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Digium Launches Support Services for Asterisk

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in March 31st, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, Danny Windham, Mark Spencer, Open Source, Unified Communications, VoIP, asterisk community, asterisk support, digium, ip pbx, linux, source asterisk, subscriptions, support, support subscriptions, switchvox 4.0, technical support     

Some big news from Digium. Rich Tehrani met with them yesterday to get the inside scoop. Rich takes copious notes on his iPhone, which he sent off to me to try and write up this news. Alas, I’ve been pretty busy myself, but I wanted to share Rich’s notes below, since there are some good “nuggets” in there.

For instance, from Rich’s notes I see that Switchvox 4.0 is on the verge of shipping. But the really big news is that Asterisk has announced the general availability of technical support subscriptions for open source Asterisk. Before if you wanted support from Digium, you had to purchase Asterisk Business Edition. Well, no longer. Now, all of you Asterisk fans out there that try Asterisk and get stuck can now contact Digium and get some support. No more relying on the Asterisk community to answer you questions. Not that asking the Asterisk community is a bad thing, but if you phone system is down, you can’t wait hours for someone to respond to an online posting. This could be a huge revenue-generating opportunity for Digium, which can now monetize the open source version of Asterisk with support subscriptions. I’m surprised they didn’t offer it sooner. Maybe they were afraid it would upset channel partners?

Rich’s notes:

  • Open Source Subscriptions
  • 2 smb subs
  • And 2 enterprise class
  • Incident based
  • Problem: up to today needed community support or consultant with hourly rate
  • Now annual sub - 3 year 10% discount
  • Can call Digium based
  • Level one - support local hours 12 hours - starting at your 8:00 - 7:00
  • For 5 days a week
  • Buys sub online
  • Available in a month through the channel
  • Get a key, name contact and get details when you call
  • Get incident/case handled
  • Can open via we or phone
  • Find a bug - gets entered in bug tracker
  • Gets handled like any biz edition type of bug
  • Not really SLA like a commercial licensed product
  • Biz edition - now only available as OEM or commercially licensed product
  • They want people to buy the open source - engineering opens up 1.4 and 1.6 - first time Digium provides support for open source asterisk
  • Up till now consultants, etc
  • Open source - people buying business edition for support reasons
  • Now getting open source subs
  • Can now support enterprise class apps
  • In the past - anyone who built a large network - 2 levels of enterprise class support
  • 24×7 - server based
  • Unlimited users
  • Up to 3 names contacts
  • First foray into enterprise from server side
  • Up to 24×7 support
  • Switchvox 4.0 on the verge of shipping

The new Asterisk support services enable companies to leverage the power of open source Asterisk with the confidence that their system will be supported by the very founders of the Asterisk movement. According to the news release, “The support subscriptions provide technical support, hardware replacements and substantial discounts on training programs to enable users to take full advantage of the power of the Asterisk platform.”

mark-spencer.jpg“Digium’s new subscription services give Asterisk users the best of both worlds–they can download and use Asterisk free of charge, as always, and now they can also call on Digium for technical support when needed,” said Spencer. “We think the combo of free and open, with support, is going to appeal to many of our most technical users. The Asterisk community has long been a source of great expertise through online forums, and now we’re supplementing that with the ability to call us, 24×7, for access to our Asterisk experts.”

danny-windham.jpg Danny Windham, CEO of Digium, said: “As Asterisk gains traction within large businesses, demand for professional support is on the rise. Our deep knowledge of open source Asterisk and total commitment to its development makes us ideally suited to offer these new services. Companies that purchase subscriptions will receive support from the most knowledgeable group of Asterisk experts in the industry. We see this offering as a substantial step forward for Asterisk in the enterprise and a valuable service for companies of all sizes.”

Asterisk support subscriptions are bundles of services sold on an annual basis. They include technical and engineering support, consultative services, advance hardware replacement, and discounts on Asterisk training and conference passes. 

Asterisk support subscriptions are available immediately from the Digium webstore at http://store.digium.com and will be available through Digium channel partners in Q2. SMB pricing begins at U.S. $595 per year for support during the subscriber’s business hours (8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday); 24×7 support for an SMB begins at U.S. $1,995 per year. Enterprise subscriptions, including 24×7 support, begin at U.S. $3,995 per year. Pricing includes a defined number of servers supported and cases opened per year.

You can read the official news announcement here.

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Skype Now Means Business, Friends The SIP World

by Om Malik in March 23rd, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, Mark Spencer, SIP, VoIP, Voice, digium, skype     

Skype, a division of beleaguered eBay, is going corporate. The company today announced that it will play nice with corporate PBX systems that use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). According to The Wall Street Journal, Skype for SIP product will be introduced as a beta product and will be tested by a limited number of companies.
The […]

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MFC/R2 support added to Asterisk 1.6.2

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in March 17th, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, LibOpenR2, MFC/R2, Moises Silva, VoIP, chan_dahdi, dahdi, digium, libopenr     

Asterisk has just added ‘official’ MFC/R2 support for chan_dahdi. Here’s the commit. The modifications to chan_dahdi, and the supporting library, LibOpenR2, were both written by Moises Silva.

According to the commit:

Many users are using this code, or a variant of it, in Asterisk 1.2, 1.4 and 1.6 in Brazil, México and Argentina. An unknown number of users (but at least 1) are using it in each of the following countries: Colombia, Nepal, Thailand, Venezuela, Perú, and probably others.

To use this code, LibOpenR2 must be installed from http://www.libopenr2.org/. Information about configuration can be found in configs/chan_dahdi.conf.sample.

Via Russell Bryant

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SHSU Switches Back to Cisco CallManager from Asterisk

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in February 27th, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, CCVP, Cisco, Cisco Certified Voice Professional, Jason Fuermann, SIP, TCO, TMCnet, VoIP, cisco call manager, digium, ip pbx, source, source asterisk     

cisco-logo.gif In 2006, I came across a Network World article, which espoused the fact that Sam Houston State University (SHSU) had switched from the Cisco CallManager IP-PBX to open source Asterisk. I wrote about this news since 6,000 students and faculty were moved off Cisco to the open source Asterisk IP-PBX, which was great news for the open source Asterisk community. This deployment demonstrated that Asterisk could scale and put to rest one of the main complaints against Asterisk.

jason_fuermann.jpg Well, 3 years have passed, and according to this thread written by Jason Fuermann, who is responsible for SHSU’s IP phone system, SHSU has switched back to Cisco from Asterisk. Say what?

Continue reading SHSU Switches Back to Cisco CallManager from Asterisk…

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Ready for ITEXPO?

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in January 26th, 2009   
Topics: Digium Asterisk World, Florida, ITEXPO, Microsoft, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, aastra, adtran, dialogic, digium, miami     

itexpo-logo-10-year-east.jpg
With ITEXPO just one week away, Rich has a good roundup of some of the happenings going on at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo taking place in Miami, Florida. Aastra, Adtran, Dialogic, Digium, and Microsoft are just some of the companies exhibiting at the show. And don’t forget Digium Asterisk World is co-located with ITEXPO!

Several prominent VoIP bloggers will be there, including Andy Abramson, Dan York, Jon Arnold, Greg Galitzine, Rich Tehrani, and of course, yours truly. I’m sure there are others as well, but I’d have to check the press registration list and I’m pretty busy today.

Hope to see you in Miami!

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56 Reasons to Attend Digium Asterisk World in Miami

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in January 13th, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, Bill Miller, ITEXPO, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, andy Abramson, asterisk world, digium, dinner     

Bill Miller over at Digium today blogged 5 reasons why you should attend Digium Asterisk World in Miami taking place just a few short weeks away from February 2nd-4th, which is colocated with TMC’s Internet Telephony Conference & Expo (ITEXPO).

