Disruptive Telephony

Has Asterisk NOT "crossed the chasm" for developers? (Key links to read for open source)

Jay Phillips is frustrated. He passionately wants to see open source telephony enjoy success all around the world. Yet right now, when people think "open source telephony", they almost always think of Asterisk... and Jay sees too many challenges for developers embracing Asterisk. Jay, the creator of the Adhearsion telephony framework for Ruby, has spoken about this at recent conferences and pulled together his thoughts in a lengthy post earlier this week entitled "What We're Not Admitting about Asterisk".

Jay argues that Asterisk has not crossed the proverbial chasm for developers and outlines some of the issues he sees.

What is perhaps most interesting about Jay's post is the equally lengthy response by Asterisk creator Mark Spencer. Mark responds to Jay's various points and in doing so provides some good insight into his views on Asterisk's connections to developers, APIs, etc., as well as the differences between the markets that Digium, the company, goes after versus the "market" of Asterisk, the raw telephony platform.

Both Jay's article and Mark's response are definitely worth reading. I'm friends now with both of them and they both bring immense passion and energy to the world of open source telephony. Ultimately they both make the point that we need better tools for developers to create voice applications. This kind of dialogue is great and will only result in better tools in the end. Please do check out the posts.

P.S. Thomas Howe has also weighed in with a post saying this is a clash in world views, which also makes for good reading. I agree with Thomas that we are in a transition into a world of "web-as-a-platform"... basically a transition "into the cloud"... and so we do need "web-centric" interfaces and APIs. But I disagree with Thomas that Asterisk is "tired". To me, Asterisk is just... well... "plumbing". Asterisk is a telephony platform, as is FreeSWITCH... as is Yate... as are all the commercial IP-PBXs. Asterisk is an open source component of the rewiring of our communication infrastructure that we have underway right now. I think anyone, including Mark, would agree that Asterisk has technical challenges it needs to overcome but I, for one, am not ready to write it off yet.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, open source, voip, telephony, jay phillips, mark spencer, adhearsion, apis, voice, applications

Heading out to ClueCon 2008, Telephony Developer Conference, this week..

This afternoon I'll be heading to the airport to fly out to Chicago to be part of ClueCon this week. Haven't heard of ClueCon before? Here's the quick summary:

ClueCon - is an annual 3-Day Telephony User and Developer Conference bringing together the entire spectrum of Telephony from TDM circuits to VoIP and everything in between. The presentations and discussions will cover several open source telephony applications such as Asterisk/Callweaver, Kamailio (formerly OpenSER), Bayonne, YATE and FreeSWITCH.

Billed as the "Telephony Developer Conference" it primarily focuses on the whole world of open source telephony.

I'll be there as part of two panels. First, tomorrow I'll be joining fellow VoIP bloggers Andy Abramson and Thomas Howe on a "VoIP Roundtable" to talk about current industry themes and trends. Then on Thursday I'll be part of a "VoIP Security Roundtable" talking about... gee... can you guess?

It should be a fun event... I'm looking forward to catching up with Andy, Thomas, Moshe Yudkowsky, Jon Todd and several others. There are also some folks on the schedule with whom I have corresponded but never physically me, so that will be nice as well. If any of you reading this will also be there, please do feel free to drop me a note so that we can connect.

Technorati Tags: telephony, cluecon, cluecon2008, voip, voxeo, open source, opensource, dan york, danyork, conferences, chicago, applications, telecommunications, developers

Nortel's fascinating move into open source telephony... but NOT with Asterisk

Nortel and "open source telephony"? Huh?

That was admittedly my thought when I received the list of who was going to be on the panel I moderated last week at VoiceCon on open source telephony. The other two panelists were obvious choices: Bill Miller was from Digium (makers of Asterisk) and Raza was from 3Com who have recently announced that they would be reselling a version of Digium's Asterisk Business Edition. Both Bill and Raza made sense to me. But Tony Pereira of Nortel? Nortel does not leap out at me as a company working with open source telephony - what in the world are they doing with it, I wondered?

It turns out that the answer is... "quite a bit!"

