Digium offers paid support subscriptions for Asterisk PBX

Editor's Note:  This is big news and I am suspecting that they saw there efforts to try and force people into their closed-source Switchvox iPBX was actually losing revenue instead of embracing their open-source golden-child and providing support.  Don't get me wrong, Switchvox is a nice product and it does added value but going the licensing route and closed-source is what all the other companies (Cisco, Avaya, Shoretel, etc....) do and THAT is one of the most compelling reasons to go open source.  Just because customers are FAMILIAR with getting a license for their phone system DOESN'T MEAN THEY WANT ONE.   It might be a hard lesson for Digium to learn but they will get it, peolple don't not want to be locked. 
 
Digium announced at VoiceCon Orlando that it will support subscriptions for businesses using Asterisk, the open source IP PBX. The company, which formerly supported only commercial versions of Asterisk that it sold as packages, now offers four levels of service ranging in price from US$595 for a year to $7,995 for a year. A three-year commitment comes with a 10% discount.

Digium offers Asterisk for free download, but until now users had to rely on the open source community or other vendors for help.

The company says customers asked for the service, claiming that their CIOs were interested in the cost savings Asterisk could offer, but leery of lack of support.

The Level 1 service provides coverage for a single PBX server, two support cases per year, discounts on both training and attendance at the Asterisk conference, and response time of 48 hours. The top-tier Level 4 service includes coverage of 10 servers, unlimited support cases, an hour of consultation time and a response time of four hours on calls.

Customers can upgrade their Level 3 and 4 services to add coverage for more servers for US$495 and $395 each, respectively. Level 1 through 3 customers can buy additional support cases for $295 each. The services come without SLAs.

The service is available now.

Source: Computer World

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Posted by Dal on April 3, 2009 01:43 PM |
Posted to Asterisk News

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