The market for Asterisk-based IP-PBX appliances has grown significantly in the last three years. We're seeing appliance-type systems from all sorts of large and small vendors alike. From Digium's Asterisk Appliance, to the Trixbox Appliance, Fonality's PBXtra, the Switchvox appliance... the list goes on and on. Each device has a custom-developed GUI that usually all ties back to the same Asterisk code on the backend. What these appliances do provide however, is usually a support contract or point-of-contact in case things go horribly wrong.
How many ways can vendors package, and re-package the same fundamental idea, with the same fundamental code running in the background, without saturating the market full of ten different versions of the same thing? What happens to the installed user base when one of these smaller start-ups bites the dust because of market oversaturation?
Do we really need ten versions of the same thing competing against each other? In comparison, the offerings from the big vendors such as the Avaya IP Office, and the Nortel BCM, run on significantly different platforms, and therefore offer different services. This strategy makes sense, because they are not the same product.
I honestly am just a bit worried about the SMBs that invest thousands of dollars in an appliance from a vendor that might not last five years. Does anybody else see this as a growing issue?
Nickasch has been very involved in IT since he was just 13. His current and previous consulting experience includes systems architecture, virtualization, and converged networks for the financial, education, and healthcare industries. Matthew currently attends the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where he also works as a network management assistant. While his interests include directory services and routing protocols, Nickasch's focus is on converged networks and voice over IP.
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Interesting, but not quite accurate
Mathew,
What you write is interesting and true – however, not quite accurate to Fonality in two ways:
1. You are correct that the Digium appliance is a proprietary box. However, the trixbox appliance, made by Fonality, is not. Neither is our PBXtra appliance. They are both standards-based PCs. This means your computer consultant can service them perfectly well.
2. The Fonality software is hardly a me-too built on top of Asterisk. Let me give you some numbers to demonstrate: Asterisk 1.2 is around 170,000 lines of code. The Fonality solution is now just over 2,000,000. This means “Asterisk” accounts for only around 8% of the software we deliver to our customers.
One example of the Fonality solution is HUD found at: http://www.fonality.com/hud. You can take one look at this client software and quickly ascertain that it doesn’t share a single line of code with Asterisk.
If what you say were true, I could simply fire my rather large engineering team and just use Asterisk. Sadly, I can’t. Asterisk is really just our protocol stack and we have to spend the $ building the whole application layer! Heck, we probably have more engineers on staff than all of Digium!
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post and I am glad you are covering the burgeoning sector of open source telephony.
Sincerely,
Chris Lyman
Fonality CEO & Janitor
If you're going to troll - be correct.
1) Nowhere in the article was it stated that the Digium appliance was a proprietary box (I really like the fact that you couldn't even go more than one sentence without trying to bash Digium). In fact, I seem to recall that the Digium appliance was initially the "Asterisk Appliance Developers Kit" (AADK) that used the same hardware. What, exactly, is a "standards-based PC", Chris? Did your marketing dept write this response for you?
2) Maybe not, but it certainly is centered around Asterisk. 2 million? Are you counting the Linux kernel? That appears to be about 1.5 million. How much of that code have you given back to their respective projects? According to Kerry, the answer is nearly none.
You "probably have more engineers on staff than all of Digium"? Need I remind you that Digium also employs about a dozen developers that spend most if not all of their time working on open source Asterisk? If you need to have "more engineers on staff than [..] Digium" to do what you do - perhaps it's time you found some better ones.
Am I anti-Fonality? Sure - and when people like Chris make such outrageous claims on one hand, and then on the other hand do nothing at all to support the projects that enable them to even exist, how can one not be?
Proactive Commentary
I'm glad to see that this post is generating so much activity. As much as I appreciate the participation and lively discussion, let's try to keep things on-track and proactive. While I do understand that there are differences of opinion, it's very important to keep a professional discussion.
At the request of other readers, if you feel that your comments are warranted, please submit them with a non-anonymous alias so that they may be addressed by others commenting on the post. It is with great appreciation that Chris and Bill have taken time out of their busy schedules to formulate well-thought responses.
Thanks again for the continued participation!
Under the Hood
I must say that I'm quite grateful to have Chris from Fonality comment on this post. His comments illustrate that not all platforms that use Asterisk as a codebase or protocol stack are the same.
Instead, to differentiate, it has become important for would-be buyers to consider an "apple-to-apples" approach on evaluating these appliances. As Chris iterated, Fonality employs a team of in-house developers that maintain an application suite that utilizes Asterisk at the core level. Do other vendors provide the same level of development, or do they kludge together previously-developed components pre-installed on hardware?
So to wrap it up, Chris' commentary brings to the forefront the decision facing SMBs and other target audiences for such appliances. While feature sets may be somewhat similar, including ACD, reporting, and GUI frontends, some vendors actually back their claims with developers and innovative applications, whilst others... well, do not.
So... any luck we can get somebody from Digium, Trixbox, or Switchvox to comment as well? Perhaps we could get a Network World appliance round-up in the making to see all of these products in a lab environment.
