News: California city implements Asterisk; saves $260K

[Bruce Dawson]

Christopher Chisholm wrote:
> ...
> That was a very interesting read.  My skill set mostly involves 
> programming, desktop hardware and your basic networking (I can use a 
> home router and understand most of the concepts in it).  While reading 
> this I was wondering how much knowledge you'd need to be able to 
> implement something like that.  It seems way out of my skill, and I'm 
> betting a pretty huge project for that one guy by himself. 
>   
There are several ways to approach projects like this. Given time, one
person can easily deploy an asterisk server arrangement. Once you get
the concepts down, then its just a matter of weeding out the good
vendors/products from the bad.
> Would anyone here be confident in your ability to do what he did, under 
> similar circumstances?  How well known are those open-source solutions, 
> and what kind of schooling would you need to understand how to use them 
> all, for that purpose?
>   
In projects like this, the biggest problems are:

* Getting requirements that don't change every minute.
* Maintaining good communications with your "clients".
* Staying on top of the Open Source offerings - they're changing as we
speak.
* Being very clear with your vendors, and having bullet-proof SLAs.
* Getting clients to read documentation or attend training.

Regarding schooling/training/learning/... I've found that the formal
methods don't work in this industry for anything other than concepts;
and you need a very good instructor for that. The best approach is to
just go in and implement with the Open Source tools you can download and
possibly customize. You learn a lot, its applicable to the situation at
hand, and its supportable. Dealing with telco's can be a bit of a
mysterious art, but its doable; helps a lot to have a "coach" to help
you through the maze of twisty little passages their marketing
departments seem to create.

Usually, the only downside is documentation. I've found it best to
"customize" documentation for each client. However, getting the client
to pay for documentation is another matter.

The fellow doing this was obviously an employee, not a contractor, so he
had some leverage in the organization to get things done. And I bet he
had a lot of help from the local user group (and he was probably a
contributor to it too), as well as from vendors like Digium (which has
got to be the best vendor I've ever dealt with).

--Bruce