The Case for Open Communications

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Bryan M. JohnsCommunity Director

Digium, Inc.

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

About Asterisk

Downloaded more than 2 million times in 2010

Deployed on more than 1 million servers

Deployed in 170 countries around the world

In development for more than a decade

More than 9800 development contributors

About Digium

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Marketer of all things Asterisk

170 employees and growing

Headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, USA

Founded in 1999 as Linux Support Services

Sponsor of the Asterisk and Asterisk SCF Projects

About the Community

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Steers and constantly improves the technology

Asterisk project has nearly 10,000 developers

Asterisk.org Community has nearly 80,000 members

Primary driving force behind Asterisk

In the Beginning

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

All telecom solutions based in hardware

Only established standards exist at the carrier dial-tone layer

All PBX solutions highly proprietary and difficult to implement / maintain

1-to-1 correlation between lines and ports

The Incremental Revenue Model

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Capacity-constrained solutions at the carrier layer

Capacity-constrained solutions at the PBX layer

The "line" dynamic

Heavily limited support options

Then Along Comes VoIP

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

"Packets", not "Ports"

Initially, VoIP adopted on the company side

Carriers forced to address inefficiency of format conversion

The "Line Dynamic" erodes in the carrier space

Asterisk Changes Expectations

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

"Line Dynamic" persisted in PBX market

Open source promotes open architecture

Focus on open standards demands interoperability

Collapse of the Incremental Model

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Open solutions demonstrate what's possible

The entire market moves to SIP (VoIP)

The bad economy pushes VoIP and open source forward

Justification of incremental pricing becomes more difficult

A New Type of Competitor

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

No incremental pricing model

Connectivity built upon standards

Free to use

Extensive and unrestricted feature set

FUD

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Propr ie ta r y vendor response to open competition is (initially) Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Lack of a intelligent response to open competition is a good thing

The accelerating popularity of open and standards-based solut ions is changing proprietary vendor competitive positioning.

The "Diss"

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Vendor is dismissive or disrespectful of open source solutions on the general position that they should not be taken seriously.

Usually sounds something like this:

"Do you really want to risk your company's ability to communicate with it's customer's to a bunch of computer nerds who think making a free phone system is cool?"

The "Diss": Response

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Asterisk (example of largest open source solution) is currently running on more than 1 million servers.

Asterisk has been built, managed and maintained by nearly ten thousand developers around the world.

Asterisk powers untold numbers of service provider networks that switch many millions of minutes of VoIP phone services monthly

The "Rinky Dink"

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Vendor insinuates that open source solutions cannot be trusted, aren't ready for commercial use or are only appropriate for use by very small companies.

Usually sounds something like this:

"Open source isn't appropriate for business telecommunications. I mean, I guess it works, but it can't handle the demands of modern unified communications. Maybe if you were a three person company working it your basement, it would make sense"

The "Rinky Dink": Response

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Asterisk is deployed commercially in installations from one to many thousands of users.

The commercial viability of Asterisk is demonstrated by the vibrant ecosystem that orbits the project.

The included capabilities of Asterisk surpass even the biggest, baddest systems available from proprietary vendors.

The "Question Mark"

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Vendor questions viability of open technologies on the basis that there's too many unknowns.

Usually sounds something like this:

"If you choose an open source solution, how do you know where the technology is headed? How do you know anyone will want to continue developing that software in the future? Will that technology still be supported in the industry five years from now? Etc."

The "Question Mark": Response

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Asterisk (and other open source solutions) are built on established and broadly supported industry standards

Adoption of Asterisk is expanding year-over-year and bringing ever more third party platform support

Open source solutions allow for rapid adaptation to market and technological changes

The "Castaway"

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Vendor questions the supportability of the technology by suggesting that there aren't professional options available.

Usually sounds something like this:

"Do you really want to have to hire an (insert open source solution name here) expert to maintain your phone system? If you don't, how do you know you'll have access to the support you need in the future?"

The "Castaway": Response

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

There are a wide variety of support options available for Asterisk installations, including support from Digium

The standards-based IP network aspects of Asterisk allow for comprehensive remote support solutions, expanding options

There are numerous commercial implementations of the technology, such as SwitchVox, that come with the same docs and support as any other solution

Why Open Source?: Summary

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

S u p p o r t f o r s t a n d a rd s p ro v i d e s i n h e re n t interoperability and choice

Open source attribute provides inherent extensibility and flexibility

Extensive set of features not metered or "Line Dynamic" constrained

Wide variety of support methods and options protects technology investment

Where's All of This Headed?

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

A continuing migration away from TDM / Analog phone service and toward SIP

Telecommunications expanding to include new media types such as video, text and desktop sharing

A rush to "Cloud" architectures

Higher expectations for capabilities and reliability in IP communications networks

Digium's Plans

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Asterisk 1.10 with dramatic enhancements to media handling and other improvements in 2011

Asterisk SCF beta at Astricon 2011 with release by year's end

A bunch of new Asterisk-based products and services that I can't talk about. (stay tuned!)

THANK YOU!

Prepared by: Bryan M. Johns | Community Director Private and Confidential | Digium, Inc. | 2011

Questions?

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