Digium is doing things right
Background
Digium is the company behind Asterisk, the popular open source PBX.
Digium was founded in 1999 by Mark Spencer, the creator of Asterisk.
Since then, Asterisk has been deployed around the world on millions on
computers. Despite that fact, Asterisk still does not have a large
market share of the PBX market. Why is this? In the past, there were
many reasons for this:
* No brand recognition of Asterisk
* No proven track record of successful implementations
* Commercial support was needed
* No Linux expertise on staff
* Afraid to use open source software
These concerns were once valid, but today most of them have been
addressed by Digium.
They made Asterisk easy to use
Digium has been working hard to overcome the historically steep
learning curve associated with implementing Asterisk. They have
accomplished this with two major improvements. First, Digium created
an open source software appliance called AsteriskNow! that bundled
Asterisk inside a pre-configured version of Linux. Most of the work
for this appliance was done by the magic pixie dust known as rPath.
Secondly they have developed a simple web-based interface called
Asterisk GUI to configure the PBX. This is a great improvement when
compared to manually editing multiple text-based configuration files!
More recently, Digium has acquired a company called Switchvox. This
was done so that Digium could take advantage of the advanced GUI that
Switchvox had created. The best part about this acquisition is that
Digium is going to be releasing the Switchvox code under the GPL
license! Check out this quote from Mark Spencer:
So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an
open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into
a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other
way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product
and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies
into open source.
They offer professional services for Asterisk
Digium now offers a wide range of professional services to meet the
needs of any organization. This includes consulting, training, and
technical support. They also offer a product called "Asterisk Business
Edition", which benefits from the usability improvements listed above.
Digium appliances
Digium has also recently started selling a hardware appliance called
the Asterisk Appliance. This appliance is designed for deployments of
up to 50 users. It supports 8 analog ports, and can process 25
concurrent calls. There are no moving parts in device, which means no
hard drive to crash. Instead, it uses an upgradeable flash card to
store voice-mail, greetings, configuration settings, and recorded
calls. Digium offers three levels of support for the device, including
a 24x7 option.
This appliance is great, but it only serves the small business
environment. I have heard that Digium is working on a larger appliance
that will support hundreds of users. This is a great thing, since it
will allow Asterisk to be deployed in a majority of businesses around
the world. Only the largest deployments would require more than the
this new appliance can deliver.
It was also recently announced that 3com would be selling a 3com
branded Asterisk Appliance. This means that Asterisk will reach a much
larger audience through the 3com brand. 3com is offering support
services for their version of the appliance.
What does the future hold?
Digium has made great strides in making Asterisk both powerful and
easy to use. However, one area that I see lacking is scalability.
Asterisk works great for a few hundred phones, but how about a few
thousand phones, like you might see at a University? The most common
way to increase scalability of Asterisk systems is to use a SIP-proxy
such as SER or OpenSER. For instance, the University of Pennsylvania
is rolling out a 15,000 unit Asterisk-based phone system. To achieve
the scalability they needed, they decided to implement SER along with
Asterisk.
How does Digium expect to support large Asterisk installations if they
require a third-party SIP-proxy that doesn't even offer commercial
support? My guess is that Digium will acquire a SIP-proxy like SER or
OpenSER so that they can offer a complete solution without needing any
third-party software.
Another obstacle that Digium faces is Microsoft. Microsoft is about to
enter the small-business VOIP market with a product called Response
Point. The biggest advantage of this product is that it includes
intelligent IVR, or speech recognition technology. This will allow
users to dial anyone in the phone directory simply by speaking their
name. This commonly used feature could persuade businesses to choose
Microsoft over Digium.
Digium has several options to respond to this threat. First, they can
try to create a working system based on open source projects such as
Sphinx. I have no clue as to how much work this would be, but I expect
that it would be difficult and time-consuming to achieve high-quality
IVR. If you know anything about the current status of Sphinx, please
leave a comment. How well does it currently work? Can it provide a
voice directory feature like Microsoft Response Point does?
The second option for Digium would be to partner with a commercial IVR
company. They are already partnered with Lumenvox, but I am not sure
what this includes. For instance, I do not know if this will provide
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