Asterisk, the open source telephony software platform for IP PBXes, has become a big deal in the last year or so. As tends to happen now with open source efforts once there is a hint that they could hit critical mass, investors and established companies have started throwing real money at Asterisk. Digium, started by Asterisk inventor Mark Spencer, was among the first, but NTT and other telcos have begun investing in, or at least researching, Asterisk's revenue-generating potential. While open source developments sometimes seem like grass-roots free-product movements that could undermine the traditional telco business, Asterisk presents telcos with the same opportunity they might see in the enterprise market in general-to support, carry out and manage deployments that customers can't undertake on their own.
For more:
- see this story in Network World
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- Asterisk was one of our top VoIP leaders for 2007