A recent webinar titled “Building Video Conferencing Solutions with Asterisk (News - Alert)” was broadcast Wednesday, July 20. You can still register and view the presentation.

As webinar officials say, advances in technology and the widespread availability of IP network connectivity are combining to cause what they recognize to be “tremendous growth in video conferencing.” Much of the reason for this, of course, is a more geographically dispersed workforce, increases in the use of home offices and business travel in general.

Webcams help tremendously as well, of course, as do smart phones, not to mention the great increases in the cost of business travel.

You probably haven’t looked too closely at it if you’ve heard the horror stories of how multipoint video conferencing technology is so expensive, needing complicated proprietary platforms and other IT terrors. But that was then and this is now -- “open source software and standard hardware platforms are breaking through these barriers,” webinar officials say, adding that cost-effective video conferencing can be built on Asterisk.

As part of the presentation, Steve Sokol noted that much of the benefit of Asterisk is the fact that so much telephony can be built on its platform, such as voice mail and conferencing, as well as its ability as a VoIP gateway to connect the PSTN to modern VoIP networks, acting as a bridge between legacy telephony gear, “the old heavy iron switches,” and VoIP services.

The webinar covered an overview of Asterisk, the video conferencing market, how to create a fully featured video conferencing option controlled from the Asterisk dial plan, video endpoint support for desktop and PC-based clients, iiPhone, Android (News - Alert) and iPad mobile video clients, multiparty display and adding high-definition audio to your video conference.

Presenting was Steve Sokol, Marketing Director for Asterisk at Digium (News - Alert), whose primary function is spreading the word about the capabilities and value of the Asterisk communications engine. In 2004 he co-founded AstriCon, the official Asterisk community conference and exhibition, and launched an Asterisk training venture subsequently acquired by Digium.

Also presenting was Antony Martin, Director of Open Source Engineering for Dialogic Corporation, whose experience ranges from PBX (News - Alert) hardware and embedded software, to IVR, Call Center, Media Server and Unified Messaging software and systems.

Dialogic is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit Dialogic in booth #407. Don’t wait. Register now.