Asterisk does have supported versions “Asterisk Business Edition”, and “Enterprise Asterisk”.
digium.com/en/asteriskbusinesses/
None taken. I am not a 3Com employee. I have worked with 3Com a lot with support issues, and have had mixed results. I find that the best help I have had has been when working directly with the engineers that designed the system.
I cannot personally attest to the support from Digium, as I am an open source (read in it for the free stuff) guy on this project for now.
Asterisk Business Edition may have a web GUI interface, I cannot say.
The package I use is freePBX. And because I am testing in a small office i use trixbox. Trixbox is an all in one distro based on CentOS. It includes Asterisk, freePBX, SugarCRM, and a few other really nice additions. Probably not up to snuff for large systems, but a great way to get your feet wet. trixbox.org
There are phones compatible with asterisk that support auto provisioning via tftp. How closely this matches the NBX, i have not tested.
All in all, asterisk is a great system. I have had more little issues, ie. voicemail sound, analog line card setup, ata setup, etc. as would be expected from an opensource system. The nice thing (and bad thing) about propritary systems, like the 3Com is that they make the hardware and software, which usually means that it will work well together, and in 3Com’s case auto detected and setup for you.
I would imagine that you have a lot of money tied up in 3Com hardware right now, and I am not going to be the guy to convince you to walk away from that into an Asterisk system. But, with an PC and some time, asterisk could be tested in your office with a minimal outlay of cash.
Get an older PC, install trixbox, and get a few Cisco, Snom, Aastra, or Polycom SIP capable phones and try for your self.
An analog card, 2 phones, a PC and Trixbox could be setup for under $700.00. (TDM02B 2 port FXO card $250.00, 2 Polycom Soundpoint IP 430 POE phone $150.00 each, spare pc in office free, trixbox/asterisk free)
If you are really having that many issues, it may be somethig to investigate.
Just out of curiosity…
I assume 3 Locations, 1 Corp. 2 satellite (with the v3000’s). Correct?
How are the locations connected? Leased lines or VTL’s? If you are using leased lines, how big, what compression on the phones, QoS?
Are you having issues on the same subnet? Dropped calls, one way audio, conferencing, or across the subnets?
What phones? 3101’s 3102’s etc…
I am sure you have gone through all of this with your 3Com rep, it is really just for my own curoisity.
Another great place to get more info on asterisk is voip-info.org/wiki/
Maybe we can get some asterisk verterans to chime in here…