a lot of features, but that's the feature set, and tying it together into novel, innovative and commercially differentiated third-party services is hard.
That said, I think we all know the sort of open source-based system to which the OP was referring. Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are low-hanging fruit, and have invited a lot of bad implementations and poor architectures. There's nothing wrong with using these systems foundationally within a carrier-grade product, as long as the system is architected correctly, in a horizontally scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant way, and that's a fairly complex undertaking of software engineering.
Vendors of these kinds of solutions also often do not provide a level of support that comports with telco sensibilities; their reasoning is either that the customer should largely support it themselves, since it's all built on open-source components, or their scope of support is narrow. Consistency and commitment can be an issue.
I can only speak firsthand, but in our case it has been very clear to me since the early life of our open source-based, commercial ITSP product that customers expect a high level of service value, and that the vendor relationship, along with the institutional domain knowledge and expertise provided, is as much a part of the value proposition as software itself. It's also been very clear that they expect support for the _entire_ technology stack of which the product consists, much as they would receive from Acme Packet or Sonus. Our customers don't care that our product ties together Kamailio, SEMS, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Redis and, ultimately, Linux, nor do they care about the degree to which we can or cannot exert direct control over bugs in these third-party GPL components. They expect us to configure the installations, maintain them, and troubleshoot, debug and fix as necessary.
I don't think this insight is necessarily common among vendors of open source-founded products. I've heard a lot of things like, "Oh, well, that's a bug in Asterisk, that's not a problem with our application." If the vendor sells and supports an Asterisk-based platform, to a large extent, it should be the vendor's problem. They may not be able to resolve it themselves, but they should own it, communicate it efficiently to the appropriate parties through expedient channels, and marshal the appropriate resources in support of fixing it. Not everything is always possible, of course, but many things should be possible most of the time.
-- Alex
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
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On 20 Jun 2015 21:11, "Alex Balashov" <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
The law of conservation of mass and energy applies to commercial
solutions vendors, too; they also need to retain in-house talent and solve problems. As it happens, they often do a worse job of this (while charging more) because their staff do not benefit from the knowledge-augmenting ecosystems of Google, conferences, books, etc. On the other hand, they have more firm control of all the components.
The clever ones get support contracts for core open source software from the open source software project in order to keep it alive. That's how it works and these guys don't get that. Or they pay for a full time dev of their staff that sits in said project. Gavin.
"The clever ones get support contracts for core open source software from the open source software project" Oh, indeed. But it just doesn't feel as satisfying as having a long dependency chain of medium-to-large companies to blame, escalating that blame through sclerotic TACs and offshore NOCs. :-) ? -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry.
I'm currently working on my third successful open source based company. We use Asterisk and haven't needed support in years. Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 20, 2015, at 12:57 PM, Zak Rupas <zak at simplesignal.com> wrote:
I agree with Peter. The company's I worked for in the past that deployed open source never made it as they encountered serious issues and bugs and did not have a solid in house talent that could resolve the issues. There is only a hand full of large carriers left with open source cores and they spend more money retaining talent to manage and solve issues vs going with a known canned system that will do the support etc
Just my 2 cents for what it's worth
Thanks Zak Rupas Tier 3 Voice Vonage
On Jun 20, 2015, at 12:47 PM, Peter E <peeip989 at gmail.com> wrote:
Well said Alex. Service providers require support for the *whole* product and that is where open source solutions may falter.
I don't necessarily agree with the notion that the big-brands don't integrate. We do a ton of integration with Broadsoft, both with software that we've written and 3rd party software. While they're not perfect (who among us is), and they're not cheap, they are highly scalable, reliable, and yes, extensible.
I am also a big fan of open source where it makes sense, but for our core soft switch, no.
On Jun 20, 2015, at 11:34, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that open-source systems are the thing to be avoided, nor that it's necessarily possible to do so. Moreover, the value proposition and trade-offs of open-source systems are quite clear. It seems to me the largest long-term value is in integration paths and connectors; most proprietary, "big iron" boxes just do what they do, and that's all they do, more or less. They may have a lot of features, but that's the feature set, and tying it together into novel, innovative and commercially differentiated third-party services is hard.
That said, I think we all know the sort of open source-based system to which the OP was referring. Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are low-hanging fruit, and have invited a lot of bad implementations and poor architectures. There's nothing wrong with using these systems foundationally within a carrier-grade product, as long as the system is architected correctly, in a horizontally scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant way, and that's a fairly complex undertaking of software engineering.
Vendors of these kinds of solutions also often do not provide a level of support that comports with telco sensibilities; their reasoning is either that the customer should largely support it themselves, since it's all built on open-source components, or their scope of support is narrow. Consistency and commitment can be an issue.
