The VAR Guy

Fonality, which specializes in open source phone systems, is answering the U.S. Gulf Coast’s call for help following Hurricane Ike. Fonality CEO Chris Lyman (pictured) had a rather intriguing disaster recovery idea following a chat with The VAR Guy. Here’s the scoop.

Move over, Digium. You’re not the only poster child for Asterisk and open source PBXes. Rival Fonality has scored another $12 million in financing from Intel Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson — and some of the money could be earmarked for acquisitions. Impressive, but what does it mean for VARs and solutions providers?

For roughly two years, The VAR Guy has warned Cisco Systems about the emerging open source threat to traditional IP networks. Now comes word that Voiceroute of Norwalk, Conn., is gaining momentum with a unified communications system based on open source.

Open source companies are finally getting on their feet in the IT channel, The VAR Guy believes. In fact, companies like Digium, GroundWork Open Source, Openbravo and Untangle are following Red Hat and Novell into the IT channel — on a global basis. Here’s a look at their progress.

A quiet revolution continues at Digium, the poster child for Asterisk — the open source IP PBX platform. Many open source companies struggle to line up resellers and solutions providers because, frankly, it’s unclear how to profit from open source. But in Digium’s case, more than 250 partners are banging on the company’s door because Digium really has built a better mouse trap. Here’s the scoop.

Last week, The VAR Guy outlined six trends he expected to generate some buzz at this week’s Interop conference in Las Vegas. Now that the show is in full swing, let’s take another look at those six trends to see how they’re shaping up.

The buzz involving Interop Las Vegas (April 27-May 2) is building. The VAR Guy has received briefing requests from Adtran, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and other networking vendors. Here are three messages he hopes to hear, and three messages he intends to ignore.

Dell. Resellers. Unified communications. Open source. A small software company has found a way to roll up those four ingredients into a very successful IP PBX solution that’s now going global. Here’s the improbable story of Fonality, which is selling its IP telephony software on Dell servers by the truckload.

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.

These are strange times at 3Com. Gloom-and-doom press reports focus on the company’s failed plans to go private. And more recently, 3Com has dissolved (i.e., shot) its worldwide channel organization. Business must be pretty darn bad at the networking company, right? Actually, that’s not entirely the case.