Coming 10 years after Asterisk's launch, Digium announced the general availability of annual support subscriptions for open source Asterisk. The new service options are expected to give organizations warm-fuzzies when working with the IP telephony platform and include technical support, hardware replacements and substantial discounts on training programs.
"More and more requests from larger and larger companies" were the ultimate deciding factor in rolling out for-pay support, said Digium spokesperson Steve Sokol, with businesses wanting a "throat to choke" if issues came up in implementing and/or working with the software.
Four categories of support services have been defined at this point in time. Level 1, the basic SMB-style package, starts at $595 for a year and includes two trouble tickets with support available during normal business hours; it also has discounts on AstriCon and training classes thrown in. Level 2 provides phone access on a 24x7 basis and 5 trouble tickets/problems for $1995.
Moving into the enterprise space, Level 3 prices at $3395 and has 10 trouble tickets and covers up to five servers. At Level 4 - - enterprises can cover up to 10 servers and make an unlimited number of trouble tickets for $7995. Level 4 also throws in a free chunk of time for consultative support to set aside time with an engineer to discuss such things as an upcoming rollout of new services or upgrade of software. Level 4 is currently the highest tier of service defined, but Sokol indicated there is another one for developers under development.
Support extends to "any version of Asterisk you want," said Sokol, including binary and the open source code itself. Most of the time, users have one of the latest release versions, with binary distribution problems easier to solve than potentially modified code.
Related articles
Digium: Asterisk downloads up 50% in 2008 - FierceVoIP [1]
Digium foreshadowed a support announcement at AstriCon 2008 - Future Asterisk Delivery and Support [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/digium-asterisk-downloads-50-2008/2008-12-17
[2] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/astricon-2008-future-asterisk-deliver-and-support/2008-09-25