I can only speak firsthand, but in our case it has been very clear to me since the early life of our open source-based, commercial ITSP product that customers expect a high level of service value, and that the vendor relationship, along with the institutional domain knowledge and expertise provided, is as much a part of the value proposition as software itself. It's also been very clear that they expect support for the _entire_ technology stack of which the product consists, much as they would receive from Acme Packet or Sonus. Our customers don't care that our product ties together Kamailio, SEMS, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Redis and, ultimately, Linux, nor do they care about the degree to which we can or cannot exert direct control over bugs in these third-party GPL components. They expect us to configure the installations, maintain them, and troubleshoot, debug and fix as necessary.
I don't think this insight is necessarily common among vendors of open source-founded products. I've heard a lot of things like, "Oh, well, that's a bug in Asterisk, that's not a problem with our application." If the vendor sells and supports an Asterisk-based platform, to a large extent, it should be the vendor's problem. They may not be able to resolve it themselves, but they should own it, communicate it efficiently to the appropriate parties through expedient channels, and marshal the appropriate resources in support of fixing it. Not everything is always possible, of course, but many things should be possible most of the time.
-- Alex
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
On 06/20/2015 04:46 PM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
I'm currently working on my third successful open source based company. We use Asterisk and haven't needed support in years.
Indeed, but - to play Devil's Advocate - you have to keep in mind that a lot of LECs and ITSPs: - Are primarily sales companies, with an engineering appendage as an afterthought. This means there's no engineering culture, and consequently, it's not a place where a lot of engineers want to work, so they have trouble retaining quality talent and end up bleeding OPEX. - And/or: rely on vendors' consulting to build and maintain their networks. - Need to replicate and scale business processes to large customer volumes and workforces consisting, in the main, of relatively average do-gooders. Depending on the precise mixture of these variables, they may or may not be able to utilise open source. I've seen a lot of companies, particularly large, where open source voice platforms, usually having come in through the acquisition of a small company, just couldn't assimilate into the "corporate DNA". These acquisitions were usually abandoned because the vast armies of cookie-cutter Broadsoft and Oracle people just didn't know what to do with all this Asterisk or Kamailio stuff. Furthermore, there's always going to be a CAPEX vs. OPEX trade-off; it's a well-understood fact that open source isn't free. Savings in licencingand support cost are to some extent transferred into cultivation of sufficient operational expertise to run the technology, or to contractors to do the same. So, like most things, it's really a question of company culture and talent mixture. As a general rule, you need some sort of nontrivial internal engineering apparatus to properly own open-source technology. A lot of ex-ILEC and Bell System people have a know-nothingism that consists more in throwing money at the problem, seldom altogether successfully. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
I consult to many CLECs and ITSPs. When we are deciding on a softswitch, we usually go over a few questions: 1) Who are you selling to - B2B or B2C? 2) What is the culture of your business - techie or sales? 3) Do you mainly buy or build? Why? 4) Realistically what scale are you planning for? 5) Who are you targeting and with what bundle of services? -- Regards, Peter Radizeski @ RAD-INFO INC Circuits * Bandwidth * Consulting (813) 963-5884
Even Microsoft has started to embrace open source in a big way but I can understand how some open source projects may have left a bad taste in your mouth. Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Gavin Henry<mailto:ghenry at suretec.co.uk> Sent: ?6/?20/?2015 7:30 AM To: Fred Posner<mailto:fred at palner.com> Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org<mailto:voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? You'll be very hard pushed to find any product that doesn't have open source software somewhere in it. It powers the world.
We utilize CSRP http://www.evaristesys.com/ and I believe it meets all of your listed requirements. We've been quite happy with it. Thanks David On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 2:39 AM, Greg Lipschitz <Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au> wrote:
Hi All,
We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers.
There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult.
There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at.
What we are looking for...
1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms.
Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made.
Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list.
Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :)
Cheers,
Greg
Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
-- [image: Ringfree Communications, Inc] <http://ringfree.biz/> David Wessell / President 828-575-0030 x101/ david at ringfree.biz Ringfree Communications, Inc Office: 828-575-0030 / Fax: 888-243-7830 PO BOX 1994 Hendersonville, NC 28793 http://ringfree.biz This e-mail message may contain confidential or legally privileged information and is intended only for the use of the intended recipient(s). Any unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, distribution, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is prohibited. E-mails are not secure and cannot be guaranteed to be error free as they can be intercepted, amended, or contain viruses. Anyone who communicates with us by e-mail is deemed to have accepted these risks. Company Name is not responsible for errors or omissions in this message and denies any responsibility for any damage arising from the use of e-mail. Any opinion and other statement contained in this message and any attachment are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company.
