AstriCon 2010 Speaker: Corporate Users Have More Faith in Asterisk Market

There has been an evolution in the Asterisk market with more faith shown by corporate users, said Stephan Monette, president of Unlimitel, Inc. Asterisk now appears to be the preferred PBX (News - Alert) platform, he said. Monette has also noticed that large enterprise and government agencies are starting to use Asterisk in production, not just the smaller- and medium-sized businesses.

Monette recently spoke with TMCnet’s Rich Tehrani in an interview provided in full below.

Rich Tehrani: How has the Asterisk (News - Alert) market changed over the past year?

Stephan Monette: Corporate users seem to be having more faith in Asterisk compared to a few years ago.

RT: What influence has open source had on the overall communications space over the past 12 months from a product and/or competitive perspective?

SM: Many open source projects have become more stable as a product and businesses are starting to use open source products in their day-to-day operations. Asterisk seems to be the preferred PBX platform.

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

SM: I'm seeing large enterprise and government agencies starting to use Asterisk in production.

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

SM: Stability of the product and more people with the knowledge to support it.

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

SM: I'm starting to see some users who are reluctant to use Asterisk because they heard horror stories about hacked Asterisk systems. The fact that any VoIP PBX can get hacked if not protected properly (not only Asterisk), many users think Asterisk has a weak link on security.

RT: Has the success of Google's (News - Alert) Android mobile platform helped increase awareness and interest in open source?

SM: I haven't seen Google's Android mobiles a lot in our market (Canada).

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

 SM: The use of follow me features and proximity detection to use the proper VoIP/mobile phone service.

RT:     What are you hoping to see at AstriCon 2010?

SM: Voicemail and Asterisk integration on a large scale (20,000 users+). Some proximity detection software.

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

SM:   I will present our latest Asterisk Central Log server. People who support Asterisk for customers will love this tool, as you can have all your Asterisk servers to send call logs to one central server and search for specific calls in real time using an easy-to-use Web interface. By using our Asterisk Central Log server, we were able to reduce the time average support time from 20 minutes down to almost seven to eight minutes.

Ed Silverstein is a TMCnet contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf