Balancing Act: Open Source Asterisk

Not a day goes by when a choice or discussion occurs that encompasses open source Asterisk vs. proprietary elements of a complete solution. Not all portions of "free and open" source are available in pure open source. Components like codecs (i.e. G.729) may be patent encumbered and we have to learn new ways to effectively provide these to the world at large in the best possible manner.

Mark Spencer's brainchild Asterisk has become a key core element of telephony solutions these days meaning a large number of people and companies have built their immediate future on Asterisk. As Asterisk matures, and attention moves to scalability and reliability, Digium has moved with it and enables others to build valuable solutions and components.

Some folks understand and appreciate the community vs. commercial elements and accept and work with them, others just don't however some certainly like to chastise the balancing act choices we deploy.

Being an executive on this team I get to see and hear about virtually all elements of the positive and negative surrounding our choices. Well, we are in business to grow a business, make money and to support Mark Spencer's vision and philosophy: provide an always open version of Asterisk compliant with GPLv2. We have both commercial and community priorities at play daily for precious resources. Choices abound.

All in all, "Digium Days" are among the most exciting in my 25+ year product management oriented career. The core elements (product strategy planning, market segmentation, roadmaps, product requirements, features, pricing models, packaging, etc) are the same, but the "Digium Difference" and "The Digium Way" are the most fun,interesting, hair raising and exhilarating. After over two years following my 3Com stint, this by far has been most interesting in the current pinnacle of my long career.

I've been thinking of which of those moments to write about in upcoming blogs. For those that think it's always an easy decision you are missing the more interesting part of working with Mark.

See you again soon! Off to the Huntsville Air Show with the Blue Angels!

Heard Around The Office Today

It was a typical day at Digium, so I thought I'd share a few things "I heard" today.

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My favorite:

ZAP-Dahdi

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Also heard:

"They need to sign the waiver before going up with Mark and Danny"

"Can we really sell that many?"

"The Community wants this!"

"Will he really be the keynoter at Astricon?"

Do CIOs Welcome Open Source?

I follow as many open source bloggers as I can find regardless of market, perspective, or message. Today I read Matt Assay's blog and thought I'd share it with my readers who follow Digium and Asterisk.

Check Matt's blog out at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9968932-16.html

and check out the original Simon Phipps (Sun) referenced blog inside Matt's blog.

As our commercial business grows around Switchvox and Asterisk Business Edition, and as it grows around larger companies getting the message, Matt's message is true in many cases as people in the purchasing process have chosen to continue to embrace the larger company "wine and dine" sales process, corporate boxes at professional sports events (ah, been there, done that!), and choose to hire and/or train IT staff to administer and manage their proprietary systems.

Although I understand why this decision is made, CIOs and IT Executives should consider options and consider running a pilot or two with open source based solutions. Are you one of these IT executives who just laugh off Asterisk and other open source choices because of "support" issues? What are you thinking?

There will be a day we have corporate boxes and wine and dine you, but for today, we can help you get access to Astricon (www.astricon.net), the only open source telephony conference for business and developers, and more importantly could reduce your TCO for your business telephony solution.

Astricon Takes Shape

With a nice mix of the former Sokol & Associates team of Lisa and Steve plus others, along with the new Digium team of Julie and John, we are getting very close to publishing the conference tracks at Astricon (www.astricon.net). We have added two excellent moderators, solid sponsors and many more are interested in signing on, and we have added a new first-time Astricon keynoter from Google (watch the web site soon for posting)and we are working on another new keynoter.

Our team is electronically charged up for the best ever Astricon, to be held in Glendale, AZ in September. See you there! Check out the site!

Office and Parking Lot Filling Up

Well, it's been a while since my last post. Will try and do better. Our building is fast filling up. Good offices are getting scarce and we are having large orientations weekly. It is quite fun. Now the parking lot is another story. People park all over so no one bangs their doors. A 1985 Toyota sits in the back of our lot trying to avoid anyone. I figured its so he won't hit anyone else. What frightens me, is I park a ways away as well so no one hopefully parks next to me. When I saw the Toyota and an older beat up van almost next to me, I cringed. I might have to park even further away.

Seriously, it's great we are growing. We have added some pretty strong community, customer quality, sales folks, software developers, and marketing folks and expect to be busy this coming summer. We are planning Astricon (www.astricon.net).

What is also fun to follow is Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Does anyone think this is an interesting story to follow? Who gets the handicap? Who gets the prize? Do they go it alone? I love the scenarios in front of us. Makes for something to watch besides a few twitter posts!

Digium Culture

She made my day today. A fairly new Digium employee told me one thing that sold her on working at Digium was this blog. Thank you.......

The Digium culture is unlike any other. People work hard, play hard, party hard, and are always looking at enhancing the working environment at Digium. We have a new newsletter, we have a new employee-driven unique cultural team, we have an awards recognition program, and we have an active group of softball and volleyball players. We have passion for Asterisk, the Asterisk Community and a passion for Digium.

We have make-a-wish foundation volunteer where the other day we honored the young man who benefited from our "Kiss-a-Pig" contest and year-end contest among employee teams. Where else can you get all this and work for the coolest company!?!?!?!?!

Check us out at www.digium.com. You'll also find a flickr link there.

Very nice feedback today to learn this blog helped convince someone to work at Digium. Tomorrow is our casual day. Last time Mark Spencer sent out the one line email we had folks in very creative dress. Pictures were on both this blog and Digium's. Check us out in the next week or so, we will have some new pictures!

Open Source Download - Buy or Not?
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We like the folks who do (buy something)

We like the folks who don't (buy anything)

We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't

But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!

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What would the downloader possibly buy today?

1. TDM gateway boards

2. G.729 Licenses

3. Voice Prompts

4. Speech to text channels

5. Text to speech channels

6. Support

7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform

8. Training and certification

9. Commercial software license

10. Consulting

So, happy downloading:

Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org

Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org

Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq

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Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com