I got on my horse yesterday about how I would position Asterisk, Fonality and indeed the whole open source telephony marketing/positioning thing. The reason is because I never believed that being open source is inherently compelling to users, in fact is a distraction in the selling process.
I say that because to the average Joe that has to make a decision to purchase, the bundle of benefits from being an open source is immediately not clear. They may be clear to us in the IT industry (lower cost, best features, better support) but it does not translate cleanly to the customer. “I heard about open source but I don’t know what it means…..” Asterisk should be sold as an telephony application services platform that not only provides advanced and comprehensive functionality out of the box, but also offers extensibility unmatched by any proprietary vendor. This is because there are literally hundreds of developers working to solve practical problems with IP telephony that can then be made available to others at a far more attractive cost than other PBX platforms. Why is that important to the customer?. Because Asterisk offers the ability to evolve overtime to meet the needs of the organization without the cost and complexity. You can add as little or as much as you want without breaking the bank. There, I will get off my marketing horse for today……
