Doug on IP Comm » Asterisk

eZuce launches enterprise open source solution based up SIPfoundry work

Doug Mohney — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:25:42 +0000

Newly launched eZuce (www.ezuce.com) comes with some familiar names in the IP PBX world. Hoping onto the UC bandwagon – ok, so everyone is these days – eZuce openUC is bragging about seven years of development through SIPfoundry efforts.

Founder Steinmann started up SIPfoundry and the sipXecs project in 2004, along with morphing Pingtel from a handset manufacturer into an open source IP PBX software company . He was rolled into Nortel in 2008 with the acquisition of Pingtel from its parking spot at BlueSocket to support its implementation of sipXecs as the Software Communications System (SCS), but you know what happened to Nortel, right? Also onboard is SIPfoundry/sipXecs-er Doug Huber, who is listed as “Lead Architect.”

eZuce openUC is being touted as an enterprise-grade open alternative to Microsoft, and being targeted at firms with anywhere from 200 to 10,000 users. There’s also some positioning to put it as “where Asterisk left off” – uh, guys, do you really want to go there again? – by offering a fully standards-based solution for replacing existing legacy IP PBX systems both as premise-based CPE and through hosted deployments.

Yes, I’m skeptical. If one remembers the snake-bit history of Pingtel – parked at BlueSocket because the cash ran out, then bought by Nortel before it went bankrupt – you might be skeptical as well.

Digium gives wishy-washy answer on Android mobile client for Switchvox

Doug Mohney — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:25:06 +0000

I hate to take Digium (www.digium.com) out to the woodshed, but this is the response I got when I asked about the potential for a Switchvox mobile client for Android.

"Digium is evaluating the public response and usage of the iPhone and BlackBerry Apps, and based on these results we’ll determine if and when we should develop a version for Android or any other platforms and if the current functionality should be refined or changed."

*sigh* Serious corporate-speak and not the sort of thing I would have expected to see out of them.

A brief photo tour of Digium

Doug Mohney — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:00:57 +0000

Running around in Huntsville last week, I was invited to spend some time with Digium and see the company’s building and facilities.

Digium is located in the Cummings Research Park, the second largest research and technology park in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world. Its’ neighbors include ADTRAN and a whole bunch of aerospace companies supporting NASA and the Army.

Regrettably, I didn’t have a chance to get a picture of the outside of Digium’s multi-story office building — accidentally left my “real” camera back in the hotel room and the cabby had me annoyed because she couldn’t break a $20 on a$7 fare over from the hotel. Just imagine big, shiny, and relatively new; Digium moved into its current building about two years ago and the company has an option to build a second one on an adjacent site should the need arise.

This is the ground floor atrium of sorts that extends up about two floors. Do I need need to spell out why the Asterisk is there?

A blurry shot of the Mark C. Smith boardroom. Smith was the founder of ADTRAN and a mentor to Digium founder Mark Spencer, not to mention an investor in Digium and sat on the company’s board. Of course, ADTRAN has named its much larger Conference Center after Smith, but it is the thought that counts.

Other conference rooms are named after various species of penguins (Linux, penguin mascot, Mark Spencer’s sense of humor).

Digium board testing area. While most people associate the company with it’s Asterisk IP PBX / IP telephony platform, the company still ships plenty of telephony boards.

Bins of assembled and packaged boards ready to be shipped out to telephony servers around the globe.

Manufacturing isn’t for the light-hearted, as it requires managing inventory, being able to deliver product on time, and being able to assess the quality of shipped products in order to improve them — returned products are no fun for customers or customers.

Digium hired someone out of the auto industry to refine its manufacturing processes and work on improving the quality of the products it ships to reduce the number of returns it gets on hardware. Fewer returns mean less money and headaches on sending out a replacement part while a “lean” manufacturing process means being able to build the products you need when needed, rather than building a run of boards and having them sit on the shelves for a couple of months. Idle/excess inventory means tied up dollars — not good for any company and really Not Good for a company that is rapidly growing and needs to put money into expansion.

Speaking of returned products, this is Digium’s failure-analysis lab. Basic diagnostics of failed boards happens here while more sophisticated analysis is conducted on an outsource basis to one of the local engineering labs in the area — outsourced tasks can include fine sectioning of a board or a look through an electron microscope to discover a failed solder joint.

Digium’s humble shipping department. If you look outside, you can see the Astri-truck.

A close-up of the Astri-truck.

Least we forget that Digium also does softwaer, this is one of a number of programmer meeting areas with comfy chairs and a big whopping white board.

Keynote Pictures from Astricon 2009 – Thursday, October 15, 2009

Doug Mohney — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:40:13 +0000

Glendale, AZ & Washington DC – Pictures from Thursday’s keynotes at AstriCon 2009.

IBM CTO Mike Smith talks all about Digium’s role as an ISV on IBM’s Smart Cube program. Companies with Smart Cube can pull down Asterisk from IBM’s online Smart Business marketplace.

Digium CEO Danny Windham recapping 2009 in terms of challenges and opportunities. Windham said that in the budget squeezes of the past year, companies have looked to open source as a more economical and cost-effective means of doing business — good stuff for Asterisk and other open source companies.

And what’s AstriCon without Steve Sokol? Steve founded AstriCon 6 years ago and got the shows — and himself — bought by Digium.

Keynote pictures from AstriCon 2009 – Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Doug Mohney — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:29:51 +0000

Glendale, AZ & Washington DC – Pictures from AstriCon 2009 on Wednesday October 14, 2009.

