Digium Senior Software Engineer to Discuss Current State of Asterisk
August 26, 2008
Digium’s vision is a world based upon open communications. As the original creator and primary developer of Asterisk (
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Alert), the industry’s first open source telephony platform. Digium provides hardware and software products, including AsteriskNOW, the complete open source software appliance; Asterisk Business Edition, the professional-grade version of Asterisk; the AA50, the Asterisk Appliance hardware-based telephony solution; and Switchvox, a complete turn-key IP PBX (
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Alert) solution, to enterprises and telecommunications providers worldwide. Digium also offers a full range of professional services, including consulting, technical support, and custom software development.
Russell Bryant (
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Alert) is Senior Software Engineer/Open Source Team Lead, at Digium. Bryant will be speaking at the upcoming Astricon in Glendale, AZ, September 22–25. I recently caught up with Bryant, and here’s what he had to say about the upcoming event, his company’s position in the open source market, and more.
GG: You are on the schedule to speak at the upcoming Astricon. What can conference goers expect to hear in your session?
RB: Attendees at my sessions can expect to hear the latest and greatest news with regards to how to be an Asterisk developer, as well as all of the cool things that the Asterisk development community is working on.
I will be participating in two sessions. The first is the pre-conference day developer tutorial, where team members will discuss how to take part in Asterisk development. We will cover everything from community interaction to code architecture.
My second session is a joint talk with Kevin Fleming. We will be giving an Asterisk update, including news about exciting developments that have happened in the past year, as well as our insights and plans for the future of the project.
GG: Are you planning any new announcements at the event?
RB: Just about everything I work on is available for public consumption as soon as I write the first line of code. However, not everyone has the time to read every change in the Asterisk source control system when there can be up to 50 changes in a single day.
So, I think that for a majority of attendees, we have a lot of new things to talk about. Some great features have been developed since the last Astricon, and even more interesting things are coming soon.
GG: Where does your company fit in the current world of open source communications?
RB: I feel that Digium (
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Alert) is the clear leader in the world of open source telephony. We have recruited an extremely talented team to continue Digium’s history of innovation. With the help of the even larger open source development community that has come to surround Asterisk, I feel that we will continue to lead the way.
As an open source company, I have always loved the rich direct interaction that we have with community members that are using our products. I feel that has really helped us ensure that what we make fits the needs of the common, as well as the niche applications that are out there.
GG: What are the most important criteria organizations need to consider when migrating to open source?
RB: I think the two biggest areas to consider are needs for customization and the support model. A highly configurable telephony platform like Asterisk requires technical expertise to deploy and maintain. That is why we also try to serve customers by creating and supporting specific telephony application products such as Switchvox for companies looking for a PBX. Many companies still choose to build a custom platform based on Asterisk, but that places some of the development and support burden back on to them.
GG: How would you define the value of Asterisk-based solutions to those organizations that have yet to adopt it?
RB: The cost benefit is astonishing. With Asterisk, you can build powerful telephony applications on general purpose off the shelf computer hardware. This hardware is getting faster and cheaper every day, and the software is still free. On top of that, the possibilities for customization of the platform are endless. As our founder, Mark Spencer likes to say, “It’s only software.”
GG: What do you think the biggest new trends in open source telephony will be in the next 12 months?
RB: I think that we will continue to focus on pushing open source telephony to its limits. It is already being used in far more ways than I could have imagined. However, people keep building larger systems and more diverse applications that make us think about needs that had not come up in the past.
I also think that increased competition in this space is going to produce very favorable results for consumers. While Digium and Asterisk have led the open source telephony market for years, we’re not the only people around. We will be able to learn from each other and figure out even better ways of approaching things.
Greg Galitzine is editorial director for TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications suite of products, including TMCnet.com. To read more of Greg’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by
Greg Galitzine
