Asterisk is a great alternative we used it up till recently moving everything to the Metaswitch. The issues we ran into is exactly what was stated below scalability. One thing that was a pet peeve of of mine with asterisk was anytime a new major release was put out they always seemed to make exten syntax changes to functions which made it hard to upgrade and keep up with new code. But none the less it did it's job for a couple of years so I can't knock it. -carlos -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Alex Balashov Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 9:02 AM To: Scott Berkman Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Alternative IVR Platform? Scott Berkman wrote:

Asterisk also makes for a very powerful and scriptable IVR platform if

you are willing/able to put the work in.

I was about to say - it makes an excellent feature box. My only major concern relates to its scalability; not even so much the amount of concurrent calls per box that it can handle as how much that amount might be reduced by a weighty, complicated dial plan with database backing, etc. On the other hand, the ability to stick it on commodity PC hardware far outweighs any of these downsides from a cost perspective; per-port cost with Asterisk is among the lowest for applications, especially if you bother to do it right (i.e. centralised logic controller, nothing too host-wise). SEMS (SIP Express Media Server) from IPTel/Tekelec is another viable alternative that might scale better. Obviously, it's a pretty bad choice for doing a simple SMB-oriented IVR; it's at least 100x more difficult than doing it with the Asterisk dial plan, and requires using some poorly documented C++ and/or Python APIs. However, if it's something really esoteric and requiring the flexibility of integration and/or data acquisition paths that Asterisk can't provide, or requires a higher degree of real-time call control (i.e. continuous deduction of prepaid balances and termination of call if they have expired, for example), I think it's a pretty good platform. Also makes a great generic signaling-only B2BUA, using ann_b2bua app for exaple. Definitely not the right thing for *basic* IVR, though. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (678) 237-1775 _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops