Every year for the past couple of years, the folks at Digium have rolled out a nice little surprise at the annual AstriCon event connected to the keynote speakers. Two years ago, Digium announced it had purchased Switchvox (Hello Tristian!). Last year, Skype and Digium announced a working relationship and a beta of a channel manager (i.e. connection) between Asterisk and Skype. And this year? IBM and Google are sending speakers.
On Wednesday, October 14,Google open source programs manager Chris DiBona will open up the conference. Chris oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community. Maybe we’ll learn that Google Voice has some Asterisk involved or that The Goog plans to use Asterisk as its internal IP telephony platofrm. Or not. I’d give this prediction a 50/50 shot.
Mike Smith, IBM’s CTO of its Server and Technology Group, will be delivering the Thursday keynote and I’ll be really interested in what he has to say. Mike is responsible for leveraging the capabilities of different assets at IBM and leading software development teams for “smart business.” He’s also leading partnerships in new software business opportunities. Hmmm….
At the last AstriCon, I gave Danny Windham an earful about the Skype/Digium announcement (I wasn’t gung-ho on it) and also said that it would be very interesting to see someone *ahem*ahem* like IBM come in and give the blessing to Asterisk. IBM, after all, loves open source and is Big Business, so if they were to place a blessing upon Asterisk, it would be A Big Deal for both sides. Hopefully, Danny remembers that conversation…
Doug -
Digium and IBM already have a joint offering for the IBM “Smart Cube” system – http://www.ibm.com/smartmarket/us/en/ListingOverviewAction.action?listingId=10502
I don’t know if I’d use the term “blessing” (is that a marketing-approved word?) but we’ve had a very good relationship with IBM in deploying this product.
As for Google: I have it on good authority that Google at least for some sections of their corporate PBX uses Asterisk. Or at least they use the prompt files from Asterisk, which would be very unusual to find in a PBX other than Asterisk. Google is a big proponent of open-source projects, and it would come as no surprise for them to be running OSS telephony software internally.
JT
Your Jedi mindtricks will not work on me, Master Todd. GrandMaster Humphrey trained us both quite well
Doug, I trust you will come to my talk on the uses of Skype for Asterisk at Astricon
Perhaps I can persuade you!
He’s a carnival barker… er… “MC” for another track, but I’m sure he’ll escape enough to stop by.
[...] week for AstriCon 2009, October 13-15, 2009. If AstriCon’s history of surprises holds, keynotes given by Google open source programs manager Chris DiBona and Mike Smith, IBM’s CTO of its Server [...]