Digium Sees Jump in Asterisk Downloads; Businesses Increasingly Going Open Source to Save Money

Digium, the creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the industry's first open source telephony platform, proudly announced today that its Asterisk (News - Alert) open source telephony software was downloaded 1.5 million times in 2008.

 

This marks a major milestone in history for the company as the number of downloads for 2008 is more than any other year in company history, and an overwhelming 50 percent higher than last year.

 

Digium has had an exciting past year and looks forward to a promising 2009, when the company celebrates the 10th anniversary of Asterisk.

 

Digium’s strong 2008 year highlights the attractiveness of less expensive, easily customizable open source software in the current recession. When the economic climate worsened, Asterisk downloads increased by 32 percent from September through December, compared to a year ago.

 

Some of the company’s major 2008 achievements include the launch of the beta version of Skype for Asterisk, which enables customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within their Asterisk phone systems. In addition, Digium completed the integration of Switchvox, a provider of an open source-based IP PBX, which Digium acquired in 2007. After successfully integrating Switchvox’s (News - Alert) channel partners, the Digium Authorized Reseller Program now includes nearly 400 resellers.

 

Additional Digium achievements for 2008 include:

 

Digium’s Switchvox AA300 – The AA300 appliance is a flexible, easy-to-use IP PBX that gives companies with up to 150 users a turnkey business telephone solution based on Asterisk software. Its release completed the initial planned build-out of the Switchvox appliance family, along with the AA60 appliance and the AA350 appliance. After assessing the Switchvox AA300, Matthew Nickasch, a blogger from Network World, wrote, “In my opinion, if there’s an appliance or SMB IP-PBX to beat, this is the one.”

 

Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program – A new guarantee program ensuring the quality of Digium’s hardware and software products and emphasizing the reliability of open source technology. The Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program is the most comprehensive product guarantee program in open source telephony today.

 

Four Millionth Port – Digium went public with the delivery of the four millionth port for connecting telephony systems based on Asterisk to communication networks. The number demonstrates the rapid increase in popularity of Asterisk for managing voice communications and integrating voice with corporate data.

Sponsored Industry Events – 2008 marked the second Digium|Asterisk World, an event held to expand open source IP telephony communications in business environments. Digium also hosted the fifth-annualAstriCon, the industry’s largest, most educational Asterisk community event. The event honored the winners of the annual Digium “Innovation Awards,” which recognize businesses using Asterisk in innovative ways.

 

AsteriskNOW 1.5 – Digium rolled out a new version of the AsteriskNOW software appliance that includes the popular FreePBX Web-based Asterisk management interface and eases the process of installing, operating and managing an Asterisk-based telephony system.

 

Industry Awards – Digium’s Switchvox appliance family continued to recieve honors for product excellence, including Unified Communications magazine’s “Product of the Year” and “Best of Show” and “Best of Open Source” at TMC’s (News - Alert) INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West 2008. Asterisk won a “2008 Technology of the Year” award from InfoWorld and a “Product Leadership Award” from SearchNetworking.com.

 

Digium Founder and CTO Mark Spencer (News - Alert) was named to eWeek’s “100 Most Influential People in IT” list and FierceVoIP recognized Spencer as one of 10 “VoIP Leaders.” As a company, Digium was recognized on Linux Magazine’s “2008 Top 20 Companies to Watch,” by VoIP-News as a “Top 20 VoIP Influencer,” and by  FierceVoIP as one of the “Fierce 15” VoIP companies of 2008.

 

“A decade after the Asterisk open source software changed the telephony world forever, Digium continues to revolutionize the way businesses and individuals communicate,” stated Danny Windham, Digium’s chief executive officer. “We are all working diligently to extend the success Digium has enjoyed in 2008 into 2009 and beyond.”

 

Digium will be showcasing its Asterisk open source telephony software for the third year at the Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO. Scheduled to take place February 2-4, 2009 in Miami, this event is collocated with TMC's ITEXPO East 2009. The Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO (News - Alert) covers "Everything Asterisk" and will be especially beneficial for business users, resellers and executive decision-makers.

 

At Digium|Asterisk World, attendees will learn how Asterisk can save them money and empower them to create more flexible telephony solutions.

 

Digium, the Asterisk Company, developed, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since the company’s founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to many communication providers, with affordable offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less.

 

The company makes Asterisk software available to the open source community and delivers Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad suite of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company’s product line includes a wide range of hardware to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey solutions or to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems.