Asterisk Contributor Third Lane Becomes Digium Software Partner

December 10, 2008

By Greg Galitzine, Group Editorial Director

One of the true beauties of open source-based solutions is that by definition, they lend themselves to adoption by creative, innovative individuals and companies, who often design applications for the good of the community. Such is the case with Asterisk, the open source telephony software that is currently being used in countless deployments worldwide, from small enterprise PBXs to large-scale operator deployments.

One company that leverages Asterisk to create their commercial offering is Third Lane Technologies. Third Lane’s flagship product, called Thirdlane Multi Tenant PBX (News - Alert), is a feature rich Asterisk based hosted PBX, which includes a Web GUI designed to simplify the configuration and customization of the PBX.

Third Lane solutions are equally at home in the hands of enterprises, or in Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Service Provider deployments, where the operators are looking to offer hosted IP-PBX services to multiple tenants.

Digium (News - Alert), Inc. — creator and primary corporate sponsor of the Asterisk open source telephony platform — and Third Lane have announced that Third Lane has become a Digium software partner. The relationship is not new. The companies have worked together for years and Third Lane has contributed to the open source Asterisk project.

The upshot of today’s partnership announcement is that enterprise customers, carriers, and resellers can be confident that Third Lane’s solutions are fully compatible with unmodified Asterisk and Asterisk Business Edition.

Asterisk Business Edition is a professional-grade version of the Asterisk open source PBX, developed to work with the Linux operating system. Created with small and medium sized business applications in mind, Asterisk Business Edition can be deployed in various forms, from common PBX and key system replacements to highly-specialized applications. Asterisk Business Edition supports from 10 to 240 simultaneous calls per system.

According to Digium officials, Third Lane is the first company in the Digium ecosystem to provide a true multi-tenant PBX that allows ITSPs and resellers to host virtual PBXs for their customers.

According to Jim Webster (News - Alert), director of technology partnerships at Digium, “Digium has long benefited from Third Lane’s contributions to the Asterisk community, so we’re pleased to formally partner and to work closely with each other. Third Lane’s PBX solutions fit a segment of the market looking for a solution that allows significant customization, and companies in the hosting business who need multi-tenant PBX support. When combined with Asterisk Business Edition, Third Lane’s products address those customers while providing a commercial-grade telephony platform supported by the creators of Asterisk.”

Members of the Asterisk community hailed the announcement.

Erik Smith, who is chief technology officer of BluegrassNet, a Kentucky-based ISP —a Third Lane customer and partner, and a Digium Authorized Reseller — believes that solutions like that offered by Third Lane are generating strong interest.

“Hosted VoIP solutions based on Asterisk and the Thirdlane Multi Tenant PBX are popular with our customers because they get all the features of a business phone system with low up-front costs, fast deployment and reasonable monthly payments,” Smith said. “Competitive products are very expensive and often charge per seat. We’re seeing strong interest in Asterisk-based solutions such as Third Lane’s because they’re simply more flexible and affordable.”

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.

Article comments powered by Disqus

Digital Voice and Data

A108: Eight Port Digital Telephony Card

Choose the Sangoma Eight Port A108 Card to support up to 240 simultaneous voice calls over eight T1, E1 or J1 lines or up to 16.384 Mbps of full duplex data throughput.

Learn More | View Demo

A104: Four Port Digital Telephony Card

Choose the Sangoma Quad Port A104 Card to support up to 120 simultaneous voice calls over four T1, E1 or J1 lines or up to 8.192 Mbps of full duplex data throughput.

Learn More | View Demo

A102: Dual Port Digital Telephony Card

The Sangoma A102 Card supports up to 60 simultaneous voice calls over two T1, E1 or J1 lines or up to 4.096 Mbps of full duplex data throughput.

Learn More | View Demo

A101: Single Port Digital Telephony Card

The industry's first affordable single port T1/E1/J1 card with available Telco-grade hardware echo cancellation. It's designed for optimum voice support for smaller systems. The Sangoma A101 Card supports up to 30 simultaneous voice calls or 2.048 Mbps of full-duplex data throughput through a single T1, E1 or J1 line.

Learn More | View Demo

More Digital Voice and Data Cards »

Sangoma Customer Testimonials

Stephen Lewis, CTO - Your Golf Travel

I'm sure you get bored of people saying it, but I wanted to express my gratitude for your excellent support - it is without doubt the best I've encountered (across all the software and hardware organisations I've dealt with).

Particular thanks are due to Ben Bueno - I only wish we could find employees who are as skilled (and friendly!) as he is.

Gerry McHugh - Ashelle Networks Ltd.

I would like to thank you at Sangoma, especially Leo for your recent help with case #274. I definitely could not speak highly enough of your support system, and the fact that it is free is unbelievable, the support is so good I don't think any company would have a problem with paying for it.

I have Sangoma cards in all my trixbox systems, which may only be about 10, but I definitely will be using Sangoma for any future systems and interface cards I may need.

More Sangoma Testimonials »

Sangoma News

More Sangoma News »