The Changing Asterisk Market as Per an AstriCon 2010 Speaker

A TMC representative recently interviewed Kerry Garrison (News - Alert), vice president of strategy at 888VoipStore, about the constantly evolving Asterisk market:

TMC Representative: How has the Asterisk market changed over the past year?

Kerry: We have seen a shift away from pure open source solutions and more into commercial solutions. I think this shows a maturation of the resellers who want to make sure the products they are selling have solid support in case they run into issues.

TMC (News - Alert) Representative: What influence has open source had on the overall communications space over the past 12 months from a product and/or competitive perspective?

Kerry: Open Source (News - Alert) continues to be the “gateway drug” into the telephony space for traditional IT/Data resellers and integrators. The very low cost of entry allows people to try before they buy.

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

Kerry: Open Source has made significant inroads in all levels of business because it allows companies to create tools and services that either were not possible before or were prohibitively expensive.

TMC Representative: What has been the key driver of open source adoption?

Kerry: Although you would expect the answer to always be cost, more often than not it is the ability to have a given set of tools that will enable a company to deliver a service with a very fast turn-around time.

TMC Representative: What barriers remain to the continued growth of Asterisk and open source?

Kerry:  All too often we see people who are new to the telephony market jump in headfirst and start selling systems without fully understanding how to support or maintain those systems. When the first system that comes along that really presents a challenge things can go wrong very quickly. People who want to sell open source telephony systems need to really understand what they are getting into to avoid situations like this.

TMC Representative: Has the success of Google’s (News - Alert) android mobile platform helped Increase awareness and interest in open source?

Kerry: I don’t think it has had much impact on open source awareness as much as the proliferation of Android (News - Alert)-based “superphones” this summer has had on looking at mobility as actually becoming a reality now. New phones running Android can easily run a SIP client and connect to IP PBX systems as an extension. With the new class of phones, people are trying to make them do as much as possible and using them as a direct extension is most certainly a growing trend.

TMC Representative: How can the Asterisk community capitalize on the growth of mobile communications?

Kerry: It is quite clear to me that mobility is going to be a driving force moving forward and these new super fast phones are going to drive many business applications. Those resellers and integrators who can deliver a complete communications solutions, especially with mobility as a key component will have a leg up on the competition.

TMC Representative: What are you hoping to see at AstriCon 2010?

Kerry: There are a lot of exciting things at AstriCon every year as well as new products that get announced and updates to existing projects. I am really looking forward to seeing with open source distros like Elastix, trixbox CE, FreePBX, and blue.box are at and how they are building their communities and business.

TMC Representative: You are speaking at AstriCon 2010.  What is your session about and why is it a must-attend session for attendees?

Kerry: My talk is on “How to Sell Phone Systems”. While many people who are getting into telephony may have had very successful IT businesses, there is a world of difference in selling a company on a new email server vs. a new phone system. I talk about how to do a telephony sell properly which teaches people how the consultative process works, key strategies for successful selling, designing the call flow, preparing a professional looking quote, and increasing sales with ancillary products such as support contracts, paging and intercom devices, headsets, etc. This talk was hugely popular at last year’s AstriCon so I was asked to do it again this year. If you want to increase your telephony sales, you owe it to yourself to come to this session.

Erin Monda recently graduated from W.C.S.U. with a degree in professional writing. She primarily writes about network technologies, including cloud computing, virtualization and network optimization, however she also has a focus on E911 technologies and legislation.

Edited by Erin Monda