Digium 047-thumb-480xauto-3433.jpg
Left-to-right clockwise: Steve Sokol, John Todd, Russell Bryant, Dave Rodriguez (TMC), Greg Galitzine (TMC), Jane Brooks, Tom Keating (TMC), Bill Miller

Bill forgot to mention another important reason - all the networking and meeting with industry insiders at ITEXPO, which also includes eating at great restaurants and fun dinner reception parties at the show. Now, the picture above isn’t from ITEXPO - it’s my visit to Digium’s offices - but it may as well have been from ITEXPO since we always go out to fantastic restaurants with major VoIP vendors to discuss the IP communications industry and meet the people who design/engineer or market VoIP products and services.

While there is plenty of important business to be had at ITEXPO, I find that I acquire some of the best information at these dinner parties where I meet industry heavyweights in a more relaxed atmosphere. I’ve pried some NDA information from some vendors after they’ve had a few beers.

I’ll have to remember to snap a few photos at this upcoming ITEXPO at the various after-show functions & parties. I’ll try and make sure to snaps some photos at the ITEXPO Bloggers’ Dinner that Andy Abramson organizes.

I’m very excited to attend since this is the first time Asterisk World will be at ITEXPO. With the global slowing economy, it’ll be interesting to see how well attended the show will be. The pre-show attendance numbers look good, so I’m crossing my fingers.

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trixbox CE vs. Asterisk Downloads

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in December 23rd, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, AsteriskNOW, Bill Miller, Fonality, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, asterisk asterisknow, asterisk downloads, asterisknow trixbox, digium, downloads, linux, million downloads, trixbox, trixbox CE     

As you may have read, Digium announced a sharp rise in Asterisk downloads for 2008 registering in a whopping 1.5 million downloads for 2008. That got me thinking just how does Asterisk & AsteriskNOW compare with Fonality’s trixbox CE distro? Arguably trixbox CE is the either the #1 or the #2 downloaded Asterisk-based distribution. But are they #1 or #2? Let the Fonality vs. Digium download battle commence…

First, we head to Sourceforge, which tracks trixbox CE downloads and see how trixbox CE stacks up against Digium’s claimed 1.5 million downloads.
trixbox-ce-downloads-2008.jpg

Date (UTC) Downloads Bytes Served
Dec 2008 * 18,050 6.8 TB
Nov 2008 31,000 12.2 TB
Oct 2008 35,187 15.6 TB
Sep 2008 19,449 9.6 TB
Aug 2008 6,948 3.3 TB
Jul 2008 8,329 3.7 TB
Jun 2008 19,993 9.3 TB
May 2008 21,822 13.3 TB
Apr 2008 18,238 11.0 TB
Mar 2008 41,085 25.2 TB
Feb 2008 27,725 16.9 TB
Jan 2008 43,942 26.4 TB
     
Total 291,768 153.8 TB

* Partial data: End of month not yet reached.
Taking a daily average, the final 2008 total downloads should be ~292,587.

That’s 292,587 (year-end estimate) vs. 1.5 million (so far) for Asterisk. So it would appear Digium’s Asterisk beats Fonality trixbox CE by over 5X!

Not so fast though. I was pretty sure the Digium download numbers were for Asterisk and AsteriskNOW combined. AsteriskNOW and trixbox CE are more comparable to each other, since both have FreePBX installed, both are .iso bootable CDs, they’re both nearly plug-and-play distros, etc.

So to be fair to Fonality’s trixbox CE, I should compare AsteriskNOW to trixbox CE. I contacted Digium’s Bill Miller, VP, Product Management, and asked him for the breakdown in their 1.5 million downloads.

I told Bill my intentions of making a side-by-side download comparison, but also pointed out I had to wear my skepticism hat:

“The only caveat to any comparison I make between Asterisk/AsteriskNOW & trixbox CE is that you host your own downloads - not a 3rd party like Sourceforge. So there I have to have a healthy level of skepticism for any numbers Digium cites. Nevertheless, I think it’ll be an interesting discussion if I post these comparative stats in an article.”

Bill explained, “19.8% are AsteriskNOW. We are close to par with them.”. Indeed at 19.8% of 1.5 million equates to 297,000 downloads or roughly 6500 more than trixbox CE. Although, I said above I had to wear my skepticism hat, I think the numbers Bill gave me sound credible.

Bill Miller ads, “Due to the other open source packages they have integrated, and the head start they had, we suspect that they have more in trixbox than AsteriskNOW in production but we are taking downloads and share from them.”

I would agree with Bill that there are indeed more trixbox CE boxes in production, but it does appear from these numbers that Digium’s AsteriskNOW is closing fast in production numbers and already exceeding Fonality’s trixbox CE in downloads.

To be perfectly frank, I’m a little bit surprised AsteriskNOW has surpassed trixbox CE, since I’m sure even Digium would admit that trixbox CE, which was formerly Asterisk@Home, had a huge head start and developed a strong community (see trixbox forums and the sheer number of posts & threads). In fact, Bill Miller mentioned the head start in our conversation. Still, the number of downloads between the two is very close and they are neck-in-neck.

Of course, if you add in regular Asterisk downloads it’s no contest. Digium wins by a landslide.

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TMC & Digium Announce Educational program for Digium|Asterisk World

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in December 15th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Digium|Asterisk World, ITEXPO, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, asterisk world, digium, digium asterisk, tmc, world itexpo     

Some good news from my company TMC and Digium, the founder of Asterisk that I thought I’d share. If you’re an Asterisk fan, you need to be at Asterisk World, which is co-located with the #1 VoIP tradeshow in the U.S., namely TMC’s ITEXPO.

digium-asterisk-world.jpgTechnology Marketing Corporation (TMC) and Digium, the Asterisk Company, today announced the educational program for Digium|Asterisk World, scheduled to take place February 2-4, 2009 in Miami. The event is collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2009.

TMC and Digium also announced that although the conference content and exhibiting opportunities are more than 90 percent complete, additional opportunities remain for interested Digium partners.
Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO is the conference that addresses “Everything Asterisk” for business users, resellers and executive decision-makers. The initial conference sessions featured in the program include:

1. Web-Aware Unified Communications with Switchvox
2. Asterisk for Enterprise
3. Enterprise Pitfalls: Lessons Learned
4. The Case for Asterisk: Call Center App Integration with .NET
5. Multi-Site Open Source Call Center Deployment: A European Case Study
6. Asterisk as a Regulatory Compliance Toolkit
7. Website Identity Management and Authentication Using Asterisk
8. VoIP Transparency: Asterisk and the Economics of Monitoring
9. The Asterisk VoIP Conversion and the Opportunity for Substantial ROI
10. Druid: Case Study for Selling UC Solutions
11. Ingredients for Successful Asterisk PBX Sales

Limited booth space and sponsorship opportunities are still available for companies to showcase their offerings and provide training to Digium|Asterisk World and ITEXPO attendees. Companies exhibiting in the showcase include: Asteria Solutions; Camrivox; Freeside Internet Services; High Powered Help; Interlink Communications Systems; OpenLine Networks; Orecx; TransNexus; Voice Pulse; and Xorcom.

Registration for Digium|Asterisk World and ITEXPO is now open.
“Now in our third year, Digium|Asterisk World’s content is evolving to reflect the maturity of the world’s most widely used open source telephony software,” said Mark Spencer, CTO and founder of Digium and the creator of Asterisk. “Our three-day event at ITEXPO will provide the hands-on training and education that Asterisk developers need to build more advanced and more flexible telephony solutions.”

