Yes, this was/is The Big Deal Digium employees kept hinting at [...]]]>

National Harbor, Maryland – Digium (www.digium.com) announced a new open source project today to go beyond the limitations of the company’s Asterisk IP telephony platform, adding a “Scalable Communications Framework” to enable “the highest levels” of availability, scalability, extensibility, fault-tolerance and performance.

Yes, this was/is The Big Deal Digium employees kept hinting at over the past month.

SCF opens up a new universe of possibilities for open source communications – not just telephony, bunkies – developers. And it’s not a replacement for Asterisk, but a new extendable platform.

At AstriCon’s morning keynote, SCF was demoed live in a fault-tolerant configuration. Audience members dialed into one of two “call centers”  with a shared conference bridge and then the power was shut down on one of the call centers. Calls were transparently shunted over to the second set of servers without calls being dropped.  

Asterisk SCF will be available as a system of distributed components that can be mixed and matched, deployed on a single system or a cluster of systems in a transparent fashion.

SCF comes out of long and on-going requests from the Asterisk community to use Asterisk in more and better ways. Fault-tolerance and scalability have long been the dual whacks critics have had against Asterisk, while developers have wanted easier ways to tie in the IP telephony platform into rich media/UC applications, preferably with a variety of software tools.

Rather than re-invent the wheel – and potentially breaking it – Digium and a core of about 20 outside advisory developers decided on a companion product/platform designed from scratch.  To communicate between processes and servers, SCF uses ICE – Internet Communications Engine – another open source project.

Developers looking to work with SCE will have a wide variety of options for programming via APIs and more broadly accessible “extension points” with everything from Java to Windows C# sharp being supported (along with Python, PHP, various other flavors of C, and various other languages that I can’t remember off the top of my head).

There’s more to come with SCF; I talked with Kevin Fleming after his keynote and there’s quite a bit to process between Kevin’s comments and my own thoughts. (Other than how I can’t nail the “Big Announcement” prediction more accurately).

If you are looking to brief, email me.  Or look for me in the loud, er, expressive [...]]]>

I’ll be running around at AstriCon 2010 (www.astricon.net) on Wednesday, October 27 and Thursday, October 28.   Don’t know if I’ll be tweeting on site; the last time I was at the Gaylord, wireless connectivity was hit-or-miss.

If you are looking to brief, email me.  Or look for me in the loud, er, expressive pink shirt.

Perhaps the big clue is Digium’s Kevin Fleming giving Wednesday morning’s keynote. From [...]]]>

The Digium Astricon (www.astricon.net) show has become Digium’s annual event to announce Big News.  Three years ago, the acquisition of Switchvox took place.  Two years ago, it was the Skype/Digium interop agreement, while last year it was an IBM/Digium agreement. 

Perhaps the big clue is Digium’s Kevin Fleming giving Wednesday morning’s keynote. From the description of his keynote on the AstriCon website–

“The Future of Open Source Communications
Asterisk has been an industry-changing open source project that has grown with the support of an active and thriving community. The news that Kevin Fleming will be sharing at AstriCon will further the disruption of the communications industry, as Asterisk did with its original release, and demonstrate Digium’s commitment to taking open source communications in an exciting direction for the Asterisk Community. “

Soooo… what does this mean, exactly? A deep embrace of Unified Communications (UC)? An overhaul of Asterisk code with lots of shiny bells and whistles?  Something else completely?

A lot of the sessions this year seem to be built around the theme of “Asterisk is Scalable, Asterisk is Enterprise-quality,” with presentations from Orbitz, Gemeinschaft bragging about 10,000 phones with an Asterisk cluster, how to compete with Cisco and Avaya in Enterprise, mission-critical Asterisk implementations in Brazil and the energy industry, and a bunch of VoIP security stuff ladled on top.