As Tony Pereira outlined in our panel as well as in conversations afterwards, Nortel is in the process of launching their "Software Communications Server 500" (SCS 500) targeted at small businesses and built using open source telephony software!

Interestingly, though, it does NOT use Asterisk.

Instead Nortel is using the "other" major player in open source telephony, the "sipXecs" product from SIPfoundry.org. (Previously called "sipX" but renamed "sipXecs" about a year ago.) I've not written all that much about sipX here but it certainly has been a product I've known of over the years. It started out as a PBX product from Pingtel which they then released as an open source version ("sipX" and now "sipXecs") and also had a commercial version called "SIPxchange". sipX garnered perhaps its most attention back in October 2006 when it was announced that Amazon.com would be using it for their internal phone systems (see the links on the SIPFoundry.org site). At a fundamental level, sipX provides similar functionality to Asterisk but where Asterisk is focused on being a "platform" for telephony that can work with a wide range of protocols, sipX is focused exclusively on SIP and also provides an extensive GUI management tool. (Pingtel provides a (obviously biased) comparison of sipXecs vs Asterisk on their wiki.)

From what I learned at our panel, Nortel is essentially creating their own supported version of "sipXecs" that they will sell as the "SCS 500". It will have full commercial support from Nortel. Target market will apparently be "small" businesses. No info really available on Nortel's site yet, although glimpses are visible through support documents (such as here and here(although this appears to be about an earlier 1.0 version last year)).

All in all it's to me a fascinating move by the folks at Nortel and I look forward to learning more about the SCS500 product over the next weeks and months as they launch it. It's a rather nice boost for the whole world of "open source telephony", too, to have Nortel making this move as well.

Technorati Tags: nortel, open source, asterisk, sipx, sipxecs, pingtel, voip, sip

My presentations at VoiceCon this week...

I'm down in Orlando this week for VoiceCon Orlando and will be part of three sessions. Tomorrow, I'm moderating a panel at 8am on VoIP security and on Thursday I'm moderating a panel on open source telephony. On Wednesday, I'll be part of a keynote panel with Irwin Lazar on "Social networking and enterprise communication", which should be quite fun. I'll include below the full descriptions of the various sessions. If you are attending VoiceCon and want to connect, please do contact me.

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Session Title: Top VOIP Security Threats
Date: 3/18/2008
Time: 8:00 AM
Room: Osceola B
Session Description: There's been a lot of concern about voice over IP security, but have there been many actual exploits? This session will inform you about the state of VOIP security. You'll learn about generalized IP attacks that have affected IP telephony systems deployed on IP networks, and you'll also find out what VOIP-specific attacks have actually been observed "in the wild"--and what to expect in the future.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the most serious voice-oriented attacks that are actually being carried out? What potential attacks haven't occurred yet but probably will before long? * How do you protect your VOIP systems against these attacks? * What types of equipment and technologies must you implement to stop voice-oriented attacks? * What specific kinds of damage can these attacks cause?
Moderator(s): Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Panelist(s): Sachin Joglekar - Vulnerability Research Lead - Sipera Systems
David Endler - Director of Security Research - TippingPoint
Mark Collier - CTO - SecureLogix

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Session Title: Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?
Date: 3/20/2008
Time: 11:45 AM
Room: Sun C
Session Description: Open source PBXs are gaining a higher profile: Asterisk and other open-source PBX software packages continue to gain acceptance, and some traditional PBX vendors have implemented open source code for their products. But these efforts still aim mainly at smaller implementations. In this session, you'll learn why open source PBX software has growing appeal, and whether it will appeal to larger customers as the market progresses.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What level of market share and acceptance has open source PBX software attained? What is expected? * Which products use open source PBX software? * What are the most compelling reasons for choosing open source PBX software? What are the greatest areas of concern in making this choice? * What are the technical challenges of an open-source PBX deployment, and how are these overcome? * What are some real-world customer experiences with open source PBX software?
Moderator(s): Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Speaker(s): M Raza - Product Management - 3Com
Bill Miller - VP, Prod Mgt & Mktg - Digium
Tony Pereira - Business Leader Business Communications - Nortel