“We’re proud of several new and innovative programs that will make the 19th iteration of ITEXPO one of the best ever,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and ITEXPO East 2009 conference chairman. “Digium|Asterisk World bolsters an already strong developer focus, and other programs like TMC University, the 4GWireless Evolution event, TMC Editors’ Week and the balance of the conference content make ITEXPO the one-and-only ‘must-attend’ event in the communications industry.”

ITEXPO East 2009 is the world’s largest and most significant communications technology event, featuring hundreds of companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor and hundreds of sessions led by the industry’s most prominent thought leaders. The show helps attendees identify the issues and challenges affecting the deployment of communications technologies. It provides a comprehensive forum for evaluating the latest products and services and delivers a face-to-face networking opportunity that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to cultivate new business relationships. For more information on ITEXPO East, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/.

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Digium Responds to FBI Vhishing Security Warning about Asterisk

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in December 9th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, FBI, IC3, Internet Crimes Complaint Center, John Todd, Security, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, digium, security vulnerability, vhishing, vishing attacks     

fbi-ic3.jpgA few days ago the FBI’s Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3) issued an unclear warning that says versions of Asterisk software are vulnerable to vhishing (voice phishing) attacks, but didn’t say which versions, but causing a flurry of news activity on VoIP news sites, tech sites, and blogs.

It all started with this warning from the IC3:

New Technique Utilizing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) Systems To Conduct Vishing Attacks

The FBI has received information concerning a new technique used to conduct vishing attacks. The recent attacks were conducted by hackers exploiting a security vulnerability in Asterisk software.

My esteemed colleagues Rich Tehrani and Greg Galitzine did some research to find out what the story was, including contacting Digium’s John Todd.

Here’s Rich’s take:

Before commenting I waited to hear back from Digium’s John Todd who explained that there were some methodology and editorial process issues in this alert - basically no one checked with Digium before going public. As it turns out, after checking with Digium, the FBI quickly revised their statement and everything is fine.

The details are that there was a bug which Digium found in March of 2008 and subsequently patched in version 1.2 and 1.4. Version 1.6 is not affected. Besides, according to Todd, the security issue would arise if system administrators basically disregarded logical security measures like using numerals in passwords.

Read more…

Greg Galitzine also writes about the FBI’s warning about Asterisk in an article titled Digium Defends Asterisk Against Fed Warning: “Tempest in a Teapot”

In it, Greg writes:

Todd writes in a blog entry titled SIP Security and Asterisk:

That bug allowed in some cases unauthorized callers to make calls through an unprotected “context” in Asterisk. Due to the nature of the bug there was fairly limited exposure - it would have required a fairly unusual set of configurations to permit fraud, and there was both a simple config file change that would provide protection, as well as an actual patch to the code which we have every reason to believe has been widely implemented by the very proactive Open-Source community using Asterisk in production environments. The bug didn’t allow arbitrary setting of caller ID, and would only work in a limited set of circumstances that personally I think would be unusual, though possible.

Early on, Todd had a sense that this might just be a misunderstanding: Sorry for the fuss, and I suspect this is just a tempest in a teapot. Use good passwords, keep your packet filters up, and I’ll update things here as we hear more.

Digium’s John Todd wrote an excellent blog post describing what happened after he was able to contact the FBI in charge of the security warning. While there was indeed a security vulnerability in Asterisk, it was patched in 1.2 and 1.4 and doesn’t exist in 1.6. Thus, someone would have to be using a very old version of Asterisk. And as for the security vulnerability itself which seemed to enable vhishing attacks, John indicates that it was a relatively obscure exploit and “an administrator would have to consciously configure their system in what I believe to be an extremely unusual way in order to be victimized by this particular vulnerability.” So indeed in John’s own words, it seems to be a tempest in a teapot after all.

John Todd wrote:

As we had surmised, the warning from the IC3/FBI on Friday was just a re-hash of a bug that was fixed back in March of this year.  I was in touch with the agent in charge of this release this morning (after contact attempts on Friday failed) and he understood quickly that the wording was lacking in ways that created questions in the minds of readers, and this was being amplified by bloggers who more clearly outlined the set of questions raised by the advisory/release.  To his credit, the IC3 agent quickly pushed through a set of changes today to the posting which more specifically describes the issue, which indeed is the AST-2008-003 SIP guest permissions problem.

 

John Todd also wrote:

This bug was discovered and patched for 1.2 and 1.4 versions of the software, and 1.6 releases were not vulnerable.  Simple changes to site-specific configurations typically would be all that would be required even on systems that did not get patched or upgraded.  The bug that is described is relatively obscure, and was found by Jason Parker here at Digium.  We didn’t know of any “in the wild” exploits back then, though of course there may be some now.  I’m still somewhat surprised that anyone has been able to use this bug to the extent that they were able to mount “vishing” attacks.  While I won’t get into the details of configuration specifics, I would say that an administrator would have to consciously configure their system in what I believe to be an extremely unusual way in order to be victimized by this particular vulnerability.

John Todd complains about the “vagueness” of the warning but in an update after speaking to the IC3 agemt, John Todd says “To his credit, the IC3 agent quickly pushed through a set of changes today to the posting which more specifically describes the issue, which indeed is the AST-2008-003 SIP guest permissions problem.” (an old issue)

So my Asterisk-loving friends. If you are indeed running patched1.2/1.4 Asterisk or v1.6 you have nothing to worry about. And if you aren’t running these versions, what the heck is wrong with you? And you call yourself an Asterisk fan. Per shame!

P.S. As Rich said, “I am sure by the time Asterisk World rolls around in a few months in Miami, we will all be laughing about this incident and marveling at the opportunity that is open source communications.”

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TMC & Digium Announce Registrations open for Digium|Asterisk World

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in October 20th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Digium|Asterisk World, Open Source, TMCnet, VoIP, asterisk world, digium, digium asterisk, linux, tmc, world conference     


Registration to the upcoming Digium|Asterisk World conference is now open, according to an announcement today from Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) and Digium, the open source Asterisk Company. So you early bird types can now register and add it to your Calendar now, lest you forget. TMC and Digium also announced the launch of the new event Web site at www.digiumasteriskworld.com.
 
Digium|Asterisk World is collocated with TMC’s INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO East 2009 and is a 3-day event commencing on February 2, 2009 in Miami, Florida.
 
According to TMCnet reporter Michelle Robart: Entering its third year, Digium|Asterisk World is the conference that educates business users, resellers and executive decision-makers on “Everything Asterisk.”

Michelle also gives more interesting details about Digium|Asterisk World:
 

The conference will feature booth exhibition space and a Presentation Theatre on the EXPO floor where attendees can learn more about Digium’s open source communications solutions. In addition, TMC and Digium will join forces to create the conference track agenda, which will be revealed in the upcoming weeks.
 
ITEXPO East 2009 is the world’s largest and most significant communications technology event. It features more than 200 companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor and hundreds of sessions led by the industry’s most well-known thought leaders. The show provides a forum for assessing the latest products and services and offers numerous opportunities for face-to-face networking that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to create new business relationships.

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TMC & Digium Partner for Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in October 6th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Digium Asterisk World, ITEXPO, Internet Telephony Confernce & Expo, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, asterisk world, digium, digium asterisk, world itexpo     

digium-asterisk-world.jpgI’ve had some big news I had to keep under wraps until today. My company, Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) and Digium, the Asterisk Company, today announced that they have partnered to host Digium|Asterisk World™ during INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO East 2009 in Miami, Florida. Having ITEXPO host Digium|Asterisk World is a huge win for TMC and further cements TMC’s ITEXPO as the most preeminent VoIP and IP communications show. In fact, I recently came across this quote from Phonevite, “With the demise of the VON Show, the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo (aka ITEXPO) is now regarded as the biggest and most eminent show in the VoIP industry.”

Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO will be the conference that addresses “Everything Asterisk” for business users, resellers and executive decision-makers. The event will be held February 2-4, 2009 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

All can come to Digium|Asterisk World to discover how Asterisk, the world’s most widely used open source telephony software, can save them money and allow them to create more flexible telephony solutions.

“We are honored to host Digium|Asterisk World, as open source technology is such a critical driver the growth of the communications market,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and ITEXPO East 2009 conference chairman. “Mark Spencer and the Digium team are without question true pioneers and innovators. What is important to note is that by joining forces with Digium|Asterisk World, ITEXPO reinforces its position as the industry’s most valuable, major communications event worldwide.”

The conference will include both booth exhibition space and a Presentation Theatre on the EXPO floor. In addition, TMC and Digium will collaborate to create the conference track agenda, which will be announced in the coming months.

“Digium has led the Asterisk revolution in telecommunications,” said Mark Spencer, founder and CTO of Digium and original creator of Asterisk. “Hosting Digium|Asterisk World at IT EXPO East 2009 will allow us to share the vision and power of Asterisk with a broad set of customers who might not be familiar with open source. By giving them their first taste of Asterisk, we empower them to not only save money but to use and create new technologies that never existed before.”

ITEXPO East 2009 is the world’s largest and most significant communications technology event, featuring more than 200 companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor and hundreds of sessions led by the industry’s most prominent thought leaders. The show helps attendees identify the issues and challenges affecting the deployment of communications technologies. It provides a comprehensive forum for evaluating the latest products and services and delivers a face-to-face networking opportunity that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to cultivate new business relationships.

For additional information on ITEXPO East 2009 or Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO, please contact TMC’s Dave Rodriguez at 1-203-852-6800, ext. 146 or at drodriguez@tmcnet.com.

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Skype for Asterisk Launches

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 25th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, TMCnet, VoIP, digium, ip pbx, skype, skype asterisk, skype calls     

Skype and Digium have hooked up to bring Skype to Asterisk called Skype For Asterisk. Skype For Asterisk launched minutes ago enables Asterisk users to get access to Skype features coupled with the capabilities of Asterisk. For example, the beta version of Skype For Asterisk will allow customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within Asterisk systems using their existing hardware; enable inbound calling solutions like free click-to-call from company websites or virtual offices; and manage Skype calls using Asterisk applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail.

Hey, I guess I was right in my (Astricon) prognostications earlier today about it having to do with Skype.

The Skype For Asterisk Beta program begins today. Asterisk users, system administrators and developers are invited to apply to participate at http://www.astricon.net/skype

I’m trying to figure out how you transfer a call to a Skype username (i.e. tkeating) using a traditional (Asterisk) IP phone with no keyboard - just a numeric keypad. Of course, maybe the transfer feature is only to other Asterisk extensions or outside phone numbers and you can’t initiate calls to Skype usernames. Of course, I’m guessing that you can map inbound Skype calls to usernames to specific Asterisk IP phone extensions.

Update (1pm): Some other thoughts…
Will Skype for Asterisk work exclusively on Digium’s flavors of Asterisk (AsteriskNOW, Switchvox, etc.) or will it also work on trixbox CE, PBX in a Flash, etc? Is the Skype channel driver licensed by Digium or is it a free driver, which can then be used on other Asterisk distros. Since Asterisk offers a free version of their open source solution, I’m going to have to assume the Skype channel driver will also be free.

Update (1:20pm): Some info from TMCnet reporters at Astricon

  • Majority of questions were about access to code. Mark says their will be some limited access.
  • Caller ID - they say it can work.
  • Number portability - Oberg says that is a ‘local issue’ and not built in to this beta.
  • No pricing announced.
  • Commercial license model, Not open source.

More on this news after the jump…

Continue reading Skype for Asterisk Launches …

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Digium AEX410 Launches

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 25th, 2008   
Topics: AEX404E, AEX410, AEX422E, AEX440E, Asterisk, FXO, FXS, PCI-Express, VoIP, analog, based, cancellation, digium, echo cancellation, indicates     

aex410.pngDigium announced the immediate availability of the AEX410, a four-port modular analog PCI-Express x1 telephony interface card for use with Asterisk. The AEX410 is a PCI-Express board that compliments Digium’s existing PCI-based TDM410 product.

The AEX410 offers analog (FXS) stations and analog trunk (FXO) modules for connecting to the PSTN or analog devices. An optional DSP-based 128ms line echo cancellation for the AEX410 is provided by Digium’s VPMADT032 G.168 module. The optional hardware echo cancellation module provides 1024 taps (128 milliseconds) of echo cancellation for superior voice quality on both trunk and station interfaces.

According to the Digium blog, the naming convention is as follows:
AEX4XYZ

Where X indicates the number of FXS (station) modules (ports)
Where Y indicates the number of FXO (trunk) modules (ports)
Where Z indicates either B for bundles not containing DSP-based echo cancellation or E for bundles that do contain DSP-based echo cancellation.

So for example, here are some sample models, though not limited to just these:
AEX422E <- 2 FXS, 2 FXO, has DSP echo cancellation
AEX440E <- 4 FXS, 0 FXO, has DSP echo cancellation
AEX404E <- 0 FXS, 4 FXO, has DSP echo cancellation

The AEX410 board product utilizes Digium’s wctdm24xxp driver file that is part of the Zaptel (soon-to-be DAHDI) driver package. For more info, check out the blog post.

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Digium Major Announcement - what can it be?

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 25th, 2008   
Topics: Alabama, Asterisk, Astricon, Fonality, Huntsville, IP706, IP712, VoIP, adtran, announcement, digium, ip pbx, major, major announcement     

Today, Digium, creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the leading open source telephony platform will be making a major announcement at Astricon later today. Digium hinted to me that a major announcement would be made at Astricon when I visited their Huntsville, Alabama headquarters in August.

I tried to find out what the news will be, but alas Digium couldn’t tell me. So I thought it would be fun to prognosticate what this deal could be.

1) Digium’s Switchvox will be distributed by Dell, which currently carries another Asterisk competitor, Fonality.

2) Digium will be acquired by Adtran, an avid supporter of Digium in the past.

3) HP seeing that competitor Dell is offering IP-PBXs (i.e. Fonality and Nortel) will partner with Digium to offer Digium’s line of IP-PBXs and telephony hardware

4) Now that Adtran, a financial supporter of Digium, offers their own line of IP phones, including the IP706 and IP712, perhaps Digium will offer a bundled IP-PBX package that includes Switchvox and a few Adtran IP phones.

5) Digium will announce this whole open source thing is nonsense, there’s no money in it, and they’re announcing that they are making Asterisk closed source effective immediately. Ok, maybe in some alternate universe!

6) CDW, a major distributor, will be carrying and distributing Digium’s products.

Ok, so what’s your guess? Costco? And remember the clock is ticking. The announcement could be made at any moment.

