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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Open Source Unified Communications: More than Digium

  • Written by The VAR Guy 1
  • August 25, 2008

The VAR Guy has been researching the unified communications market in recent weeks. And he’s stumbled across an interesting trend: More and more open source startups are pushing into the unified communications market. Here are four prime examples:

Chances are, you’ve already heard of Digium, one of the prime backers of Asterisk — the open source PBX. But they aren’t the only company working on open source telephony and unified communications development. Four other names to note:

1. PaloSanto Solutions, based in Guayaquil, Ecuador with offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., is the driving force behind Elastix, a PBX appliance software platform. Elastix is an appliance software that claims to integrate:

“the best tools available for Asterisk-based PBXs into a single, easy-to-use interface. It also adds its own set of utilities and allows for the creation of third party modules to make it the best software package available for open source telephony.”

Sounds wonderful. But is PaloSanto committed to the channel? No and yes. The company’s business partner Web page seems to be a work in progress. However, check out the Elastix partner page and you’ll see a list of global partners that are truly committed to the platform.

2. Fonality, based in Los Angeles, has signed on more than 7,000 resellers and strategic The company also formed a strategic partnership with Dell (here’s some info) and a distribution agreement with PC Mall. The VAR Guy has interviewed Fonality’s executive team a few times. Yes, they understand the IT channel.

3. Unison Technologies of New York turned some heads in early August when the company ported its unified communications platform to Ubuntu Linux. Unison includes a PBX, e-mail and instant messaging system, and serves companies with 20 to 1,000 employees.

Sounds sweet. But it’s real early in the Ubuntu Server game. The VAR Guy suspects Unison and Ubuntu Server could help to strengthen each other in the business market.

4. VoiceRoute of Connecticut caught The VAR Guy’s attention at two recent conferences. The company evangelizes the Druid open source unified communications platform — which leverages Asterisk, IMAP and XMPP. Druid gives your organization access to the best available IP communications platform that bringing together voicemail, VOIP, mobile phone, faxes and instant messaging.

Surely, The VAR Guy overlooked a few companies. But one thing is clear: Much like Linux vs. closed source, the unified communications market is heading for an open source vs. closed source showdown over the next few years.

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Networking Open Source

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7 comments

  1. Avatar Rurik Bradbury August 27, 2008 @ 3:04 am
    Reply

    Thanks for the write-up. I should add a couple of points:

    1) Unison is not open source. It is commercial, with Linux at the back end (Unison Server) and a choice of Linux or Windows for the desktop client (Unison Desktop)

    2) It’s a good option for VARs who sell PBX systems or deploy email servers like Exchange. For a much lower cost, you can sell clients a unified telephone/email/IM system instead.

    3) Unison has an aggressive program for VARs, with margins up to 50% for selling the software (details are at unison.com/partners)

    Rurik Bradbury
    CMO at Unison Technologies

    PS you’d be surprised at the number of Ubuntu Servers out there — it’s deceptively large.

  2. Avatar The VAR Guy August 27, 2008 @ 5:02 am
    Reply

    @Rurik: Wow. You’ve caught The VAR Guy in a major blunder. He’s embarrassed by the goof. But a little sleep and a morning Latte will make things much better. Back in a few hours, folks, hopefully without a repeat of the blog errors Rurik points out.

  3. Avatar dean collins August 27, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
    Reply

    small other slipup – voiceroute is druid, druid is voiceroute.

    it’s not like they are recomending a seperate entity they own the ip.

    If you like druid but dont want to deply your own server you might liek to check out the V-dex 40 from http://www.Taa.com

    it’s a diskless plug and play appliance running a version of druid.

    http://www.taa.com/products-vdex-40.html

    Cheers,
    Dean

  4. Avatar Rurik Bradbury August 27, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
    Reply

    No problem — many people assume that Unison is open source, since we have a close partnership with Canonical/Ubuntu. We will make it clearer on our site.

    BTW i forgot to hyperlink our partner pages:
    http://www.unison.com/partners

    Rurik

  5. Avatar meeven August 31, 2008 @ 1:13 am
    Reply

    Another minor issue – the link to fonality.com goes to a ‘domain for sale’ page. Turns out the link is wrong (http://fonailty.com/).

  6. Avatar The VAR Guy August 31, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
    Reply

    @Meeven: All fixed. Obviously, The VAR Guy was a bit sloppy with this post. Perhaps lack of sleep truly impacts accuracy? Sorry for the error(s).

  7. Avatar Prissio August 19, 2011 @ 8:29 pm
    Reply

    We are a hosting company in Ecuador and palo Santo is also active is selling hosting, we took a linux course at their office last year. hosting ecuador.

    Elastix is the first ecuadorian open source software that reach international audience.

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