- Minimize cost and Maximize Return on Investment.
- Sustain Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI security compliance.
- Centralize customer servicing of 25 languages into existing contact centers.
- Deploy 15+ country's by the end of the year.
Cost Comparison
Traditionally from a telephony and networking perspective, we are an Avaya and Cisco shop respectively. These systems are proven; however, top of the line commercial products come with a suitable price tag. Here's a typical cost for a single 30-person site Avaya/Cisco solution:
- Labor: $25K
- Equipment cost: $53K
- Total CapEx: $78K
Annual Recurring costs: $63K
(MPLS network, Maintenance Contracts, Phone lines, etc)
With a 5 year amortization of equipment, the annual cost for an Avaya/Cisco implementation for this project would be: $79K/site x 15 = $1.2 million/yr = $6 million/5 year TCO
The $6MM is only network/telecom equipment. It does not take into account office lease, payroll, advertising, etc. Following the traditional route would make it virtually impossible to achieve profitability in these small markets, which is probably why most of our competitors haven't done this already...
The alternative...
the telephony solution we chose for this project is an Open Source Software PBX called Asterisk.
Asterisk is software that turns an ordinary computer into a voice communications server. Asterisk is the world's most powerful and popular telephony development tool-kit. It is used by small businesses, large businesses, call centers, carriers and governments worldwide. Asterisk is open source and is available free to all under the terms of the GPL.The solution to our SOX/PCI compliance was to utilize the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) in the satellite offices and tunnel the traffic through our commercial infrastructure. The ASA solution enabled us to:
- leverage our existing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) saving $15K per location.
- encrypt all voice and data communication between and within the sites.
- manage the sites/systems the same way we monitor our traditional infrastructure.
- Labor: $2K
- Equipment cost: $3K
- Total CapEx: $5K
With a 5 year amortization of equipment, the annual cost for the Asterisk/ASA implementation is: $9K/site x 15 = $135K/yr!
The annualized savings for Asterisk/ASA versus the traditional Avaya/Cisco solution is $70K/site or $5.2 million in 5 years!