VoIP News has an interesting article with insights on why not all businesses are ready to adopt open-source telephony systems like Asterisk. The basic premise is that it depends on the culture. Sure, open-source is less expensive and there are solutions out there that are already road-tested and dependable. However, if a business still subscribes to some old school corporate culture that values stability over flexibility, then they’re not likely to go for open-source.

There’s a lot at stake. Market analyst Dell’Oro Group recently projected total PBX revenues at over $7.5 billion in 2011, with IP PBXs making by far the biggest gains. Traditional TDM PBXs will have less than five percent of the market by then, a catastrophic drop from the 85 percent share they held in 2002.

In many ways the decision-making follows what’s now a well-worn path. On the one hand, do you choose the large, stable supplier whose proprietary PBX has as many features as you could ever use and that you know will be well-supported? Or do you take a flyer on the far-less expensive open source system that may not yet have as full a set of features and where the future support is much less certain?

Apparently, in the greater scheme of things, even the largest providers of Asterisk-based hardware and services, such as Digium, are–so to speak– a “a ‘nit’ in the overall scheme of the telephony and unified communications market.” We haven’t hit critical mass yet. Most businesses out there still prefer to deal with more traditional types of vendors. So even if they’re going for VoIP, it’s likely that they’re opting for non open-source solutions.

The perception at first is about support. However, that has been addressed, with the broad support base, for instance, of Asterisk, and the 24/7 professional support that the larger players like Digium are providing. But the question of solutions like Asterisk going mainstream will still rely on how comfortable enterprises get with open source.

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