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October 01, 2009
Asterisk to Gain Momentum among Senior Executives: Integrics
By Michael Dinan, TMCnet Editor
Over the next five years, more and more senior management executives will become aware of Asterisk (News - Alert) – the popular open source telephony platform created and developed by Digium – and the technology will begin displacing even more traditional switches, an official with a telecom software engineering company told TMCnet in an interview this week.
According to Alistair Cunningham, managing director of Integrics Ltd, Asterisk already has widespread acceptance among the technical community, its growth driven by “its power and flexibility as a telephony development platform, as well as its open source nature.”
In an interview with TMC (News - Alert) Editorial Director Erik Linask, printed in full below, Cunningham said that Asterisk – which is marking a full decade in existence this year – allows Integrics to build a highly integrated product that handles full PBX (News - Alert) features integrated with billing, invoicing, web interface, SOAP API, “and everything else a commercial telephony provider needs.”
“This wouldn't be possible on a closed platform,” he said. “It's also highly redundant and scalable to tens of thousands of concurrent calls using many Asterisk machines.”
Cunningham, who is speaking during AstriCon 2009 – to be held Oct. 13 to 15 in Glendale, Ariz. – in a session titled “Best Practices for Reliable Carrier-Grade Telephony,” also talked a little about his company’s products and customers, and what he expects to see and learn at the conference.
Their full exchange follows.
Erik Linask (News - Alert): This year marks the 10th birthday of Asterisk. What has driven its growth over a decade?
Alistair Cunningham (pictured left): Its power and flexibility as a telephony development platform, as well as its open source nature.
EL: What is your company’s involvement with Asterisk?
AC: Our Enswitch product uses Asterisk as a telephony stack, to handle SIP, IAX, and TDM protocols, to provide codec transcoding, and so on. We very much vew it as a platform.
EL: Who is your target customer and what are their biggest pain points?
AC: Our customers are commercial telephony service providers offering services such as hosted PBX, ITSP, SIP trunking, number translation, and calling cards. They're looking for a complete integrated package.
EL: How does Asterisk help address your customers’ pain points?
AC: It allows us to build a highly integrated product that handles full PBX features integrated with billing, invoicing, web interface, SOAP API, and everything else a commercial telephony provider needs. This wouldn't be possible on a closed platform. It's also highly redundant and scalable to tens of thousands of concurrent calls using many Asterisk machines.
EL: What are the key differentiators of your product over others on the market?
AC: Enswitch fully integrates the telephony features with billing and invoicing. It provides a comprehensive web interface and SOAP API. It offers redundancy and high scalability.
EL: You are speaking at AstriCon 2009 – describe your session and tell our readers why they should attend it.
AC: I'll be talking about best practices for reliable carrier grade telephony services. If you want to achieve the best uptimes for your carrier services, I think you'll find this talk interesting.
EL: What else do you expect to see or hear at AstriCon that will be particularly interesting or innovative?
AC: I'll be keeping an open mind until the day!
EL: Where do you see the Asterisk market in five years?
AC: Asterisk already has widespread acceptance among the technical community. Over the next five years, we'll see more and more Asterisk awareness at the senior management level, and it displacing an ever larger number of traditional switches.
Learn more about Integrics Ltd. at AstriCon 2009, to be held Oct. 13 to 15 in Glendale, Ariz. The conference’s mission is to expand awareness and knowledge of Asterisk, the world's leading open source PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit, over the course of a three-day conference and exhibition. AstriCon includes a wealth of information for every Asterisk user, whether you are getting started or have already discovered the power of Asterisk. Register now.
Michael Dinan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Michael's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Michael Dinan
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