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1 - Compared to Proprietary Telephone Systems
Various companies make a wide range of telephone systems from small to large. All the components of
a proprietary system come from a single manufacturer. The single company designs and builds all th
hardware and software for their telephone system. They manufacture the system themselves. None o
their equipment will work with systems from other companies. This is how they control the price.
Manufacturers usually sell the largest systems themselves, through a dedicated sales force. A dedicated
sales force is, of course, expensive. The cost of this sales force and all the support behind the sales forc
is included in the price you pay for your telephone system
Anything smaller than the very largest systems are usually sold through representatives or distributors.
The smallest systems are typically available through representatives or distributors
The price you pay for a proprietary telephone systems includes all the costs of manufacturing and distribution. The price has to be high enough to provide a profit for everyone in the distribution chain,
the manufacturer, distributor, representative, retailer, etc. The cost of designing and manufacturing i
spread over a relatively few systems from a single manufacturer. This makes proprietary systems ver
expensive.
is built with commodity PC hardware. Event the most sophisticated, industrial strength PC is
far less expensive than any traditionallPBX. Since a PC is a commodity, PCs are inexpensive and your
system is inexpensive.
You may need interface boards to support telephony. For example, you may need a board that will let
you hook up to an incoming telephone line. You may want a board that lets you connect fax machine
in your office to your system. The boards you add to the PC from companies like ar
inexpensive. An system is far less expensive than any proprietary telephone system you migh
consider buying for your business.
Proprietary systems are classified by their manufacturers by features. Do you want voicemail, that's
more hardware and more money. Do you need a system that supports more users? That's a larger mor
expensive system. A proprietary system will cost more for every feature you want. Features like voice-mail and an Internet connection will be expensive.
Each proprietary system in a manufacturer's product range is limited to a certain number of users.
Adding more users requires adding more expensive cards to the system, or buying a more expensiv
system. The manufacturer demands much more money for their more capable systems
A small inexpensive PC will run and support a surprising number of users. Do you need an
system to support more users? You can use a larger PC. You can very easily use multipl
servers. If you ever have too many users for a single system, spend a little bit mor
money and put in another server.
You won't be able to get the features available with an expensive proprietary system if you purchase an
inexpensive proprietary system. Manufacturers do not put all the features they support into all th
products they sell. There may be a feature you need or want that is only available with a more expensiv
system.
Features only available in a proprietary phone system costing tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars are now available in your free software. has most o
the features found on any high-end proprietary telephone system.
A user community has grown up around . When a developer from any organization adds a
new feature, you get that feature too. Unlike proprietary systems, you can easily add your own features
As it is new, may still lack a few features here and there, but it is easy to add new features to
. When someone in the community adds the feature you want, you won't be charge
extra for it. Since the product is open source, you can add you own features.
Atek VoIP Solution has facilities proprietary telephone systems cannot provide. For example, has a scripting system. This scripting system makes it easy to make do amazing things. For example, you
can write a script to have call you in the morning to wake you up. You can write a script t
have read a weather or traffic report.
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