Digium Cruises Into Summer With Partnerships, Asterisk Community
June 04, 2008
In the last week, Digium (
News -
Alert) has made several news announcements, including a partnership with Fanstel to offer SIP
Phones designed to interoperate with Asterisk Business Edition and a software partnership with Asteria Solutions Group. I posed a few questions to Bill Miller (
News -
Alert), Digium’s VP of Product Management and Marketing regarding the news and asked about several other initiatives on the current Digium roadmap as the company heads into the summer months.
GG: Please describe Digium’s relationship with Fanstel.
BM: Fanstel is an Interoperability Partner. This means that Digium has certified certain Fanstel SIP phones (in this case, the ST3116) as interoperable with Asterisk (
News -
Alert) Business Edition.
GG: Will this partnership open up opportunities for Digium to reach new markets?
BM: Potentially. Fanstel has a number of OEM partners and a significant presence in the Asia/Pacific region where Asterisk is gaining traction. They market to many Asterisk-based solutions partners and integrators Digium does not see on a regular basis.
GG: You recently announced Asteria Solutions Group as a Premier Software Partner. What does this designation mean?
BM: A Premier Partnership is a closer technology partner relationship. Premier Partners are companies that Digium has worked with for a significant period of time or are larger companies that have very compelling products. Premier Partners provide products that Digium believes appeal to a large portion of the Asterisk community (including developers, users, resellers, VARs, etc.), and that we believe have the potential to gain relatively wide acceptance. Digium does formal testing with premier partners and allow these partners access to our logo and marketplace on
www.digium.com. We track click-throughs from our marketplace for each partner and often times have specific marketing or revenue share agreements.
GG: How is Astricon developing? What can TMCnet.com visitors expect to see at the event this September?
BM: Astricon is shaping up nicely as we have over a dozen exhibiting sponsors including Polycom (
News -
Alert) and Sangoma as Platinum sponsors. We are expanding our keynotes this year to include high profile companies that are using open source telephony in various capacities and we should have the conference agenda and speaker list posted shortly at
www.astricon.net. We will be featuring ecosystem partners and offering some Astricon-related material on the
Asterisk Global Online Community on TMCnet. We hope to see more attendees and exhibitors in Glendale, AZ this year as we expand the event while continuing to maintain many of the original education tracks for newbies to the Asterisk community.
GG: What can we expect to see from Digium (product-wise) as we head into the summer?
BM: Digium will be rounding out the Genuine Asterisk Appliance product line featuring both Switchvox and Asterisk Business Edition versions. Feature releases of existing Asterisk Appliances will offer users and channels more choices and more capabilities to take on traditional IP
Telephony solutions.
Digium’s telephony cards have been the market leader since late 2001 when Mark Spencer (
News -
Alert) launched them into the Asterisk market, and over the past year we have re-tooled nearly the entire line of boards. Look for some interesting information on these boards and newer products later this summer. Digium will announce some interesting strategies, directions, and partners over the upcoming summer months.
GG: Any other comments?
BM: Digium is pleased to be part of the TMCnet Global Online Community with our exclusive
Asterisk Community. We will continue to refine content, bring community and ecosystem news and case studies to the readers to learn how others have benefited from Digium, Asterisk and many product and service offerings. We also look forward to participating in
ITEXPO West in Los Angeles just before our
Astricon event and will be speaking there as well as exhibiting.
-----
Greg Galitzine is editorial director of TMCnet. To read more of Greg’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
| IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X |
| SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