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Session Title: Social Networking Meets Enterprise Communications
Date: 3/19/2008
Time: 10:30 AM
Room: Osceola C
Session Description: It?s no secret that world of enterprise communications is undergoing a transformation; IP Telephony and Unified Communications are changing the nature of the game. Now new forms of interaction, which began in the consumer/personal communications market -- blogs, wikis and online services like Facebook ? are migrating into the enterprise. Where do these social networking systems ? and mindset ? fit into the enterprise communications landscape? Join us for a discussion about what?s real today and what?s likely to happen in the future.
Panelist(s):
Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Irwin Lazar - Principal Analyst & Program Director, Collaboration & Convergence - Nemertes Research

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voiceconorlando, asterisk, opensource, socialnetworking, communications, danyork, irwinlazar

I'll be down at VoiceCon Orlando in March 2008...

FYI, I will be down at VoiceCon Orlando on March 17-20, 2008. I'm moderating two panel sessions (see the schedule). First, up, bright and early at 8am on Tuesday, March 18th, I'll be moderating a panel on "Top VoIP Security Threats". This should be a fun one as it has VOIPSA Chair Dave Endler, Mark Collier of SecureLogix and Sachin Joglekar of Sipera Systems. I know all three of the guys, particularly Dave and Mark who have both worked on VOIPSA matters, and this session should be a good bit of fun. I'm planning on making it a rather interactive session. :-)

At the other end of the show, on Thursday, March 20th, at 11:45am, I'll be moderating a panel "Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?". This would should be interesting because it has Bill Miller from Digium (makers of Asterisk), who I know well, and M Raza from 3Com... and then Tony Pereira from Nortel! 3Com's presence on the panel isn't particularly surprising given their relationship with Digium, but it will be interesting to see Nortel's view on the matter.

All in all it should be quite an interesting show. Lots of good sessions and, I'm sure, interesting people to meet. If you're going to be down there, please do drop an email as I'm always interesting in meeting readers of the blog.

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voxeo, voipsa, securelogix, sipera, 3com, digium, asterisk, voip security, open source

TAUG - "Asterisk and Open Telephony Conference" - Toronto, April 7-9

Those of you interested in Asterisk and open source telephony may be interested in the "Asterisk & Open Telephony Conference" in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 7-9, 2008. Part of the larger IT360 conference, this Asterisk conference is being organized by members of the Toronto Asterisk User Group which is one of the largest Asterisk user groups in the world. Because of the TAUG influence, I expect it to be a solid show from a technical point of view with lots of practical information. I'm not currently planning to be there, but it looks to be a good one if you can get there.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, conferences, open source, voip, ip telephony, taug, toronto, it360

Digium launches the "Digium Asterisk Marketplace" to promote members of the Asterisk ecosystem

Digium recently announced that they have launched the "Digium Asterisk Marketplace" as a way to help connect users of Asterisk to partners in the "Asterisk ecosystem" who make products that work with Asterisk. Many of the folks listed there have been parters with Digium for some time and are often in Digium booths at various trade conferences but there were a few names new to me. At the time I am writing this, there are 30 members listed in the Marketplace but with the application form readily available, we'll see how much this grows. The Asterisk blog entry lays out the terms:

The price is right – a listing starts at $395 per quarter. In return, your company gets exposure to the thousands of unique visitors that cross the Digium site daily. Or you can get a more prominent “premium” listing for a few extra bucks. For a limited time, you can get a listing for a full year starting at $795 - about half the regular rate.

Later, we plan to add more cool features, such as the ability for users to provide feedback, more categories for listings, and the ability to buy selected partner products directly from the Marketplace site.

The question will really be how many Asterisk partners view this as a value and jump in.

In any event, I think it's great to see this type of listing coming out for Asterisk and I'll look forward to seeing how it grows over time.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, digium, opensource

Asterisk crosses 1 million downloads in 2007

News out of Digium yesterday morning that there have now been over one million downloads of Asterisk in 2007:

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today announced the one millionth download of Asterisk in 2007, capping off a record year for the leading open source telephony company. Digium, which will complete its 24th consecutive quarter of growth and profitability this year, created headlines with new executive appointments, industry awards, strategic partnerships and acquisitions aimed at further advancing the company's presence in the small-to-medium-sized (SMB) VoIP market.