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ITEXPO West 2008 Best of Show Winners

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 19th, 2008   
Topics: 8x8, Apex Voice Communications, CosmoCom, Epygi, Fonality, ITEXPO, Inc., Instant Solutions, IntelePeer, KnoahSoft, Mitel, MobileMax, Oaisys, Pactolus, PhoneFusion, Phonevite, Quintum, Ring Carrier, SIP Print, Syntellect, TMCnet, TelcoBridges, Touchstone Technologies, Unified Communications, VoIP, VocalCom, Volt Delta, WBS Connect, companies, digium, i2Telecom, products, sangoma, solution, solutions     

itexpo-logo.jpgIt’s been a great ITEXPO - perhaps the best West Coast show we’ve had, especially when you consider the economic turmoil. It’s worth sharing the companies and their products that were just awarded “Best of Show” at TMC’s Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.
 
Best Service Provider Solution
Ring Carrier
TelcoBridges
IntelePeer
 
Best Large Enterprise Solution
Instant Solutions
MobileMax
 
Best SMB Solution
8×8
Quintum
Epygi
 
Best Consumer Offering
Phonevite
 
Best Development Tool
Sangoma
Apex Voice Communications
Touchstone Technologies
 
Most Innovative Solution
i2Telecom
Oaisys
PhoneFusion
 
Best Booth
WBS Connect
Mitel
 
Best of Call Center 2.0
VocalCom
Syntellect
CosmoCom
 
Best of Open Source
Digium
Fonality
Pactolus
 
Editors’ Choice
SIP Print
KnoahSoft, Inc.
Volt Delta
 
“These companies are pioneers and their products represent the cream of the crop in VoIP solutions,” said Rich Tehrani, president and group editor-in-chief of TMC. “As the event grows, selecting Best of Show winners each year becomes more and more difficult as the solutions displayed on the exhibit floor become more and more impressive.”
 
Tehrani continued: “Every product is worthy of distinction, therefore you can rest assured that the companies and products on the list this year represent truly outstanding achievement in IP telephony.”

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ITEXPO West 2008 a Resounding Success

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 18th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Conferences, CosmoCom, Fonality, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Packet8, Pika, SIP, TMCnet, Toyota Prius Hybrid, Unified Communications, VoIP, angeles convention, communications, communications technology, convention center, digium, skype, video conferencing     

Some great news from TMC about our IP communications conference & expositions (ITEXPO) taking place this week that I thought I’d share. The show is still going on, with today being the last day. Yesterday’s exhibit hall attendance was tremendous as seen by some photos I snapped and posted yesterday. I had some great meetings or saw many important VoIP companies, including Asterisk/Digium, CosmoCom, Fonality, Microsoft, Packet8, PIKA, Skype, and more. Many companies announced news or launched new products at ITEXPO, which is now the #1 IP communications show in the U.S. Further, in talking to two vendors I learned some interesting news coming out next week at Astricon, that I can’t divulge yet, but stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out this news release put out by TMC

itexpo-logo.jpgITEXPO West 2008 to Generate over $1 Million for Los Angeles; Brings Next Generation Technology to the City of Angels

Leading Communications Event Attracts Largest, Most Diverse Audience of any Conference in the Internet Communications Technology Industry

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that ITEXPO West 2008 taking place September 16-18, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, expects more than 7,000 attendees from around the world. Year after year, ITEXPO West plays a prominent role in supporting Los Angeles, with estimates of a more than $1 million influx surging into the local economy in less than three days.

ITEXPO West 2008 is the world’s largest and most significant communications technology event, featuring more than 150 companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor, and hundreds of sessions led by the industry’s most prominent thought leaders. Attendees are afforded unprecedented access to a diverse population of both global and local companies; in addition to executive keynote speeches from household names like Skype, Microsoft, Avaya and Texas Instruments, local companies, such as AireSpring, Fonality, Grandstream, TW Telecom, will use this conference as platform to make announcements and showcase their groundbreaking voice and video offerings.

What is also important to note, is that contrary to other declining economic sectors, IP communications and VoIP salaries had a noteworthy rise in the second quarter. OnForce, Inc., is an online jobs mart where employers and workers meet on the Internet and agree on an hourly rate. A recent report from the company showed growth in VoIP rates have increased from 1.5 to 1.95 between Q1 and Q2; VoIP jobs are now paying twice the average of all IT jobs.
“Over the past several years, we have welcomed many people from around the world who flock to the Los Angeles Convention Center each Fall to attend the Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO,” commented Pouria Abbassi, P.E., CEO & General Manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“Communications technology is important in every type and facet of business operations across the board, especially in Convention Center business. Knowing the communications technology of today will help anticipate and address our business issues of tomorrow. We are honored to host the ITEXPO 2008 at our World Class Los Angeles Convention Center,” added Abbassi.
The show helps attendees identify the issues and challenges affecting the deployment of IP-based communications technologies. It provides a comprehensive forum for evaluating the latest products and services, and delivers a face-to-face networking opportunity that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers, and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to cultivate new business relationships.

“Converged applications that leverage VoIP and video-over-the Internet are diving our industry forward, and may very well be one of the few silver linings in an otherwise dismal economy,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and ITEXPO West 2008 conference chairman. “Clearly, this technology is here to stay as over 16 million U.S. consumer VoIP lines were in service by the first quarter of 2008, according to new data released by TeleGeography, representing nearly 14 percent of all households and 27 percent of broadband households.
“It is a no-brainer for us to host this event in Los Angeles at the Convention Center, as this facility and this City are second to none.”

The expo hours for ITEXPO West are: Wednesday, Sept 17th from 4:00 to 8:00 PM, and on Thursday Sept 18th from 11:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

Free expo passes are still available, and interested attendees should visit https://www.tmcnet.com/scripts/itexpo/ca08/itfall08reg.aspx?theplan=D for more information. In addition to educational content and new product information for today’s latest communications technology, ITEXPO also features several vendor promotions — including the Toyota Prius Hybrid Giveaway, which is free to participate, with no purchases necessary. For more information on this exciting promotion, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-08/w08-prizes.htm.

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Internet Telephony Expo Preview

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 10th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Fonality, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Livecast, Pika, Rich Tehrani, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, andy Abramson, communications, digium, sangoma, smb     

itexpo-west-2008-show-guide.jpg Rich posted the official ITEXPO Show Guide, which gives you a preview of what’s happening at next week’s ITEXPO. You can check out the 17MB PDF by clicking the image to the left. In Rich’s blog post, he previews what’s happening at the show and he writes, “All the top names are in the show… Cisco, Avaya, Time Warner Cable, Mitel, Interactive Intelligence and Dialogic. In addition, the most important open-source communications companies will be exhibiting. Digium/Asterisk, Sangoma, Fonality, Pika, Orecx, Xorcom, Redfone, FreeSide and many more.”

He adds, “Every IP PBX vendor who matters will be there. Every SMB VoIP provider… There will also be a great deal of solutions for service providers, call centers and more. The entire communications vendor community will be in attendance.”

I can’t believe the show is less than a week away. Should be a great show! Looking forward to meeting all the major players in VoIP & IP communications, as well as hanging out with fellow bloggers and journalists at Andy Abramson’s renowned Bloggers’ Dinner.

As I previously stated, I plan on using Livecast to stream portions of the show. I should probably test it sometime today on my blog to see how well it works. Come to think of it, I think I will. Stay tuned!

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Interviews with Top 60 VoIP Movers and Shakers…

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 5th, 2008   
Topics: AT&T, Aspect, Asterisk, Fonality, ITEXPO, Mitel, Rich Tehrani, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, digium, interviews, learn, movers, movers shakers, shakers, skype, telecom     

Rich Tehrani has a nice roundup of 60 interviews he’s done with many of the major “movers and shakers” in the VoIP / IP communications industry.

