Asterisk is so multifaceted it’s hard to come up with a general catchall answer for everyone asking what
Asterisk can do for them. When a friend and I tried to think up an answer that would fit this requirement, the
closest thing we could come up with was “Asterisk will do everything except your dishes, and there is a
module for that currently in development.”
Asterisk as a Private Branch Exchange
Asterisk is, first and foremost, a PBX. Some people seem to constantly tout Asterisk’s VoIP capabilities,
and while that is a major feature, they seem to forget that Asterisk doesn’t need VoIP at all to be a PBX.
But even without VoIP, Asterisk has many advantages over traditional hardware-based PBXes.
Advantages over Traditional PBXes
Asterisk has numerous advantages over “traditional” PBXes.These advantages can benefit both larger and
smaller businesses. Let’s talk about two different scenarios, with two different problems, but one common
solution.
Suppose you are the newly hired IT Director for a medium-sized office. While getting a tour of the server
room, you happen across the PBX. What you see disturbs you: a system, which handles approximately 200
people, is about the size of two mini fridges, requiring its own electrical circuit separate from the servers, and
producing enough heat it has to be tucked in a corner of the server room so as not to overload the air
conditioning system. It also seems to be stuck in the early 1990s:The system has abysmal voice-mail
restrictions, no call waiting, and no caller ID. Being the gogetter you are, you attempt to “buy” these features
from the vendor, but the quote you receive almost gives your purchase officer a heart attack. As if this
wasn’t enough, you also have a dedicated “PBX Administrator” who handles adding phones to the system,
setting up voice-mail boxes, making backups of the PBX, and nothing else. Asterisk is made for this kind of
situation. It can easily fit within a server environment, and will cut costs instantly since you no longer have to
cool and power a giant box that produces massive amounts of heat.Also, dedicated PBX administrators,
while possibly still necessary for a large environment, can be easily replaced by other, administrators,
provided they know how to administrate a Linux box. A competent Linux user can be taught how to
administer an Asterisk PBX easily. Finally, as stated repeatedly, Asterisk is open source, which really cuts
the software upgrade market off at the knees. Plus, if Asterisk lacks a feature a company needs, there are
more than a few options available to the firm: they can code it themselves, hire someone to code it for them,
or use Asterisk’s fairly active bounty system (available at http://www.voip-info.org).
Asterisk in a Small Business Environment
Asterisk provides advantages for small businesses as well. Suppose you are a consultant to a small company
that has you come in a few hours every week to fix computer problems.This company has a small,
ten-phone PBX that was installed by another vendor before you came into a picture. After a while, one of
the phones—the owner’s, of course—will no longer work with the voice-mail system. When you dial his
extension, it rings his phone, and then drops you to the main voice-mail prompt instead of going directly to
his voice-mail box. When he dials his voice mail from his phone, it prompts him for a mailbox rather than
taking him directly to his.The vendor no longer returns phone calls, and the owner begs you to take a look at
it. You bang your head against the wall for several hours trying to figure the system out. Besides the basic
“How to use your phone” info, no documentation is available, there are no Web sites discussing the system,
and diagnostic tools are non-existent. Even if you do figure out the problem, you have no idea how to
correct it since you don’t know how to reprogram it. In other words, you’re licked. Asterisk will fix most of
the issues in this situation as well. Documentation, while admittedly spotty for some of the more obscure
features, is widely available on the Internet. Asterisk debugging is very complete; it can be set up to show
even the most minute of details. Also, in a typical Asterisk installation, vendor tie-in wouldn’t be an issue. If
the owner’s phone was broken, a replacement phone could have been easily swapped in and set up to use
the PBX—no vendor needed
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