More On OpenSource

OSDial is available under a license called Affero General Public License, or AGPL. As with any license, the license governs how the software is made available. The purpose of the AGPL is to make software easily and freely available as long as you follow the specific rules of the license. (This is not to be confused with software just offered for free, also known as freeware, which does not use any license.)

One of those specific rules is that the code used to make your program must be available to users. This code is called source code. With it, you can make any changes you desire to the program. One rule is that you must share any changes you make, if you choose to distribute it outside your own organization.

There are a few different licenses that follow the general notion of offering the source code without any monetary fee. These are generally referred to as OpenSource.

It is important to note that software developed as OpenSource is typically developed to standards which are higher than a lot of commercial offerings. You will find governments of various countries having specified that when they look for software they have to consider OpenSource. The US military uses it and NSA is actually contributing security code which is in wide use. Large corporations like IBM, HP and Novell are contributing in various degrees. IBM, for example, is following a plan which is to convert all of its internal computers to OpenSource. They have put Linux on things ranging from wrist watches to supercomputers.

Asterisk is the name of a program which is a full telephone system, a.k.a. PBX. This is what you connect phones to, make calls from and facilitates transferring calls between phones in an office. Usually a phone switch is a costly box you buy and typically mount on the wall, which you then connect phone lines to. Asterisk differs in that it is a computer program which you can run in any computer. This makes it inexpensive, flexible and easy to implement. Many phone companies are now using it to lower their operational costs and to compete more effectively. The feature list of Asterisk is comparable to a $20,000 phone system, but exceeds it in flexibility.

In order to connect Asterisk to public phone lines we install a phone card (not unlike to but far superior to a modem). Thus the system can function as a business phone system.

Indeed, Asterisk being a computer program and not a typical hardware phone system, makes it possible to configure it exactly the way you want. Your imagination is really the limit to what it can do. Having been in development and production since 1999, it is as stable and reliable as any business phone system on the market.

Vicidial has been in development and production since 2003 and is one of the most popular OpenSource dialers available. OSDial evolved from Vicidial during 2008 and offers increased flexibility and stability. Both can be found in use in some of the largest contact centers around the world.

Call Center Service Group has created a standard hardware and software solution that reliably and predictably produces a quality product each and every time. The hardware provided by us is not only dialer certified and comes with three years on site hardware support, but is also server grade. We settled on Sangoma and Supermicro because when a dialer goes down you can loose income, staff and clients. When you look at the potential income of a contact center, it is not worth cutting corners on quality.

Comparing OSDial to other dialers reveals the potential of huge cost savings.