Keynote audience at AstriCon 2009

It was a full ballroom for both days of keynotes.

Allworx founder Jeff Szczepanski at AstriCon 2009

You run into a lot of interesting people in the hallways of AstriCon — like the founder of Allworx.

Google Chris DiBona keynote at AstriCon 2009

Chris DiBona delivers the Wednesday morning keynote, talking up all kinds of goodness about open source software. You need stats on open source downloads and popularity? He’s got ‘em.

Digium's John Todd showing off his shirt at AstriCon 2009

John Todd shows off his newest tie-dye shirt. He gets them custom made, only going to show there’s no accounting for taste.

Digium's dull (but this is good) AstriCon

Doug Mohney — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:45:41 +0000

Glendale AZ & Washington DC – As Digium celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Asterisk IP telephony platform this week at the AstriCon developer’s conference with cake and funny hats, this year’s keynote presentation by IBM CTO Mike Smith drifted into the mundane and dull — a very good thing.

Smith, brought in to talk about Digium’s role as an ISV (independent software vendor) in IBM’s Smart Cube platform/Smart Business program, put up a series of slides and descriptions for IBM’s ISV certification process to warm the heart of any nervous SMB IT work thinking about purchasing Asterisk for a Smart Cube server through IBM’s online applications store.

Since IBM services as the single point of contact or — as Smith described it – “the single throat to choke” — for technical support on the Smart Cube, Digium had to adjust and code and jump through a number of hoops so a commercial version of Asterisk would be available through Big Blue.

Net-net of the qualification process is a product that IBM is comfortable offering. It may be dull, but this is a good thing since IBM’s process and attention to detail is the sort of thing that will give warm fuzzies to anyone prone to buy IBM servers for their business — fuzzies that extend to the purchase of Asterisk as an IP PBX solution loaded on the Smart Cube Server.

This is a Good Thing. It isn’t PR sexy like the whole Skype for Asterisk announcement last year (and BTW, we know where those Skype folks are these days), but it is another solid step in moving Asterisk into the corporate mainstream.

IBM is also providing another channel for Digium to distribute Asterisk and channel partners who sell the Smart Cube solution now get a chance to provide a PBX along with a data server — plus making some money in providing handsets and configuring a phone system for their customers. Again, contrast the potential here for Digium to grow its business through (dull but trusted) IBM and its channel partners verses last year’s talk from Skype to A) Develop a business strategy B) Find and train channel partners and C) Ultimately make money by recurring revenue on SkypeOut minutes sold…

(FYI, Skype was talking up love of channels and the Skype partner program about a month ago in Miami, but that’s what they were talking about last year at AstriCon 2008 and at CES 2009… so what’s the hold up?)

Net-net: IBM may not be exciting and flashy, but for most buyers, this is a Very Good Thing indeed.

AstriCon – What I'm doing there…

Doug Mohney — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:49:56 +0000

I’m going to be at Digium’s AstriCon conference, the Asterisk developer’s conference, on October 13-15 in Glendale, AZ.

Digium head hoo-hoo, er Community development guy John Todd has asked me to be a Master of Ceremonies (MC) for two of the AstriCon tracks on Wednesday and Thursday. Which means I get to herd cats, er developers to sessions, make sure tracks keep rolling along and generally try to keep everything moving. Probably wash John’s tie-dye shirts in the evening…

Asterisk is part and parcel of a LOT of IP Telephony projects these days these days, ranging from ooma’s handsets to high-end workings with HD.

AstriCon keynotes – Ain't that interesting!

Doug Mohney — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:27:50 +0000

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…

Voxeo gets Asterisk open, cloud-y.

Doug Mohney — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:48:47 +0000

Voxeo has made two open source announcements in the last two days, establishing Voxeo Labs for open source/open standard solutions and releasing the Tropo.com cloud telephony service source code for free under open source licenses.

Voxeo Labs will be staffed by the guys who brought you Adhearsion, Jay Phillips and Jason Goecke. Since Adhearson is built on the Ruby programming language and sits on top of the Asterisk open source telephony platform, there’s plenty of openness already built into the founding of Voxeo Labs.

The first product flowing out of Voxeo is the Tropo.com cloud telephony service source code. Tropo.com provides a cloud telephony service to enable developers to write voice apps in languages such as Groovy, JavaScript, PHP, Python and Ruby, providing a direct alternative to translating to and fro in XML formats. Tropo is built entirely on open standards including SIP, Java SIP servlets, and IETF’s MRCP.

Tropo source code released today includes the Tropo SIP Servlet and Tropo API “Shims” for Groovy, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and Ruby programming languages. Voxeo Labs will release additional Tropo components in the coming weeks to run Tropo apps in private clouds, elastic computing services, or on servers in conjunction with Voxeo’s free Prophecy platform.

Fall 2009 events – Where I'll be

Doug Mohney — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:56:27 +0000

So far, my fall dance card looks like this–

IT EXPO West 2009, Los Angeles Convention Center, September 1-2

I’ll be moderating for one panel on Tuesday and taking briefings in the TMC press room on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 1 & 2.

HD Communications Summit, Round II, September 15-16, 2009,New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, New York, New York.

Details on the HD Communications Summit are being hammered out, but I will most likely be sitting in the back — hopefully next to a power strip — blogging and twetting during the proceedings.

AstriCon 2009, October 13-15, 2009, Glendale (well, Phoenix), Arizona.

Looks like I’ll arrive sometime on the 13th — time to be determined by the cheapest fair through United — and and MCing a couple of tracks on Wednesday and Thursday, October 14 and 15.