Now, granted, we have to remember that this is one million downloads and has no real indication of: a) how many of those downloads were actually installed; b) how many of those installations were simply tests and are not in actual production use; c) how many of those downloads were duplicate downloads by the same user; and d) how many of those downloads were updates as people installed new versions.

All that aside, it is a significant milestone for any project. Congrats to the Digium team!

P.S. I'm still waiting for an answer from Digium PR about how many downloads there are total for Asterisk. This is one million in 2007, but how does that compare to the overall total?

Technorati Tags: asterisk, digium, opensource, voip

It's about the platform - Google finally answers the "Gphone" speculation... with an Android!

"It's about an open platform, stupid!" While I didn't include Google when I first wrote my post about how voice is really all about application platforms, I did note in the comments that I had intended to do so... and today's announcement really shows that they should be in anyone's list of telephony application platforms. As announced on the Google blog with "Where's my Gphone?", Google today announced the Open Handset Alliance and the associated set of forthcoming software called Android. The front page of the Open Handset Alliance provides a rather compelling (to me) statement:

What would it take to build a better mobile phone?

A commitment to openness, a shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality.

Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.

We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) will be available on November 12th.

The list of partners in the Open Handset Alliance is quite interesting... handset manufacturers, semiconductor companies, software companies... but also cellular/mobile operators such as Sprint and T-Mobile as well as NTT DoCoMo and the giant China Telecom.

Also intriguing to note that eBay is listed as a partner. Would this be for eBay itself or could it perhaps be for Skype? Adding Skype into this mix could be interesting as well.

The Google blog page contains this text which gives some insight into Google's interest:

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications -- all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and capabilities.

We see Android as an important part of our strategy of furthering Google's goal of providing access to information to users wherever they are. We recognize that many among the multitude of mobile users around the world do not and may never have an Android-based phone. Our goals must be independent of device or even platform. For this reason, Android will complement, but not replace, our longstanding mobile strategy of developing useful and compelling mobile services and driving adoption of these products through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile operators around the world.

In the end, Google wants a platform upon which they can offer their many services. With this plan, they are hoping to turn a zillion mobile phones into a platform which Google - and many others - can use.

Fascinating move... and one that is naturally getting a ton of coverage in the blogosphere. I've not had the time to read much of it, but did catch Scoble, the NY Times article and ZDNet's take. I'm sure we'll all be reading much more about it in the days ahead.

Right now, all we can really do is speculate until next Monday when the (apparently open source) SDK becomes available. We shall see... although the initial signs are certainly that this could indeed cause some disruption.

P.S. One of the commenters on Scoble's blog wondered why there wasn't equivalent attention being given to http://www.openmoko.com/ , especially since it is out already with a product. My quick reaction would be that from what I know of OpenMoko, it is about an open platform, but from a single vendor and on a single hardware platform. This Google announcement would appear to transcend both the vendors and the hardware platforms. It's also an announcement from Google and it has impressive backers.

Technorati Tags: android, apis, applications, google, openhandsetalliance, wireless

The audacity of Asterisk - why the 3Com/Digium partnership fundamentally changes the game in SMB telephony

The SMB VoIP game is changing. Fundamentally. And in a pattern we've seen before in other industries. In the news release out today, Digium and 3Com announced that:

Under the terms of the agreement, 3Com will offer Digium’s award-winning Asterisk Appliance™ to small businesses that need a reliable, easy-to-deploy voice solution based on open standards. 3Com Asterisk will be available through the company’s proven channel of partners worldwide.

