Posts Tagged ‘Digium’
Glendale, AZ & Washington DC – Pictures from Thursday’s keynotes at AstriCon 2009.
IBM CTO Mike Smith talks all about Digium’s role as an ISV on IBM’s Smart Cube program. Companies with Smart Cube can pull down Asterisk from IBM’s online Smart Business marketplace.
Digium CEO Danny Windham recapping 2009 in terms of challenges and opportunities. Windham said that in the budget squeezes of the past year, companies have looked to open source as a more economical and cost-effective means of doing business — good stuff for Asterisk and other open source companies.
And what’s AstriCon without Steve Sokol? Steve founded AstriCon 6 years ago and got the shows — and himself — bought by Digium.
Glendale, AZ & Washington DC – Pictures from AstriCon 2009 on Wednesday October 14, 2009.
Keynote audience at AstriCon 2009
It was a full ballroom for both days of keynotes.
Allworx founder Jeff Szczepanski at AstriCon 2009
You run into a lot of interesting people in the hallways of AstriCon — like the founder of Allworx.
Google Chris DiBona keynote at AstriCon 2009
Chris DiBona delivers the Wednesday morning keynote, talking up all kinds of goodness about open source software. You need stats on open source downloads and popularity? He’s got ‘em.
Digium's John Todd showing off his shirt at AstriCon 2009
John Todd shows off his newest tie-dye shirt. He gets them custom made, only going to show there’s no accounting for taste.
- In: Events | Uncategorized
- 2 Comments
Glendale AZ & Washington DC – As Digium celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Asterisk IP telephony platform this week at the AstriCon developer’s conference with cake and funny hats, this year’s keynote presentation by IBM CTO Mike Smith drifted into the mundane and dull — a very good thing.
Smith, brought in to talk about Digium’s role as an ISV (independent software vendor) in IBM’s Smart Cube platform/Smart Business program, put up a series of slides and descriptions for IBM’s ISV certification process to warm the heart of any nervous SMB IT work thinking about purchasing Asterisk for a Smart Cube server through IBM’s online applications store.
Since IBM services as the single point of contact or — as Smith described it – “the single throat to choke” — for technical support on the Smart Cube, Digium had to adjust and code and jump through a number of hoops so a commercial version of Asterisk would be available through Big Blue.
Net-net of the qualification process is a product that IBM is comfortable offering. It may be dull, but this is a good thing since IBM’s process and attention to detail is the sort of thing that will give warm fuzzies to anyone prone to buy IBM servers for their business — fuzzies that extend to the purchase of Asterisk as an IP PBX solution loaded on the Smart Cube Server.
This is a Good Thing. It isn’t PR sexy like the whole Skype for Asterisk announcement last year (and BTW, we know where those Skype folks are these days), but it is another solid step in moving Asterisk into the corporate mainstream.
IBM is also providing another channel for Digium to distribute Asterisk and channel partners who sell the Smart Cube solution now get a chance to provide a PBX along with a data server — plus making some money in providing handsets and configuring a phone system for their customers. Again, contrast the potential here for Digium to grow its business through (dull but trusted) IBM and its channel partners verses last year’s talk from Skype to A) Develop a business strategy B) Find and train channel partners and C) Ultimately make money by recurring revenue on SkypeOut minutes sold…
(FYI, Skype was talking up love of channels and the Skype partner program about a month ago in Miami, but that’s what they were talking about last year at AstriCon 2008 and at CES 2009… so what’s the hold up?)
Net-net: IBM may not be exciting and flashy, but for most buyers, this is a Very Good Thing indeed.
I’m going to be at Digium’s AstriCon conference, the Asterisk developer’s conference, on October 13-15 in Glendale, AZ.
Digium head hoo-hoo, er Community development guy John Todd has asked me to be a Master of Ceremonies (MC) for two of the AstriCon tracks on Wednesday and Thursday. Which means I get to herd cats, er developers to sessions, make sure tracks keep rolling along and generally try to keep everything moving. Probably wash John’s tie-dye shirts in the evening…
Asterisk is part and parcel of a LOT of IP Telephony projects these days these days, ranging from ooma’s handsets to high-end workings with HD.
Every year for the past couple of years, the folks at Digium have rolled out a nice little surprise at the annual AstriCon event connected to the keynote speakers. Two years ago, Digium announced it had purchased Switchvox (Hello Tristian!). Last year, Skype and Digium announced a working relationship and a beta of a channel manager (i.e. connection) between Asterisk and Skype. And this year? IBM and Google are sending speakers.
On Wednesday, October 14,Google open source programs manager Chris DiBona will open up the conference. Chris oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community. Maybe we’ll learn that Google Voice has some Asterisk involved or that The Goog plans to use Asterisk as its internal IP telephony platofrm. Or not. I’d give this prediction a 50/50 shot.
Mike Smith, IBM’s CTO of its Server and Technology Group, will be delivering the Thursday keynote and I’ll be really interested in what he has to say. Mike is responsible for leveraging the capabilities of different assets at IBM and leading software development teams for “smart business.” He’s also leading partnerships in new software business opportunities. Hmmm….
At the last AstriCon, I gave Danny Windham an earful about the Skype/Digium announcement (I wasn’t gung-ho on it) and also said that it would be very interesting to see someone *ahem*ahem* like IBM come in and give the blessing to Asterisk. IBM, after all, loves open source and is Big Business, so if they were to place a blessing upon Asterisk, it would be A Big Deal for both sides. Hopefully, Danny remembers that conversation…
Voxeo gets Asterisk open, cloud-y.
