Watch out, Cisco. Move over, Microsoft. Unified communications and the Asterisk open source platform are on a collision course. In fact, a startup called Worxbox hopes to accelerate that convergence. Here’s why anyone interested in the unified communications market should care.
In recent months, Asterisk has transitioned into the mainstream. More and more businesses and universities are embracing Asterisk as an open source PBX replacement to traditional phone systems.
Digium, one of Asterisk’s strongest backers, recently won a global distribution deal that should allow the IP PBX to accelerate its worldwide acceptance.
Similar to Red Hat’s early business dominance of the Linux market, Digium is the company to beat in the Asterisk industry. But startups are helping to build out an Asterisk ecosystem.
Dell, for one, partnered with Fonality — an Asterisk backer — to promote IP telephone gear earlier this year. And now Worxbox is wisely attaching the unified communications label to its Asterisk efforts.
After all: Anything that says “unified communications” these days grabs the attention of media and customers.
The VAR Guy first read about Worxbox when he visited Smith On VOIP, one of his favorite blogs. Smith noted that Worxbox’s mission is:
To provide a production quality Open-Source Unified Communications Server that’s easy to build, configure and manage.
Let’s keep things in perspective: Cisco and Microsoft are dominant. And their respective unified communication platforms are gaining traction. A tiny organization like Worxbox isn’t going to topple the networking establishment anytime soon.
But if you look at Asterisk as an ecosystem — rather than a single company — you begin to see how an open source movement can grow … and grow … and ultimately rival closed-source options.
It happened when Linux sneaked up on Windows servers. And it’s going to happen again as Asterisk-centric companies sneak up on traditional VoIP providers.
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Frankly, I think Asterisk is yet another piece of open source that the press hypes far too much. You shouldn’t compare it to the VoIP systems on the market from Cisco. Customers are willing to pay for Cisco quality.
“Cisco quality” what a joke. sure their core competency stuff, routing and switching, is very high quality, much of their periphery like UCM is really poor. They just buy up small companies, stick the badge on it and push it out the door… I’ll admit i’m more used to the Callmanager 4 generation, and with 7 about to come out things must have moved on, but their gear was just awful, really poor… If Diginum and co can put together a properly written and developed system, good luck asterisk, as Cisco certainly haven’t got one.
Chris: I’m pretty high on Asterisk, but I don’t think you give Cisco enough credit for its acquisition strategy. They do more than “stick a badge” on the products they acquire. They do a great job of retaining the talent they acquire, and for the most part integrate that talent and their products into the larger Cisco.
[…] are on a collision course. In fact, a startup called Worxbox hopes to accelerate that convergence. Here?s why anyone interested in the unified communications market should care. Watch out, Cisco. Move over, […]
[…] are on a collision course. In fact, a startup called Worxbox hopes to accelerate that convergence. Here?s why anyone interested in the unified communications market should […]
Moved to Vicidial 8 months ago. The Asterisk backend has worked well; in fact after the initial install and tear down and rebuild the system has worked better than we imagined. We found features that we couldn’t get from Cisco or anywhere else and if we think of something we might want we can build it ourselves.
Currently, running 2 T1’s, 46 phone lines, on a Sangoma A104 and plan to build out even further.
Alan: Was this project for your own business, or did you build out the Asterisk deployment for a customer? Curious for more details. Thanks.
[…] Open Source Meets Unified Communications […]
Fonality is not “an Asterisk backer”. They have never contributed a single thing to the Asterisk project.
Would Fonality be better described as “Asterisk promoter” rather than “backer”?
Either way, would you agree that Fonality’s efforts to productize Asterisk are helping to legitimize the software’s growing popularity with businesses.
Have you listen to about vaporware… it is Worxbox
Rene: True, Worxbox may be vapor at this point, but Asterisk, Digium and Fonality (backed by Dell) certainly aren’t.
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