Rich writes:

Whenever I go to a conference, I learn a tremendous amount from the people I meet at the show. I really enjoy the impromptu networking which takes place at events as it allows me to learn so much about what is happening in the market….{snip}

In less than two weeks the world with gather at ITEXPO — The World’s Communications Conference to help select products for purchase, learn about the latest events in the telecom market and network with peers.

It is this last area where this blog entry should be of maximal benefit. You see, over the past month or so I have been interviewing the telecom movers and shakers who will be coming to ITEXPO. I certainly didn’t interview every mover and shaker (exactly what is a telecom shaker anyway wink  ) but this list should give you a good idea who some of the speakers and exhibitors will be at this year’s show.

Some of the movers & shakers Rich interviewed include Digium, Skype, AT&T, Fonality, Mitel, Aspect, and more. Rich’s blog enter includes a nice organized table list of the interviews letting you read the companies you’re interested in. Like Rich said, many of these movers & shakers will be at ITEXPO which is less than 2 weeks away. I’m going to be there and hope to do some on-site interviews. Hope to see you there!

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Asterisk GUI 2.0 launches

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 26th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Asterisk GUI 2.0, GUI, TMCnet, VoIP, digium     

Yesterday, afternoon I mentioned Asterisk GUI 2.0. Later that evening, Digium “officially” announced Asterisk GUI 2.0 and included some screenshots, which you can check out here:

here’s a few screenshots to wet your whistle:
asterisk-gui-20-voicemail-settings.png
asterisk-gui-20-conference-bridge.png

asterisk-gui-20-incoming-rules.png

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Digium Headquarters Tour

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 26th, 2008   
Topics: Alabama, Asterisk, Bill Miller, Dave Rodriguez, Greg Galitzine, Huntsville, Jane Brooks, John Todd, Mark Spencer, Russell Bryant, Steve Sokol, TMCnet, Tom Keating, VoIP, check, digium, ip pbx, linux, linux based     

During my tour of Digium’s headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama I snapped quite a few photos that I thought I’d share. I’ll just share a few here, but if you want to see them all, go check out the online photo album I created specifically for Digium:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/photos/digium/

Be sure to check my other photo albums as well:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/photos/

The new Digium headquarters is very impressive. I couldn’t help but be in awe of what Mark Spencer created. Obviously, there is money to be made in open source, and seeing the fruits of Mark’s and his team’s labor in this state-of-the-art building was proof of that. I can’t help but reminisce back to my November 2001 column titled “In Search Of A Linux-Based PBX” where I listed several “young” Linux-based PBX solutions. One such solution I discovered was Asterisk. Check out what I wrote back in November 2001 to see how far Asterisk has come:

As my search continued, I stumbled upon a company called Asterisk. According to their Web site, Asterisk is an open source PBX and general telephony toolkit that runs on the Linux operating system. Asterisk provides a set of APIs that essentially make it a type of middleware between Internet and telephony channels like VoIP, voice over frame relay, etc., and telephony and Internet applications like voice mail, phone directories, call parking, and so forth. Asterisk supports a flexible and extensible channel API, allowing any number of real hardware or software interfaces. It is purported to support ISDN, PRI, T1, and POTS through an Adtran Atlas. The Quicknet Internet PhoneJack and Quicknet Internet LineJack are both supported. Plans to support Lucent-based Winmodems also in the works. This product is not a turnkey out-of-the-box Linux-based PBX, and its still under development, but it does have several telephony functions working, such as call bridging, call transfer, call parking, and rudimentary voice mail. Check them out.

There was no Digium telephony cards back then. It ran on Adtran hardware and some Quicknet PhoneJack cards. Who knew that Asterisk would explode and become the dominant Linux-based IP-PBX solution?

Well, there is no better proof on how far Asterisk and Digium has come than to see their brand new building. Check out these photos:

digium-headquarters.jpg
Front side of the building


Digium front lobby - Nice cafe to get your morning caffeine fix (coffee) before you head off to do some Asterisk coding.wink


This is the Asterisk logo in the center of Digium’s headquarters on the 1st floor taken from the 2nd or 3rd floor above. Doesn’t this remind you of the Star Trek Enterprise’s warp core? (Seen below from a side view. Couldn’t find a top-view image which would be more similar)

star-trek-enterprise-warp-core.jpg


I count 6 fans and at least 4 heat sinks. Now that is some serious coolage! This might be the AA350 I snapped but not sure.


This is Rotary Dial Phone with an Ethernet Jack making it the world’s only rotary IP phone!smile It was in one of the Digium offices I passed by.


Digium has many Collaboration Rooms. This is just one of them. Note the (almost) floor-to-ceiling whiteboard for plenty of collaboration space.


Just a shot of the hallway with the cabling system overhead. Hmm, I only see like 7 cables. What sort of magical networking is Digium doing that they only need 7 cables in a company of 150 people?


Digium has several Collaboration Rooms. Note the orange chairs to match the orange Asterisk logo.


Don’t zoom in on the whiteboard. It contains top secret Digium information on how they plan on taking over the open source telephony world. Oh wait, they’re already doing that.wink


Can’t call yourself a software company without a foosball gaming table! Though I did notice Digium’s vending machines only sold Dr. Pepper and not Diet Coke. Sacrilege I say!


Digium’s training class room. Each student gets their own PC to install & configure Asterisk.


Digium and TMC having dinner
Left-to-right clockwise: Steve Sokol, John Todd, Russell Bryant, Dave Rodriguez (TMC), Greg Galitzine (TMC), Jane Brooks, Tom Keating (TMC), Bill Miller

There are several other pictures in the Digium photo album. Go check them out.

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Digium Asterisk Appliance AA1080 or AA1060?

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 25th, 2008   
Topics: AA1060, AA1080, Asterisk, Digium Asterisk Appliance, TMCnet, VoIP, appliance, digium, model, photos     

Bill Miller commented I may have seen some yet-unreleased products during my tour. During my tour of Digium’s headquarters, I snapped some photos, so I thought perhaps one of my photos might contain some top secret Digium product, so I planned to give them a closer look.

Sure enough two of my photos caught my eye. I zoomed in on the photos and noticed a Digium Asterisk Appliance with a model number printed that says “AA1080″ or “AA1060″. I can’t be sure which model number is correct. Although my Canon Powershot G9 is 12.1 mexapixels, I was too far away when I snapped the photo to get a good resolution shot of the model name. I put on my best CSI and CIA photo enhancement techniques (aka Photoshop) to try and enhance the image, but I still can’t make out if it’s AA1080 or AA1060.

Nevertheless, it would appear Digium has a yet-unreleased 1U appliance called the AA1080 or AA1060. Today, Digium has only announced the Digium AA60, AA300, and AA350 appliances. So the AA1080/AA1060 could be the next iteration. Check out the two photos for yourself…


Click for Full Size - zoom in by the Linux license plate.

Click for Full Size - zoom in by the Linux license plate.

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Digium AsteriskNOW News and more…

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 25th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, AsteriskNOW, Cisco, Digium Asterisk Appliance 50, Mark C. Smith, Mark Spencer, Nortel, TMCnet, VoIP, adtran, digium, freepbx     

digium-headquarters.jpg
As I hinted last week, I would have some “interesting” news to tell after my visit to Digium’s brand new headquarters along with colleagues Greg Galitzine and Dave Rodriguez. Before I get into the MAJOR news being made by Digium, let me cover what else I learned on my trip. It had been 3 years since I last visited Digium down in Huntville, Alabama.

