Astricon: Has Asterisk Gone Mainstream?
When the Astricon conference kicks off Oct. 13 in Glendale, Ariz., The VAR Guy will be checking to see if Asterisk — the open source IP PBX — is ready for mainstream VARs and solutions providers. Actually, The VAR Guy thinks he already knows the answer to that question. Here’s why.
Over the past year, Asterisk advocates — from Digium to Fonality — have continued to build out their channel partner programs. The results are promising. New training and certification programs have been propelling the Asterisk market forward — as have such technical enhancements as:
No doubt, Asterisk deployments continue to accelerate. But are traditional VARs — the folks who partner up with Cisco, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, etc. — really ready for Asterisk? And will those VARs promote Asterisk to small businesses that are far more familiar with traditional VoIP options? Oh and one closing question: Will Asterisk make a big move into the cloud?
The VAR Guy will go looking for answers at the Astricon conference.
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The short answer: Yes, Asterisk is going mainstream and even small business owners will increasingly standardize on it.
VARGuy – I am very interested in following your posts on this matter. I will be cross-linking to my SMB VoIP site so I can drive people from our VoIP forum board to come over and read your reports. This area is HOT!
thanks….harrybbbbb
Frankie: The VAR Guy says “you are correct.”
Harry: Hats off to you (just don’t look at The VAR Guy’s bald spot) for the successful SMB Nation event. The VAR Guy stumbled onto numerous story leads at the event. And our resident blogger will check out the SMB VoIP site…
[…] Astricon: Has Asterisk Gone Mainstream? When the Astricon conference kicks off Oct. 13 in Glendale, Ariz., The VAR Guy will be checking to see if Asterisk — the open source IP PBX — is ready for mainstream VARs and solutions providers. Actually, The VAR Guy thinks he already knows the answer to that question. […]
I suppose it depends on your definition of “mainstream” but I am very curious to see what happens. I have to wonder, though, if the big boys are really interested in the Asterisk code base and if they have any reservations about the Digium double-edged sword of dual licensing. Another concern is the stability of the code. Its roots are 10 years old and many of the assumptions made in the late 1990’s are not necessarily advantageous to tech business today. (E.g. Linux only, inability of IAX to scale, voodoo with channels and threads, poor support for HD voice.) Let’s face it: when you’re blazing a new trail it’s hard to know the long-term impact of your design and engineering decisions.
The other thing people should take note of is that fact that a more recent player in OSS telephony, FreeSWITCH, has been gaining momentum and growing market share. At least one notable VAR (Barracuda Networks) is using FreeSWITCH as the telephony engine in its commercial PBX offerings. It’s also being used by SIPfoundry in sipXecs 4.
One thing is for sure: The future for OSS telephony is very bright indeed!
-Michael
Michael: You gave The VAR Guy a lot of food for thought. He’ll keep it all in mind during Astricon…
I came across this interview with David Rowe:
http://www.cio.com.au/article/264806/open_source_identity_free_telephony_project_founder_david_rowe
He’s been doing all kinds of interesting stuff with Asterisk: building open-source hardware PBX appliances, adding decent echo-cancellation, and also coming up with that “Mesh Potato” thing.
Open-source software is like clay, endlessly malleable into new forms without arbitrary obstacles being thrown in your way.
Lawrence: Thanks for the link. The VAR Guy is checking it out.