Thanks again for the continued commentary!
Digium Response
On behalf of Digium(r), the creator of Asterisk(r) and benevolent sponsor and maintainer of the open source project, I will offer a response for you and your readers. I am the VP of Product Marketing and Management at Digium.
1) All of the Asterisk-based appliances include a Linux Kernel, a web server, and various other systems components that contribute to a complete system. What really matters is what value has been added by that company. For an appliance, it comes down to:
a) the support that is available
b) the GUI
c) the hardware
d) the price and TCO
e) performance for specific applications
f) the applications
Those are the areas where appliances can be compared side by side. Lines of code are irrelevant - Asterisk is the core engine and the voice applications and user interface vary in size.
2) As pointed out by Matthew Nickasch in his article, there are several Asterisk-based appliances - some are from very small companies are some are from fast growing and larger companies.
3) Asterisk is far more than a protocol stack. It makes up the call control layer and the voice application layer (think voicemail, conferencing, auto attendant/IVR, queues, call recording, and many more). There are other areas of the application layer which aren't necessarily the raw voice parts (think the Switchvox Switchboard(tm), or Fonality's HUD). These are differentiating applications that run on top of Asterisk. Some of these user interface applications totally hide Asterisk and others such as the AsteriskGUI(tm) are open source and simply configure Asterisk. Many support presence and other advanced unified communications features.
4) Digium has over 130 employees today and this includes over a dozen software developers just focused 100% of their time on open source development as well as dozens of engineers who build and test commercial versions of software and hardware all based on Asterisk. Digium acquired Switchvox in September 2007 to bring open source based turnkey solutions to the masses.
5) Digium (www.digium.com) offers both pure open source software appliances - AsteriskNOW(tm) and Asterisk Business Edition(tm) the commercially licensed and fully supported version of Asterisk for business. This allows our customers the choice of solutions that fit their needs. If a toolkit is their desire, a technical person/team can download free and/or open source code and build their application on GPL-based Asterisk. If a turnkey solution is desired, there is the Asterisk Appliance family which is a turnkey IP PBX/Hybrid IP PBX and the Digium Switchvox Free, Soho and SMB turnkey solutions are available as software only to run on standard servers and Digium supplied hardware appliances. Try Switchvox Free for yourself (http://www.switchvox.com/) and compare features of each version there as well.
6) The Switchvox SMB software is a complete business phone system that includes voice applications beyond those of any other product today - including Fonality. The Switchboard application provides benefits to users that include the ability to utilize web services out of the box that integrate CRM software (SugarCRM and Salesforce) and Google Maps that let users provide better customer service and can easily be customized as well without any technical knowledge. You can get a live demo account and try it yourself without even downloading Switchvox.
7) The Asterisk Code is supported by both a large community of developers worldwide and Digium's internal developers and Product Quality department which together provide the largest geographically dispersed team of engineers in telephony. Asterisk enables Digium, our partners, and our competitors to leverage all telephony features so they can differentiate their solutions. Some companies give back to the community and Digium maintains the code going forward and others do not.
8) Digium is the only open source telephony company that offers a money back guarantee on all commercial hardware and software (see www.digium.com) which is unmatched in the proprietary world let alone open source.
9) Digium is the leader in TDM gateway cards for servers worldwide having shipped over 3 million analog and digital ports enabling thousands if not millions of users to benefit from Asterisk telephony software.
10) Asterisk has been certified by the SIP Forum's SIPConnect specification and is arguably the most interoparable SIP-based PBX in the world due to the number of downloads and commercial offerings available.
11) Digium has experienced 24 consecutive profitable growth quarters assuring we will be around for the customer who choose to adopt our products and solutions - pure open source or not.
In summary, Digium is more than the creator of Asterisk. We sponsor the Asterisk project, we deliver tools for people to use Asterisk and build solutions on it, we offer complete solutions and components, 24 x 7 support, and have global channels with over 50% of our business outside of the US. Sure, Fonality has developed a solution based on Asterisk and offer their solutions in the marketplace but they are not the creators nor maintainers of Asterisk they simply have their own proprietary solution that hides Asterisk from the user.
Thanks for this marketing opportunity Matthew. Want to see Asterisk and Switchvox in action and learn more? Visit VoiceCon in Orlando or Digium Asterisk World (at VON) in San Jose, March 17th-20th.
...Bill Miller
VP, Product Management and Marketing
Digium, Inc
Huntsville, AL
www.digium.com
Network World Roundup
"Perhaps we could get a Network World appliance round-up in the making to see all of these products in a lab environment."
This was actually already done by Network World about a year ago and the Switchvox PBX beat out the Fonality PBX in a side by side comparison (results below). Now that Switchvox is part of Digium you can expect this gap to widen even more.
Network World Results:
http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2007/040907-ippbx-popup-chart.html
Full Write up
http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2007/040907-open-source-ippbx-test-four-loop.html?zb&rc=voip_ippbx
Digium claiming to be benevolent
Claiming to be benevolent sponsors of Asterisk is a bit pretentious of Digium don't you think? The market might see it differently.