After getting a grand tour of the new Digium building we sat down in a state-of-art boardroom complete with a high-end Polycom IP conferencing unit, theater lighting, and a projector with motorized retractable screen. The boardroom was named the Mark C. Smith Boardroom to honor Mark Smith, who was the founder and chief executive officer of ADTRAN and Mark Spencer’s mentor. A picture honoring Mark Smith sits on a table in the room. We all admire how Mark Spencer was able to transform open source telephony - myself included - but no doubt Mark Smith and his company ADTRAN played  a major role in making Asterisk the phenomenon it is today.

During our full-day meeting, Digium wanted to fill us in on the latest happenings going on and the future directions Digium was planning to take. One of the first takeaways I took was that their 1.5 year term CEO, Danny Windham believes strongly that Asterisk should be classified as an “engine”. It’s the “core guts” on which other software from third-parties can be added. For instance, Asterisk is not simply an IP-PBX, as of 1.6 it has an SS7 stack enabling Asterisk to be used in carrier and service provider applications. Another example they gave was how Asterisk can run just about any protocol, and were quick to point out that sipXecs, an open source alternative recently acquired by Nortel, can’t even natively run Nortel’s own digital phones while Asterisk works just fine with Nortel phones.

Another important takeaway was that Digium said flat out that claims Asterisk could not scale were false or at the very least were misleading since they were based on older versions of Asterisk. In fact, it seemed Digium took great personal umbrage that some of their competitors were making these claims. As evidence of scalability, they mentioned a particular service provider running thousands of ports and are currently writing a write paper case study on this customer. When they publish it, I’ll be sure to include excerpts in my blog.

One last takeaway that is important to mention is that Digium considers themselves to be the “Benevolent Asterisk Project Sponsor and Maintainer”. This is a key mantra that they want to reinforce. They have no plans to ever fork Asterisk into say an open source version and a premium closed source version. They know there are many companies that do add proprietary code on top of the Asterisk engine and don’t give back to the community, but Digium has no plans on monetizing Asterisk that way. I should point out that corporations that purchase Asterisk Business Edition (ABE) do have the right under the dual licensing to add their own code without giving it back to the community, however, there are companies that have taken the Asterisk engine, didn’t pay for ABE, added their own code, and didn’t give the code to the community.

Some interesting statistics about Digium that they told me during the meeting that I thought I’d share. First, Digium currently has 150 employees and has had 26 consecutive growth quarters. The headquarters are now running on Switchvox, which Digium acquired in September of last year. This is the first year that Digium has been named to Gartner’s renowned visionaries quadrant. One stat that I’ve always wonder about is what percentage of Asterisk code is developed by the open source community and what percentage by Digium. Well, the answer is 50% each, which was a little surprising. I would have expected the open source community to be higher, but this goes to show you how important Digium is to the future of Asterisk. They are obviously paying for developers and making an investment in improving Asterisk.

Some other interesting stats:

  • Over 1,000,000 downloads in 2007
  • Project 2008 downloads at over 1.54M
  • Over 4 million servers deployed with Asterisk
  • Over 56,000 active on forums
  • Over 17,700 on active Asterisk mailing lists
  • Over 7,248 on our Bug Tracker
  • Over 400 active contributors
  • Over 200 service providers worldwide using Asterisk

Further, the number of commits to Asterisk Trunk was 3,498 (mainly Asterisk 1.6 related) and the number of commits to Asterisk 1.4 was 1,401 (bug fixes). A staggering 132GB of bandwidth was consumed in 2008 YTD.

Here’s an interesting photo I took from the 2nd or 3rd floor aimed at the Asterisk logo which I believe is the center of the 3 buildings. From what I’m told if you fly over Digium’s building, the three buildings form the Asterisk logo. For some reason looking down at this circular area reminded me of the Star Trek Enterprise’s warp core. Forget “Powered by Intel”, this building is “Powered by Asterisk”.

Digium recently hired Stephen Burcham, the Director of Quality who came from a company that designed controllers for anti-lock braking systems, which demand the most stringent quality control and reliability standards. Stephen has brought that same high standards mentality to Digium. Surprisingly, Digium’s hardware production is done by two American companies, so it’s Made in the U.S.A. Considering many electronics can be done more cheaply in China, I was happy to hear Digium was using American companies to manufacture their goods. In fact, Digium is using two local Alabama companies and they told me that they actually made in an investment in at least one of them to purchase a higher-end process manufacturing machine to meet Digium’s stringent quality requirements.

One of the biggest challenges facing Digium has less to do with technology and more to do with market perception. Digium told us that they have to battle Cisco and their claims that Asterisk is not a business class solution. I found it fascinating that Cisco is still able to leverage their own name brand recognition to get (scare?) customer wins, but if anything that’s great news for Digium and Asterisk. It isn’t technical comparisons or feature-sets that Asterisk is losing customers to Cisco, it’s name brand recognition. That’ll improve with time and my guess is very quickly since Asterisk has a full head of steam.

Now for the interesting news. AsteriskNOW which previously ran on rPath will now be using the very popular CentOS (5.2) distribution. Now that it runs on CentOS it will support easy operating system updates (via .rpm files). Also new in AsteriskNOW will be a yum repository for easy updates of Asterisk itself. Just ‘yum’ the lastest version of Asterisk and it will upgrade your version of Asterisk without screwing up your customizations.

Also new is that the next release of AsteriskNOW (1.5) will bundle the very popular FreePBX front-end GUI. This is big news! FreePBX has become the defacto standard for web-based GUI administration of Asterisk, so now Asterisk fans can download AsteriskNOW, boot of the self-install CD and not only getting a working copy of AsteriskNOW, but FreePBX as well! This isn’t to say Digium will stop developing their own GUI. In fact, when I asked that question, they said categorically they will continue to develop and improve their Asterisk GUI 2.0, which is currently installed on Asterisk Business Edition (ABE) and the Digium Asterisk Appliance 50 (AA50), as part of the 1.2 release I recently blogged about. Digium told me they expect the next release of AsteriskNOW to be available by Astricon.

Some other interesting news to talk about soon and I want to blog my grand tour of Digium’s state-of-the-art facility, but I’ll break that out into a separate blog post. Stay tuned…

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Digium AA50 1.2 Software Released

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 19th, 2008   
Topics: AA50, Asterisk, Digium Asterisk Appliance 50, TMCnet, VoIP, appliance, digium, firmware, trunk, trunks     


Yesterday, Digium released version 1.2 for the Digium Asterisk Appliance 50 (AA50). It’s been awhile since I’ve heard any news about the AA50, so I’m glad to see Digium is still developing for the AA50 even with their new Switchvox-based AA60 appliance offering and their even newer AA300 & AA350 offerings. Actually, I discussed whether Digium’s AA60, AA300, and AA350 would compete against their original AA50 Asterisk appliance, which might be worth a read. In a nutshell, I stated that they target different sized businesses. Still, there is some overlap, which is why I’m glad to see Digium is continue to develop for the AA50.

So anyway, what’s new in 1.2? First this interesting tidbit for Polycom phone fans: “My Polycom 3XX IP phones display acted funny in the 1.1.x firmware releases. Can I have the original, 1.0.x, behavior back?” To which Digium responds, “Yes. In 1.2, on the Options menu, there’s a setting called “Enable Idle Image Display.” Turn this setting off, Apply Changes, and reboot your phone.”

Also new in 1.2 is support for Internet Explorer 7 and numerous usability improvements in the GUI itself. A new System Status page shows “firmware revision, information about your trunks (Did my VoIP trunks register okay?  Did they fail?), and information about your extensions (what’s on your system, and where do they point?).”

One important new feature is on the Trunks page. The pre-configured VoIP service providers are now pulled dynamically from a Digium webservice, instead of being hardcoded into the firmware. Thus, the next time one of the pre-configured providers changes something in their required configuration, Digium can automatically address it without requiring users to download a new AA50 firmware.

Another important new feature is that the Outgoing Calling rules page now allows outbound call pattern matches, in addition to a trunk path, to also be sent to a local destination or out via a fail-over trunk if the primary trunk is unreachable.

All AA50 users that purchased their AA50 and registered their subscription before August 13, 2008 will receive an additional free year of subscription. So essentially, Digium is giving away the 1.2 upgrade for free to those who registered.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s new, so go check of the Digium blog post for more. Lastly, I’m actually headed down to Huntsville, Alabama to meet with the Digium crew at their headquarters to find out what Digium is up too lately. Hopefully, I’ll have interesting news to report. Stay tuned!

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Packet8 675xi VoIP for the SMB

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in July 24th, 2008   
Topics: 8x8, Asterisk, IP phones, Packet8, Packet8 6757i, Packet8 6757i CT, Packet8 675xi, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP, Vonage, Wireless, aastra, carolyn schuk, digium, packet, phone, series, smb     

I missed the 8×8/Packet8 news on July 16th about its new hosted small office “key” system and plug-and-play IP phones. Joan Citelli, Director of Corporate Communications emailed me asking for a briefing, but apparently I never replied since her email was still marked as unread and nothing in my Sent Items. Email overload I guess. The news was about 8×8, working with handset maker Aastra Telecom to provide a key system to the SMB market,which is part of the new Packet8 675xi series.

I happened to come across Carolyn Schuk’s article while surfing the web and came across her post about some 8×8 news that I missed. She writes, “8×8 is VoIP’s Rodney Dangerfield. It just gets no respect.” She has an excellent point and one which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Carolyn then lays out her case: “Consider how it stacks up against its far better-known pure-play VoIP competitor, Vonage: In the last five years, 8×8 revenues grew 460.3 percent while Vonage’s grew 0.0 percent. 8×8 made $700,000 during the first quarter of this year. Vonage lost $8.9 million and is shopping for a $215 million refinancing deal to stay out of bankruptcy. 8×8 holds 73 patents. Vonage just got its first. Despite this, Vonage’s stock price is $1.58 while 8×8’s is $1.03.”

She goes on to explain that the news coverage of the new Packet8 675xi series was sorely lacking, which sparked the Rodney Dangerfield comment. I’m guilty as charged, since I didn’t cover the news. Though it wasn’t for a lack of respect that I didn’t cover the Packet8 news. Sometimes it’s just impossible to cover all the daily VoIP news in addition to my testing of VoIP products, managing the MIS department as CTO, etc.

Well, better late than never. Today, I thought I’d give an overview of the new Packet8 675xi series, which is actually part of their Packet8 Hosted Key System Services. Perhaps most importantly, this offering supports “call appearances” commonly referred to as “shared line appearances” or SLA, which enables you to know when someone is using a line. It’s a popular feature of key systems and one which is often difficult to reproduce on VoIP systems. Supporting SLA is often a key selling advantage when targeting the SMB which is used to call appearance functionality.

First off, the Packet8 675xi IP phone series consists of three models — the 6753i entry level phone, 6755i intermediate phone and 6757i CT advanced phone. Essentially these are OEM’ed versions of the Aastra 53i, 55i, and 57i CT but with a special firmware load. Each model offers full duplex speakerphone functionality, programmable softkey appearances, LCD display screens, embedded XML browsers and up to nine call appearance lines. All models support Power over Ethernet and come equipped with dual auto-sensing switched Ethernet ports.

Here’s pictures of all 3 models:
packet8-virtual-office-6753i-ip-phone.jpg
packet8-virtual-office-6755i-ip-phone.jpg
packet8-virtual-office-6757i-ct-ip-phone.jpg

The Packet8 675xi series include intercom paging and direct dial from a searchable corporate directory. Prices for the Packet8 675xi series range from $129.99 for the 6753i to $349.99 for the high end 6757i CT model which includes a DECT cordless phone as part of the bundled offer. The 6757i CT model’s built in DECT antenna allows the user to roam up to a 300 foot radius from the 6757i CT base telephone. The Packet8 675xi IP phones also feature corporate directory display and lookup, intercom paging, and shared line appearance.

The Packet8 675xi series of IP phones incorporates 8×8’s advanced NAT traversal technologies. This allows users to simply plug the phone into any Internet connection and immediately make or receive calls without performing any network or firewall configuration.

The high-end Packet8 6757i CT includes an integrated cordless handset with coverage up to 300,000 sq ft. It has a large 144 x 128 pixel graphical backlit LCD display and 6 dynamic context-sensitive softkeys, and with its large screen it can take full advantage of XML based programs.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Packet8 675xi series use SIP trunking to Packet8’s network infrastructure. All of the telephony functions such as transfer, conferencing, voicemail, etc. reside on the Packet8 network. Thus, you don’t need any costly IP-PBX hardware at the customer premise - you just need IP phones. This can be a huge cost savings for SMBs looking for an inexpensive VoIP solution, especially as the costs and margins for IP-PBXs continue to shrink with growing price pressure from more competition and open source solutions like Digium’s Asterisk.

Packet8/8×8 certainly has earned my admiration with some great products and services, a cool videophone, and more VoIP patents than you can shake a stick at! My ‘respect’ has been duly given.

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Leslie Conway Joins Digium

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in July 11th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Leslie Conway, Mark Spencer, TMCnet, VoIP, adtran, digium     

Just two days ago I highlighted the connections between Adtran and Digium. They’re both located in Huntsville, Alabama, Mark Spencer worked at Adtran, their current CEO Danny Windham came from Adtran, etc.

Thumbnail image for leslie-conway.jpg Well, today Rich writes about Leslie Conway, who also comes from Adtran, joining the Digium team, thus adding to the Adtran/Digium connection.

Rich writes:

Over the years, Mark Spencer, the founder of the company transitioned from CEO to CTO and during the transition Digium tapped Adtran for talent as needed. Adtran was an early investor in Digium and this may have been one of the smartest investment decisions a company can make.

Well said, Rich…

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Awesome Adtran & Digium article

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in July 8th, 2008   
Topics: Alabama, Asterisk, Danny Windham, Huntville, Mark Spencer, TMCnet, The Huntsville Times, Unified Communications, VoIP, adtran, article, digium     

Just came across a great article in The Huntsville Times titled “Twin visions for telecom Digium, ADTRAN follow opposite tracks” which discusses and compares ADTRAN and Digium. Both companies are based in Huntsville, Alabama, a best-kept-secret when it comes to technical talent and often referred to as “the “Silicon Valley of the South”. In the article, Digium CEO Danny Windham calls the Huntsville/Madison County area “a hidden secret.” Traditionally rooted in the defense and government work, Huntsville, Alabama has moved into technical commercial businesses due to its strong intellectual capital.

ADTRAN Campus

ADTRAN’s Gorgeous Campus & Buildings

The article explains the connections between Digium and ADTRAN beyond geography when it tells how Danny Windham left ADTRAN to become Digium’s CEO. It also explains how Mark Spencer, the founder of Asterisk & Digium formerly worked for ADTRAN. However, the article neglected to mention ADTRAN’s strong support in developing Asterisk during its early years and that ADTRAN still has an equity interest in Digium. In fact, I recall in my 2005 Adtran meeting down in Huntville, Adtran mentioned they knew Mark Spencer and that Mark did an internship with Adran. Adtran spoke very highly of Mark and they are highly supportive of Digium. I think that would have solidified the comparison between the two companies even better. Still, a great article worth a read.

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