Let's think about that for a minute. 3Com will make Digium's Asterisk appliance available through "the company's proven channel of partner's worldwide", which some reports are putting at around 60,000 resellers. Digium just wound up with a large global sales channel. Yet to be seen is whether there will be any channel conflict with existing Digium Partners/VARs, but regardless, Digium just wound up with a way to deploy Asterisk-based solutions globally. It does, however, get one step better (my emphasis added):

“3Com is focused on delivering products and solutions for converged secure networks, in which voice is an application that can be readily integrated with many others,” said Bob Dechant, senior vice president and general manager for 3Com Corporation. “We’ve announced a complete voice strategy and new product offerings for small businesses, including the 3Com Asterisk Appliance. We also offer innovative enterprise-caliber 3Com Global Services for customers who purchase the 3Com Asterisk. We chose to partner with Digium because of the company’s position as the Asterisk leader, its commitment to open standards and the ease-of-use of the appliance.”

Yes, indeed, Digium winds up with a global support organization behind Asterisk. Powerful announcement. Global sales and support - for an open source PBX... According to information from Digium, the "3Com Asterisk", priced at $1,595, will include a 3Com-co-branded interface and easy configuration/provisioning of 3Com SIP phones (as can be done today with Polycom phones). Given last weeks' announcement of the SwitchVox acquisition, I would think that rolling some of that GUI/functionality into the offering would be another logical step longer-term. The implications of this announcement, though, go far beyond the commercial relationship between Digium and 3Com. Those of us who remember Linux in the late 1990s and early 2000s remember that Linux took a trajectory like this:

1. Techies/geeks/early-adopters started to install Linux into their businesses to solve specific needs. Often it was installed without corporate permission as a DNS server, web, server, etc.
2. A range of small, specialized vendors started to ship servers with Linux pre-installed. Very often these companies were founded by people within the Linux community (ex. VA Linux, Penguin Computing)
3. Larger, more mainstream but still lower-tier manufacturers started to ship servers with Linux. (I forget the first one I saw doing this.)
4. Tier 1 manufacturers (ex. IBM, HP, Dell) started to ship servers with Linux.

Asterisk just moved to step #3 (after already moving through #1 and #2). While 3Com does not have the same market status as Cisco, Avaya and Nortel (or Mitel in SMB), 3Com definitely has a presence out there and to me their endorsement of Asterisk certainly brings a level of credibility to Asterisk-based software and hardware. It's good for Asterisk. It's good for Asterisk-based products and services (including those of Digium's competitors). It's good for open source. Ultimately, in my opinion, it's good for all of us.

Yet to be seen is how good it is for 3Com's own SMB offerings and that will be interesting to see. Right now it seems that they are all about "offering customers choice" between 3Com's own product and the Asterisk-based appliance. Will that last? Will 3Com continue to maintain its own SMB products long-term? Or will it cede that lower-end market to Asterisk and focus on apps that interoperate with Asterisk and/or phones for Asterisk (and 3Com's higher-end offerings)? Interesting questions to consider, particularly in light of 3Com's announcement on Friday that it is being acquired by Bain Capital and Chinese giant Huawei as well as their announcement today of new VCX systems targeted at the SMB market.

Nor is it clear to me how much of a short-term impact there will be on the SMB market. 3Com has been less of a presence in that space in recent years although its clear from their various announcements today that they are intent on playing a larger role in the space. Will Mitel, Avaya, Cisco, etc. lose any sales today as a result of 3Com selling Asterisk? Maybe. Maybe not.

Longer-term, though, I personally view this as a huge validation that open source telephony has a role in the business space. The cracks in the wall of proprietary telephony just got a whole lot larger today. Congrats to Digium and 3Com... and now the question is - who's the next vendor to get on board?

What do you think? Is this a validation of Asterisk? Or a flash in the pan? (Or as one more cynical person put it to me, "a desperate move by 3Com to stay relevant?") What do you see as the short-term and long-term impacts to the SMB market? Should the existing vendors be scared? Or just ignore it?

More coverage:

• Alec Saunders: Digium Scores with 3Com
• Greg Galtizine: 3Com to Offer Customers Asterisk Appliance
• VoIP-News: Digium Targets Mass Market Again With 3Com Deal
• ZD Net (Russell Shaw): 3Com fills SMB nices with new IP Telephony products
• eWeek Channel Insider: 3Com Preps VOIP Switches for SMBs

Technorati Tags: opensource, asterisk, digium, voip, 3Com, telephony