Dear all.
My feeling is that we should all contribute what we can. Clearly
A2Billing needs money to support the hosting and this website, but it
also needs people to test and report bugs, help with the
documentation, post howto's and especially people who can contribute
code, and generally help with answering questions from our newest
members. Non financial contributions are as welcome as cash, and for
this, we thank you.
There are other ways in which people can help A2Billing, PBX in a
Flash and other open source projects of this nature.
As you have seen from the sucess stories section, there are a good
number of people who are passing decent amounts of traffic through
A2Billing systems. If you have an A2Billing system running on a
commercial basis, then please write it up.
When we get a request for a commercial install, one of the hurdles we
have to get over is "It's open source, it's free, it cannot be any
good, otherwise you'd be selling it." The more people who give open
honest reports on how they use the system and their positive
experiences with it, the easier it is for me or Areski or any other
system integrator to point at the "Success Stories" where they can
read it for themselves.
One of my roles in A2Billing is to try to raise the overall profile of
A2Billing so that the MD of a Telecoms company considers our product
amongst everyone elses product, whether we make the sale or not
depends on the merits of our system as against anyone elses system,
commercial or open source, but at least we get a chance.
This is good for everyone, because then we have more money to invest
in more marketing, trade shows, speaking at events, such as Areski did
recently in Malysia, (
http://www.asterconference.com), which in turn
raises our profile, gives us a crack at competing for the work, and
with hope, gives us more money to allow us to concentrate on improving
A2Billing at an even faster pace, and that means that everyone gets a
better product.
Currently, I don't think our profile is sufficiently mainstream enough
to be on the radar of the average telecoms company. This needs to
change. So if you can help in spreading the word, mentioning
A2Billing, introductions to newspapers and trade publications (e.g.
http://www.voipplanet.com/backgrounders ... hp/3716971) , it
would be very much appreciated.
The same would apply to PBX-in-a-Flash and especially FreePBX, the guts of PiaF and the Trixbox system et al. PiaF is a product aimed at being a PBX or switchboard for an office, and is a very good one (I reckon so, but then again I wrote the ISO for PiaF, so I maybe a tad bias.) But the chances of the MD of a company even knowing such a thing exists is very slight. Usually, "Debbie on Reception" is given the job of getting a new PBX, and she only buys the one she used at her last company. There must be millions of companies out there who need a PBX, and if they have a VoIP PBX, they are going to need VoIP termination, DID, and all the other things that A2Billing can provide.
To conclude, thanks again for all those who have contributed in terms
of bug reports, helping other people, contributing code, invested in
installation and support from us, and especially those who have
donated. - Please start writing up your stories.
Yours
Joe Roper