Posted on: July 23, 2009
Voxeo has made two open source announcements in the last two days, establishing Voxeo Labs for open source/open standard solutions and releasing the Tropo.com cloud telephony service source code for free under open source licenses.
Voxeo Labs will be staffed by the guys who brought you Adhearsion, Jay Phillips and Jason Goecke. Since Adhearson is built on the Ruby programming language and sits on top of the Asterisk open source telephony platform, there’s plenty of openness already built into the founding of Voxeo Labs.
The first product flowing out of Voxeo is the Tropo.com cloud telephony service source code. Tropo.com provides a cloud telephony service to enable developers to write voice apps in languages such as Groovy, JavaScript, PHP, Python and Ruby, providing a direct alternative to translating to and fro in XML formats. Tropo is built entirely on open standards including SIP, Java SIP servlets, and IETF’s MRCP.
Tropo source code released today includes the Tropo SIP Servlet and Tropo API “Shims” for Groovy, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and Ruby programming languages. Voxeo Labs will release additional Tropo components in the coming weeks to run Tropo apps in private clouds, elastic computing services, or on servers in conjunction with Voxeo’s free Prophecy platform.
Fall 2009 events – Where I’ll be
Posted on: July 17, 2009
So far, my fall dance card looks like this–
IT EXPO West 2009, Los Angeles Convention Center, September 1-2
I’ll be moderating for one panel on Tuesday and taking briefings in the TMC press room on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 1 & 2.
Details on the HD Communications Summit are being hammered out, but I will most likely be sitting in the back — hopefully next to a power strip — blogging and twetting during the proceedings.
AstriCon 2009, October 13-15, 2009, Glendale (well, Phoenix), Arizona.
Looks like I’ll arrive sometime on the 13th — time to be determined by the cheapest fair through United — and and MCing a couple of tracks on Wednesday and Thursday, October 14 and 15.
ChannelWeb reports that Microsoft is wishy-washy about what will to happen with it’s Response Point SMB VoIP system.
Meeting with VoIP VARs, Response Point Program Manager John Frederickson said Microsoft doesn’t currently plan to release future versions of Response Point. It will, however, continue to maintain the product and evaluate specific feature requests. The company will also continue supporting OEMs and selling Response Point 1.0 Service Pack 2.
So, you want to buy a dead/legacy-ed out product because…?
Back in May, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people working on Response Point and hasn’t said diddly about plans to develop/release a 2.0 version. Things don’t look good as the Response Point GM has been moved over to Microsoft’s search group and there’s a “small” engineering team still around to maintain the product, but Response Point is “funded” and has a marketing budget through June 30, 2010.
An email from Microsoft to ChannelWeb said the company didn’t “announce anything” at the meeting and expects to have more details to share on future development at the end of this calendar year.
Some VARs love Response Point, but they are discomforted that Microsoft has basically frozen the product. Other players in the IP PBX game would like to see Response Point just Go Away – the Digium people seem to be especially catty when it comes to the SMB PBX.
On June 27, Fonality starts the first round of its mixed martial arts (MMA) style “Fight club” rounds. Chris Lyman, you need to cut back on the Red Bull, brother!
They call it Fonality Fight Club. As a stunt, invitation to hit the boss, and/or stress relief, 17 Fonality staff members, will “with no previous fighting experience, will be getting into a ring and attempting to knock out or submit each other in a UFC-style MMA tournament.” Up on the website, you can find more details, including videos, lightweight and middleweight brackets, and there’s a Twitter feed buried in there to boot.
Lyman is a big MMA fan, if memory serves. And somehow, I could see one of Chris’s underlings getting him to “tap out” in a cage… and still have a job the next day 
More seriously, I don’t know if this is crazy or crazy like a fox. MMA is popular among the *ahem* 18-34 demographic. But then, people buying Fonality products probably fit more into the NASCAR demographic than the anything else. I suppose if Chris was really serious, he’d have the championship rounds on the floor of IT EXPO, add some real excitement to the next TMC trade show.
And what do they do for fun down in Huntsville? I suspect it is called the Digium FLIGHT club. CEO Danny Windham and CTO Mark Spencer are avid pilots. And both of them are too mellow to hop into a cage and physically beat the hell out of someone.
VoIP Trunk sucks up to Digium
Posted on: June 23, 2009
Gotta love a good gimmick when I see one.
Newly minted startup VoIP Trunk is offering a free SIP/IAX trunking account to all Digium employees. Don’t believe me? From VT’s blog:
“We love Digium for giving the world Asterisk. And as a small ‘thank you’, we’d like to give Digium a small gift in return. We’d like to give a VoIPTrunk SIP/IAX trunking account to all Digium employees. No charge, of course. All Digium employees can send an email to digium@voiptrunk.com from their digium.com email address and we will hook’em up!”
Of course, a few days later, there has to be a clarification–
“Hey Digium people. Guess what. There is no free SIP/IAX trunking account. It was all just a big email harvesting scam so we can incessantly spam you into buying a Fonality-green colored Snuggie!
We’re kidding. Actually we’re excited about the response we’ve received from you. We’re hard at work creating your accounts and will get back to you in short order. Promise. And no snuggie spam.”
Well, maybe VoIP Trunk can start handing out SIP trunks to bloggers… no, wait the FTC is cracking down on that, alas
