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 the voice directory feature mentioned above. I think it would be a good idea for Asterisk to provide advanced IVR functionality that is integrated with their software. The easier it is to implement the better!