Despite the recession, Cisco Systems and Digium (the upstart open source IP PBX specialist) are holding strategic partner and customer events within days of each other in Miami, Florida. Cisco’s agenda is all business. Digium’s agenda is mostly technology. The VAR Guy’s agenda: Stirring up some controversy.

Read the full thing at http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/03/cisco-and-digium-nearly-converging-in-miami/

Voice Internet Protocol (VoIP) Telephony refers to the technology used for making telephone calls over the Internet. The two major technologies used to implement VoIP telephony are Asterisk and OpenSER. This article by Flavio E. Goncalves compares Asterisk and OpenSER topic by topic and shows the differences between them.

Read the full thing at http://www.packtpub.com/article/comparing-asterisk-and-openser

Media processing vendor Pika Technologies Inc. recently announced that its Warp appliance line is customer-ready and ready to slay the Nortels and Ciscos of the world in a bid for the small to midsize corporate telespace.

Pika's hardware line, which includes the Appliance for Asterisk and Appliance for Linux, is bundled with an open-source platform that will let develops tweak the software to their telephony needs.

Read the full thing at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9095478

Some critics dismiss Asterisk as a “toy.” The open source VoIP platform, skeptics say, lacks a service and support network for big enterprise and university deployments. Apparently, the folks at Digium are aware of their critics. The Asterisk market leader has launched a new warranty program that could give skeptical partners and customers more faith in the open source PBX.

Read the full thing at http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/02/12/asterisk-guaranteed-peace-of-mind/

Companies selecting a VoIP solution must choose from a dizzying array of options, including whether a hosted, hybrid-hosted or premise-based telephony system will work better for them, and whether the benefits of open source outweigh the potential risks.

Digium CTO and Asterisk creator Mark Spencer called the proprietary hybrid-hosted model "very evil" during the Internet Telephony Expo West 2007 in Los Angeles, leading to a conversation-starting blog posting by SearchNetworking.com site editor Amy Kucharik. Kucharik recently spoke with Spencer to get some clarification on his position and controversial comments, and to hear his thoughts about open source VoIP and what it means for business users.

Read the full thing at http://www.searchvoip.com.au/topics/article.asp?DocID=1279058

From VoIP News:

Leading Asterisk developer Digium Inc. has snagged a licensing deal with a subsidiary of Japanese telco giant NTT in what it sees as a major breakthrough for the open-source PBX system in that critical market.

Until now Asterisk Business Edition, Digium’s premium version of the software, has been English and that’s held back its potential use in Japan, according to Jim Webster, director of software technologies at Digium. Under the agreement, NTT Software Corp. will develop its own version of Asterisk Business Edition for use in its ProgOffice PBX product for Japanese small and medium-sized businesses.

Read the full thing at http://www.voip-news.com/news/digium-ntt-breakthroug-deal-040907/

From ITWire:

Digium, developer of the Asterisk open source IP PBX software, has launched the Asterisk Appliance, PBX hardware running Asterisk and able to serve up to 50 users.

The Asterisk Appliance includes embedded Asterisk Business Edition telephony software, Digium hardware, the Digium-developed Asterisk graphical user interface and documentation. According to Digium, it can be easily configured by customers or resellers and supports VoIP and traditional analogue phones

Read the full thing at http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10743/127/

From LinuxLookup:

The Asterisk and Zaptel development teams have released Asterisk 1.4.1. This release contains a very large number of bug fixes, including a fix for the recently discovered security vulnerability.

Read the full thing at http://www.linuxlookup.com/2007/mar/05/asterisk_1_4_1_released

From Free Software Magazine:

Did you know that it’s possible to build an entire telephony system centered around computers? One which is free of licensing costs too? Asterisk is a free software application written to do just that, and much more. Why? For the uninitiated, here’s why...

Read the full thing at http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/asterisk_the_easy_way

From VOIP News:

Open source IP telephony got slightly less geeky today with Fonality's public release of trixbox 2.0. The new version of the free Asterisk-based IP PBX platform is a lot easier to install and use than its predecessor. That should increase its popularity as a foundation for small-business phone systems. But it's still not likely to steal customers from Fonality's PBXtra or similar turnkey products.

Read the full thing at http://www.voip-news.com/feature/trixbox-2-open-source-voip-010307/