I have some issues I’m wondering if Asterisk can solve. I work for a medium sized market research firm, that focuses on IVR technology. We conduct telephone surveys for members of certain clubs that are expecting surveys, no unsolicited stuff involved for the record. Because of managements fear of Linux and open source applications, we currently use a windows dialer solution, using 4 T1’s (same machine / install) configured as AMI/D4. Dialogic D/240JCT1 are our cards of choice. This program has some major limitations regarding volume, and scalability as well as some critical design flaws. To give you an idea of the volume of numbers we call, approximately 200,000 numbers a week. I have tested Asterisk with our surveys, and know it will work, I’m just looking for any feedback, advice, at all from the experts here on how I can use Asterisk with our specific situation. Money isn’t really an object, so VOIP, card choice, hardware etc… is all up for review. Sorry if this is in the wrong place. Reprimand me if necessary.
This is the perfect place to ask your question. To be honest I was skeptical at first when using open source however I quickly learned that it is a lot better than paid solutions in many ways. If there is a vulnerability in windows you only know about it Microsoft releases a patch or it shows up on the news. Microsoft is known to take time on releasing patches. The more patches they produce the weaker they look so they try to have them all go out at once. With open source if a vulnerability comes out on a Saturday night usually there will be a fix by Sunday. Digium is known to inform the public if there is an issue and to create a fix right away. Also with open source you have the support of millions of people out there as opposed to one company that you must rely on. I do not know the stats for asterisk downloads but about 1.5 years ago they were up to atleast 250,000. That should tell you something about the product.
Thank you David. This is the type of responses I was looking for, although I’m an open source zealot already, it’s the suits i have to sell it to 
. Some other things that would be helpful to me are raw system stats, ie: RAM / Swap usage under load (imagine 96 channels off hook from 9am to 1:30am 6 days a week), multiple T1 interfaces, best choices for hardware, etc… I’m serious about making Asterisk a reality at this firm with a small pinch of wanting to break some myths, and maybe some ‘land speed records’.