AstriCon Speaker to Promote Asterisk and Networking with Attendees

Asterisk (News - Alert) has been one of the most innovative creations to come to telephony in the last few decades, yet like all technologies, it is changing. According to Stefan Wintermeyer, Managing Director for AMOOMA GmbH, Asterisk is changing in that its market share is become much larger and people have started to realize the potential of the technology. Wintermeyer recently took part in a TMCnet interview in anticipation of the upcoming AstriCon 2010 event. When asked whether open source was still primarily an SMB phenomenon, the answer is yes because of the price tag. As for the key drive for open source adoption, Wintermeyer highlighted the money and when asked about barriers to continued growth of Asterisk and open source, Wintermeyer pointed to internationalization. It is not expected that the success of the Android (News - Alert) platform has helped increase awareness and interest in open source.

 

The good news is that Asterisk can still capitalize on the growth of mobile communications as voice is still the primary form of communication. At AstriCon 2010, Wintermeyer hopes to get to meet everybody in the field and network with other professionals. The sessions offered by Wintermeyer will include how to get an HA Asterisk setup and how to scale this setup for bib PBX (News - Alert) systems. The full interview follows

 

1.      How has the Asterisk market changed over the past year?Asterisk’s market share became much bigger. People started to realize the potential of a software based PBX compared to a black box PBX.

 

2.      What influence has open source had on the overall communications space over the past 12 months from a product and/or competitive perspective.Open Source software has always been a good door opener for communication software. Without Open Source software we wouldn’t have e-mail and the same goes to VoIP. Of course the closed source vendors jumped on the train pretty quick but the first step was a typical Open Source success story.

 

3.      Is open source still primarily an SMB phenomenon or has it seen increased acceptance in the large enterprise space?

 

Why do I have to answer this question over and over again for the last 10 years? SMB mainly use Open Source software because of the price tag. Most Open Source software is just way better and therefore cheaper in the long run. For large enterprises the price tag is important too but the stability and the security is a much bigger argument for them.

 

4.      What has been the key driver of open source adoption?Money. Most Open Source software is freely available. So the initial testing process is very easy. You don’t have to buy a test license. Once people see that it is working fine they just stick with it.

 

5.      What barriers remain to the continued growth of Asterisk and open source?Coming from Germany I have to say internationalization. Currently Asterisk offers English, Spanish and French voice prompts only. All documentation is in English only.

 

6.      Has the success of Google’s (News - Alert) android mobile platform helped Increase awareness and interest in open source?Not that I am aware of. Android is just a small step for the Open Source community.

 

7.      How can the Asterisk community capitalize on the growth of mobile communications?Voice communication is still the number one form of communication. The integration with other ways like e-mails or instant messaging makes a great mix. There is a ton of consulting work waiting to be done for clients who want these services and providers who want to offer them.

 

8.      What are you hoping to see at AstriCon 2010?For me AstriCon is mainly a good way to meet everybody. There is nothing new which couldn’t be read about on Twitter an hour later. But it is just such a big difference to just read something compared to meet the guy in person who did it and to discuss the possibilities.And it is always fun to meet the Digium (News - Alert) folks.

 

9.      You are speaking at AstriCon 2010.  What is your session about and why is it a must-attend session for attendees?I’ll talk about two things mainly:- How can you get an HA Asterisk setup?- How can you scale this setup for big PBX systems (over 10,000 phones)?So anybody who is interested in a PBX system which can handle a bit more than the usual suspects should attend. You don’t have to build a PBX with 10,000 phones but in case you are looking for a system which can handle some 500 phones you can use the same techniques. I’ll talk about Gemeinschaft which is a one stop shop Open Source system for this.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Chris DiMarco