Comments on: Digium Attracts 400 Resellers

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:49:28 +0000

Socceroos: Forgive me for not recalling the back story at the moment. That drama unfolded back in October. But The VAR Guy will try to dig out his notes and find the answer for you.

By: Socceroos

Socceroos — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:47:16 +0000

“because the information about Fonality was either misleading or inaccurate.”

I’m sorry, who told you that?

By: Socceroos

Socceroos — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:36:07 +0000

Yeah, perhaps I didn’t need to add the ‘hello Digium’ bit. We’ll go with any good provider. =)

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:28:44 +0000

Socceroos: Thanks for clarifying your business. We welcome strong opinions — such as yours — but also always try to push folks to reveal if they have any ties to the companies they endorse.

Thanks again for reading The VAR Guy.

By: Socceroos

Socceroos — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:10:05 +0000

VarGuy: my company is in Real Estate. http://www.townsshearing.com.au

You can confirm this by following my logged IP.

By: Socceroos

Socceroos — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:52:35 +0000

Hey Var Guy,

No I, nor my company are affiliated with Digium. I was considering supporting our Asterisk installation myself, but the comfort of having fully trained and available help was too much of a lure – especially in a business environment. So as I started searching for a provider I made sure we weren’t getting into anything dodgey. And in my opinion, from what I have been able to read, Fonality are a dodgey outfit.

I’m not going to pay for their services if thats the attitude they have to their users and community.

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:20:01 +0000

Socceroos: The VAR Guy welcomes your thoughts. But one quick question… are you affiliated with Digium in any way? Just making sure you’re truly a vendor-neutral customer that came to conclusions without any hidden motivations.

By: Socceroos

Socceroos — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:27:46 +0000

My company is currently looking for a better, cheaper, more fully featured phone system and Asterisk is at the top of the list. BUT…

I’m not fond of Fonality. Below is why:

The folks at Fonality aren’t doing much of a job to inspire confidence in aspiring customers: http://www.freepbx.org/news/2008-06-02/why-does-fonality-choose-to-deceive-you

Because of this, we’re avoiding Fonality. We want to be able to trust the company we’re relying on for telephony.

Hello Digium.

[NOTE FROM THE VAR GUY, DECEMBER 22, 2008: Apparently, the link above has been removed and/or the page taken down because the information about Fonality was either misleading or inaccurate. The VAR Guy recommends that readers get in touch directly with Fonality (www.fonality.com) in order to get educated and draw your own conclusions.]

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:30:57 +0000

Lane: Numbers can certainly be misleading. But Asterisk momentum is for real. Check in with Fonality (another open source VoIP company) and you’ll see momentum similar to Digium’s.

By: Tristan Rhodes

Tristan Rhodes — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:27:31 +0000

Lane,

I think you are right, most telecom VARs don’t want to touch open source based products, because they will drastically lower the revenue and profit from each customer. These VARs want to protect their over-priced solutions as much as possible, but perhaps they will be forced to start selling Digium once they lose enough business to competitors who sell Digium.

If you want to learn more about the Digium reseller program, you can read about it on their website:

http://www.digium.com/en/ecosystem/resellers/

Using the information on the requirements tab, and the number of resellers in the article above (400), you can predict a minimum revenue from the reseller channel.

http://www.digium.com/en/ecosystem/resellers/?tab=requirements

400 resellers x $25,000 yearly commitment = $10 million revenue per year

This is just a low-ball estimate, and it only includes sales from the reseller channel. Digium probably has substantial sales from their websites (Digium.com and Switchvox.com)

Tristan

By: Lane Smith

Lane Smith — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:03:40 +0000

I see these numbers from many vendors, Dell signed 10,000 partners, Vembu signed ???? partners, etc. I think the real questions is what exactly makes a reseller? Is it someone that is actually selling the product, or someone that has downloaded a free trial or signed a reseller agreement (with no financial committment).

I am working with a lot of people in the telephony industry and from what I have seen not many interconnects are jumping on board the Asterik platform. I suspect many of these resellers are Data VARs looking to get into the telephony game.