Negating IP-Centrex with Asterisk and VMWARE Nir Simionovich, CEO & Resident Asterisk Guru Greenfield Technologies Ltd. Israel

Refurb + Asterisk + VMWARE ESXi = Kick Broadsoft! Nir Simionovich, Chief RedBull Consumer Greenfield Technologies Ltd. Israel

/home/nirs/.finger Professional Open Source evangelist since 1996 Professional Asterisk evangelist since 2002 Professional Asterisk solutions and training provider in Israel since 2007 Author of 2 Packt Publishing’s Asterisk books: AsteriskNOW and AGI Development Personal gearing: Creating highly scalable Asterisk installations Largest installation to date: 3500 concurrent channels

/usr/share/man/centrex/what-is Centrex is a PBX-like service providing switching at the central office instead of at the customer's premises. Typically, the telephone company owns and manages all the communications equipment and software necessary to implement the Centrex service and then sells various services to the customer. IP-Centrex aims to converge between the IP telephony world and the Centrex operation model.

/usr/share/man/centrex/why-good Centrex is a wonderful business model for allowing companies to utilize high-end PBX services, without actually owning the PBX infrastructure. Allowing companies utilize Centrex resources as they require allow them to grow and expand as required, gradually expanding their investment as required. Carriers rendering Centrex services can utilize their core resources better, thus, shortening their switching ROI and reducing their switching TCO. In general, Centrex is good!

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/usr/share/man/centrex/pricing Most IP Centrex platforms are priced according to the following criteria: Number of users connected to the platform Number of trunks connected to the platform Number of concurrent calls available Number of voic boxes General features and Class-5 features Voic storage and availability In other words – you pay for anything and everything!

/home/nirs/i-have-a-centrex-dream In a perfect Centrex service, the pricing model should be flat rated. You pay a fixed amount of money each month, regardless of the number of connected phones or users. The amount paid each month is packaged into a well understood package – that even the moguls can understand!

/home/nirs/i-have-a-centrex-dream We don’t need elaborate switch partitioning systems to enable Centrex-Like services We want to allow our customers more control and more features As technology advances, we want to rapidly deploy these technologies to our customers We want to keep in track with open-source development, allowing for new features in the core to be reflected ASAP onto our Centrex

/home/nirs/i-have-a-centrex-dream We don’t need elaborate switch partitioning systems to enable Centrex-Like services We want to allow our customers more control and more features As technology advanced, we want to rapidly deploy these technologies to our customers We want to keep in track with open-source development, allowing for new features in the core to be reflected ASAP onto our Centrex

/root/Documents/rules-of-thumb Asterisk and FreePBX provide a fully featured office PBX construct – don’t reinvent the wheel Hardware servers are under utilized – that’s a given Network connectivity isn’t as expensive as it used to be VMWARE provides a good solution for bettering your hardware utilization and lowering your TCO

/var/log/warning VMWARE costs a lot of money for licenses VMWARE compatible servers cost an arm and a leg Storage issues for the entire system is an issue Monitoring the PBX systems is an issue Is this really economical?

/var/log/resolutions Use VMWARE ESXi as a start – it’s FREE Use re-furbished servers – you can pay as low as 300$ for a Dual XEON server (IBM x335 or Intel SR1350) Monitoring is simple with icinga/nagios and munin Hosting can be a little tricky, but you can always negotiate a good deal Or you can always go with al-cheapo dedicated servers from Cari.Net or ServerPronto.Com

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/root/Documents/initial-rack-layout The following setup includes 14 IBM x335 server (Dual CPU + Dual HD + 8GB RAM) 2 IBM x345 servers (Dual CPU + 6xHD + 8GB RAM) 4 HP Pro-Procurve Switches 10/100 with 2x1GB uplinks Total cost of refurbished servers: < 8000$ ! Total cost of hosting per month: < 1300$ (20 Mbps) Total number of runable VMWARE hosts: 60 – 75 Projected income at 90% utilization: PBX hosting : 1800$ per month Handset hosting (calculated according to 1200 units): 10,800$ per month Professional services: 5,000$ per month

/root/GreenfieldTech/initial-rack-layout GreenfieldTech currently provides hosted PBX services for a select number of it’s customers Overall setup had cost less than 2800$ to build Hosting costs are set at 800$ per month Total number of hosted PBX systems: 35 Total number of hosted PBX handsets: 450 Total monthly revenue from PBX hosting: ~3500$ Total monthly revenue from pro. Services: ~1500$ ROI reached after 6 months!

/home/nirs/contact_info Feel free to contact me at any of the following: Greenfieldtech.nir

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