I'm a big Metaswitch fan myself. On Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 7:36 AM David Wessell <david at ringfree.biz> wrote:
We utilize CSRP http://www.evaristesys.com/ and I believe it meets all of your listed requirements. We've been quite happy with it.
Thanks David
On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 2:39 AM, Greg Lipschitz < Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au> wrote:
Hi All,
We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers.
There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult.
There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at.
What we are looking for...
1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms.
Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made.
Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list.
Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :)
Cheers,
Greg
Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--
[image: Ringfree Communications, Inc] <http://ringfree.biz/>
David Wessell / President 828-575-0030 x101/ david at ringfree.biz
Ringfree Communications, Inc Office: 828-575-0030 / Fax: 888-243-7830 PO BOX 1994 Hendersonville, NC 28793 http://ringfree.biz
This e-mail message may contain confidential or legally privileged information and is intended only for the use of the intended recipient(s). Any unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, distribution, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is prohibited. E-mails are not secure and cannot be guaranteed to be error free as they can be intercepted, amended, or contain viruses. Anyone who communicates with us by e-mail is deemed to have accepted these risks. Company Name is not responsible for errors or omissions in this message and denies any responsibility for any damage arising from the use of e-mail. Any opinion and other statement contained in this message and any attachment are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Last time I deployed Broadsoft on Solaris. We had mixed results. This was back in 2002 I understand the Broadsoft Platform has changed alot. Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Greg Lipschitz<mailto:Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au> Sent: ?6/?20/?2015 2:40 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org<mailto:voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? Hi All, We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers. There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult. There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at. What we are looking for... 1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms. Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made. Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list. Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :) Cheers, Greg Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au<http://www.thesummitgroup.com.au> The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109 _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
I also need to select a softwitch shortly. I can understand why some may reply off list but if you would not mind posting a summary it would be much appreciated. Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Greg Lipschitz<mailto:Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au> Sent: ?6/?20/?2015 2:40 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org<mailto:voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? Hi All, We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers. There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult. There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at. What we are looking for... 1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms. Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made. Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list. Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :) Cheers, Greg Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au<http://www.thesummitgroup.com.au> The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109 _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
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Thanks to all who have replied on and off list. I'll do some more homework and report back the findings in time :) Cheers! Greg Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109 ________________________________________ From: VoiceOps [voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] on behalf of Greg Lipschitz [Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au] Sent: Saturday, 20 June 2015 4:39 PM To: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] Which Softswitch? Hi All, We are in the process of going down the path of deploying our own Softswitch infrastructure to transition away from purchasing from SIP Trunk providers and moving to getting CTS direct from VoIP Carriers. There seems to be a lot of solutions out on the market and weeding out the "Built on Asterisk" / "Built on Freeswitch" with little or no support vs Commercial Supported solutions is proving to be difficult. There are the "leaders" (or strong marketing companies) such as Broadsoft & Metaswitch - but what I am trying to uncover is what else is great out there that may not have the exposure but is worth looking at. What we are looking for... 1. Class 4 Softswitch 2. Geographical Redundancy (Active - Active) 3. Preferably not built on Freeswitch or Asterisk (Not saying they're bad just tired of OpenSource for Core products) 4. Must have commercial support available (preferably during Australian hours) 5. Windows or Linux doesn't phase us - we have skill set on both platforms. Happy to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the war stories so that we can get some real world feedback on what's out there, what works, what doesn't and hopefully not make the same mistakes that others have already made. Offlist replies are perfectly fine if you don't wish to discuss on-list. Thanks in advance and enjoy the rest of your weekend! :) Cheers, Greg Greg Lipschitz | Director | The Summit Group E: Greg at thesummitgroup.com.au W: www.thesummitgroup.com.au The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | P: 1300 049 749 | Level 1, 39 Railway Road, Blackburn VIC 3130 The Summit Group (USA) LLC | P: 321 216 3844 | Suite 561, 40E Main Street, Newmark DE 19711 Postal: P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East VIC 3109 _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
participants (14)
-
abalashov＠evaristesys.com -
beckman＠angryox.com -
caalvarez＠gmail.com -
david＠ringfree.biz -
fred＠palner.com -
ggerhard＠sansay.com -
ghenry＠suretec.co.uk -
Greg＠thesummitgroup.com.au -
jungleboogie0＠gmail.com -
mwiles＠akabis.com -
peeip989＠gmail.com -
peter＠4isps.com -
ryan＠finnesey.com -
zak＠simplesignal.com