Hi all,
I am trying to push for trixbox CE to be installed at the company I work for but the kinds of questions they will ask is why is this a free product if its so great? From a business aspect why does Fonality offer this as a free download? What is the benefit for them? Is it just for the tech support offered?
Any input would be appreciated!
Thanks!
Of course there are advantages to paid solutions (usually less bugs, more built in features, and support), but CE is a great little package. Fonality makes all their money on pro licences, prebuilt systems, support, (probably kickback from hardware manufacturers) and lastly donaters/ads. It's actually funny you are bringing this up now. I'm in a business class and just last week we studied how "free" is becoming a very viable money maker for companies. Free has it's price. May it be in someones consulting hours, good will donations, hardware, your own time learning how to setup the free product, etc...
Try to sell them on the open source idea.
http://www.opensource.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
Most of my time is spent evangelizing trixbox and OST in general in the SMB and enterprise space.
Have you used any other Open Source in your business? Apache, BIND etc? Was it successful? Are you a full time IT manager or split with other duties? Does your leadership team look to you for direction and answers? I know this is an uncomfortable question but do they trust your judgment? All of these are factors I have seen influence adoptions of OST.
With hundreds of successful deployments and thousands of end points under my belt I can provide compelling references and success stories.
Asterisk and FreePBX are proven. It's up to the implementers to do the job right.
PM me if you want me to speak with your management team. Obviously my angle is looking for consulting time, even if it's simply an hour or two of oversight.
Good luck on your implementation.
Scott
aka "Skyking"
Thanks for the great input on this matter. I am a simple network admin but do have the freedom in my company to propose new ideas. We currently use Fonality but with my knowledge I have gained over the last year I feel a total in-house solution is the way to go to cut expenses. Right now I feel pretty comfortable duplicating what I have on the Fonality system with CE. Wanting to move to CE raises the question I did because it felt like I was stealing!! hehehe but as long as there are still paths of generating money off a free product I feel more comfortable pitching the idea.
Thanks again!
Member Since:
2007-10-16