In his latest pricing and licensing column, Doug Carolus of N’Compass Solutions discusses Digium, Asterisk, and open source software as it relates to enterprise communications. As an aside, Doug provides the best thumbnail definition of "free" software that I've heard, and one that's good to keep in mind when thinking about this category of product. Open source software is "free" in the sense of "free" speech—i.e., relatively unrestricted—as opposed to "free" in the sense of "free" stuff—i.e., it costs you nothing. Theoretically, Asterisk doesn’t cost you anything either, but as Doug demonstrates, actually obtaining it and following through all the way to deployment in an enterprise is not at all without cost.
Doug goes on to provide a detailed look at the various ways you obtain, deploy and maintain open source communications software, and suggests where the costs lie and what they can amount to. His column, together with John Malone’s ongoing work surveying the market share for open source, have got me thinking about the future of open source communications software in an environment where many people expect at least the basic functionality to become increasingly commoditized.
If voice and its related applications such as IVR become add-ons to business software and customer service applications, does that suggest that open source is likely to become more appealing to enterprises? Doug makes an interesting observation: Larger deployments of Asterisk are likely to be based on the open source software without prepackaging or customization from any Digium channel partner or other VAR/integrator: "These customers want the flexibility to build the system any way they want, not how the vendor packages it," Doug writes. "This design flexibility is what appeals to the enterprise customers using Asterisk."
It raises the possibility that enterprises may be increasingly drawn to open source communications software because they can more easily (and inexpensively) customize it to fit more appropriately into the business systems that are core to their processes, rather than dealing with more heavyweight, likely more proprietary communications platforms from the traditional, legacy voice/PBX providers.
On the other hand, one of the justifications for greater interest in communications via the cloud is that enterprises don’t even want to bother running the communications systems they already have or may need to retain in the future—so why would they want to bother acquiring or developing the expertise in-house that would be necessary to build a custom solution based on Asterisk or other open source communications software?
The other possibility is that this all shifts primarily into the hands of integrators/VARs, and you select this partner based on a range of considerations, among which the specific underlying communications platform they use might be one of the least important considerations. Price, prior relationship with the channel partner, channel partner expertise in the specific kind of technology integration or vertical industry might all rank higher than whether their solution is based on Asterisk, Cisco, Avaya, or whoever.
What's intriguing, getting back to the initial point of Doug’s, is that the freedom of movement afforded by "free" software may be more important than any freedom from cost, at least for the large enterprise.
I want to close this topic with a pitch for you to help out with John Malone’s research on Open Source market share. John is continuing to build on his research and is running a survey on enterprise usage of open source software. If you have the chance, please go fill out the survey here