Hopefully, this year’s announcement will be on the level of goodness that the Switchvox acquisition brought to the company.   It took almost a year for Digium to work out the bugs with the Skype/SIP gateway and now Skype is Best Buds with Avaya.  I’ve also been told that IBM has ditched their marketplace scheme, so Asterisk won’t be distributed through that channel.

Digium should also try to address some grumbling among some of its partners that the company has become too “ADTRAN-like” in its processes and slow to respond to requests for new feature adds to Asterisk and opportunities for working with the company.

This year’s event will take place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, just outside of Washington D.C., on October 26-28, 2010. 

FYIs on getting to the Gaylord from local hubs

Please note travelers take my advice at their own [...]]]>

Digium (www.digium.com) has formally announced dates and places for AstriCon 2010. (www.astricon.net).

This year’s event will take place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, just outside of Washington D.C., on October 26-28, 2010. 

FYIs on getting to the Gaylord from local hubs

Please note travelers take my advice at their own risk – my day job is not concierge –

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)

GOOD NEWS – This is the closest airport to the Gaylord and I believe is a 30-40 minute cab ride directly from the airport, assuming no rush-hour traffic (Yes, DC natives are now laughing). 

Travelers selecting this option may want to land at Reagan, take a Metro (Yellow or Blue, doesn’t matter) down to King Street station and grab a cab there over to the Gaylord. 

Yellow line stops at Eisenhower Avenue and Huntington with a transfer to a cab will also work, but I cannot vouch for the availability of cab service at Eisenhower.  If arriving at Huntington, go to the lower level, walk out, and there should be cabs available – the station is an “end-node,” so there’s always 4-6 cabs around to take people places. 

More adventuresome travelers with light luggage could take the free King Street Trolley (http://alexandriava.gov/Trolley) from the King Street Metro down to the Potomac River Waterfront.  From there, one could pick up a Water Taxi (http://www.potomacriverboatco.com/national-harbor-schedule.php) from the Alexandria Marina directly to the Gaylord.  One way tickets are $8.00 and be advised that taxis leave every hour and 10 minutes or so, with the dock-to-dock time about half an hour. CHECK the website for the most up-to-date schedule.

BAD NEWS – Being a smaller airport, there aren’t that many cross-country direct flights into DCA. East Coasters from Boston and the South might want to look at US Airways, one of the primary carriers there. United frequent-fliers may be able to hub through Chicago or Denver to get to IAD, but don’t expect a cheap ticket.

Washington Dulles International (IAD)

BAD NEWS – If you’re coming from the West Coast, the “Washington” part of Dulles is anywhere from 40 minutes (if you’re really really lucky) to an hour and 20 minutes away from the Gaylord. 

Look at taking a Super Shuttle or renting a car. I think there’s also a way to take a bus ride from Dulles to the closest Orange Line stop, but it’s going to be a long bus ride and then you have to navigate to switching from Orange to Blue lines so it might not be worth the cost in aspirin.

GOOD NEWS – If you have time to kill and like airplanes (Hi Mark! Hi Danny!), the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center (http://www.nasm.si.edu/UdvarHazy/) is available, and there’s a shuttle bus available.

Baltimore Washington International (BWI)

GOOD NEWS – While just about the same distance (46 minutes in traffic, up to 1 hr 20 min … or more in traffic) as IAD, plane fares into BWI tend to be cheaper. 

BAD NEWS – The most direct way from BWI to the Gaylord is still a car or Super Shuttle. 

An alternatively creative route would be to take the train into DC to Union Station, then Metro to King Street.  Amtrak or MARC both have routes and there’s a free shuttle bus between the airport and the close-by rail station.

Once at Union Station, you can take the Red Line metro over to the Green/Yellow line, and then Yellow Line to King street. Or just take a cab.

Amtrak Union Station

If you’re traveling from New York, Philadelphia, or points in between, taking the train to D.C. (Union Station) is not a bad idea. You could metro from Union Station to King Street, or simply take a cab.

An alternative route might be taking the train from points north to New Carrollton Metro stop and then getting a cab (30-40 minutes?) to the Gaylord.