The truth is that Digium creates free Asterisk so that they can sell lots of their proprietary non-free hardware, which runs on top of it. Therefore, Digium's Asterisk efforts are not born of benevolence. Instead they are born of a desire to succeed with their for-profit business model. In a funny way, Asterisk, is Digium's marketing expense -- that which they use to grow their brand and reach.
And if benevolence = open source, their argument is not valid either. Digium is not particularly an open source company anymore. Maybe they were one day. But now they have a commercial version of Asterisk that is not GPL. They have also acquired a closed source company called Switchvox. And I am even hearing wind that Asterisk itself has come kind of crazy clause in it that says you have to give Digium the commercial rights to your code in order to get included in free Asterisk. That doesn't sound very open source or benevolent to me.
Maybe Digium should just admit they are no different than any other company - trying to grow and be profitable for their shareholders, and stop pretending that because they make free software to get to their commercial goals, they are somehow different or better. That would be a benevolent thing to do. 8^)
Digium: The Benevolent Sponsor and Maintainer of Asterisk
While we suspect there’s more behind this post than meets the eye – we don’t find it at all pretentious that Digium claims that our sponsorship of Asterisk is benevolent. While benevolent has several related meanings, one is ‘characterized by goodwill, intended for benefit rather than profit’. Given that Digium currently funds approximately a dozen developers that work almost exclusively on the open source project, processed over 3000 issues in 2007 which resulted in almost 2000 source code commits to the open source project, and manages and funds a significant infrastructure which facilitates the Asterisk community and provides for maintaining the open source project (asterisk.org, bug tracker, mailing lists, etc), all of which provides no direct revenue – then we think that’s pretty benevolent.
However, the benevolent sponsorship of the Asterisk open source project is only half of Digium’s mission. The other half is a for-profit entity which hopes to grow and be profitable for the shareholders whose commercial mission is to create products and services that permit the whole world to benefit from Asterisk. Businesses with the in-house technical expertise to utilize the open source project may only need to purchase training to successfully utilize Asterisk – so we offer Asterisk training classes around the world. Others may need hardware products to benefit from the open source project – so we, along with a number of other companies including many cloners, offer hardware products designed specifically to work with Asterisk. However, a very large number of businesses do not have the in-house skill to technically utilize the open source project. For this segment of the market we offer pre-packaged solutions based upon the Asterisk open source project that we sell as a turn-key product. As the for-profit side of Digium grows, so does the corresponding investment in the open source mission. Benevolence also relates to the way the company thinks about the future of the open source project. Using the philosophy of benevolence, Digium strives to make decisions regarding its open source mission that will enable open source Asterisk to be broadly adopted into many market segments and many geographies.
Do we somehow think we’re different than other companies – well yes. Do we somehow think that our products are better than other companies – well yes. Does that mean that we consider ourselves as individuals to be better than others – to the contrary. We’re just a group of dedicated passionate people working to bring the power of open source to anyone and everyone. Maybe a suitable test in determining benevolence is – does an organization give back more to the community than it takes. In Digium’s case, the answer is absolutely yes!
Fonalty wins Digium in PC Magizine
Here is what google finds-- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2173285,00.asp
Speaking of google i dont buy this whole benevelent argument. Digium sounds like a tiny google. They make free stuff to sell more of their other stuff. seems simple
Heres what i know--we need to make a phone decision soon and we wont pay as much as last time.
Your New Phone System Choices
That PC Magazine article you refer was written using an early beta version of the Asterisk Appliance (now called AA50 - http://www.digium.com/en/products/appliance/). The product was reviewed about a year ago, months before it was in production and still received 4 bullets! It is a viable choice today depending on number of users and voice applications you are looking for.
Another cost effective choice is the Asterisk-based award winning Switchvox SMB system. Take a look at the Digium Switchvox product mentioned in a reply post by someone else above at www.switchvox.com. This is based on Asterisk, has a free live demo on the web site that is a working IP PBX with the features of a great new phone system. The Switchboard is the admin and user dashboard and and comes with integrated SugarCRM and Salesforce as well as Google Maps panels on the user switchboard with the ability to create URL panels specific to your business that can be part of the Switchboard.
This blog is not intended by the author as a sales tool for us, so take a look at all the systems yourself, do a test and/or analysis of each and see what meets or exceeds your needs at the right price (get quotes!).
In the end, only you can determine (by getting to know each company better) which product and architecture and company you wish to work with and decide how you want to participate. This is a personal choice.
Oh, one last thing: Google has become a powerhouse because the value they provide is used by a lot of people. Checking our corporate blog you can read some of our recent experiences with Google....but without a doubt, you used Google to find the Pcmag article and you may use Google for your marketing campaigns. It's about value as a consumer of the solutions provided.
Thanks for the participation in this thread.
...Bill Miller
VP, Product Management and Marketing
Digium, Inc.
www.digium.com