With a lot of Humility and some general fun, I want to compliment TMC and Digium on Astricon.
The event was very nicely attended and represented a growing trend in their market.
The overall trend I saw was the number of distributors that were in the booths. They represented a rich eco system of products available that matched nicely to the marketplace’s diversity.
The second trend I want to point out is the diversity in applications. Digium made a big announcement about their developing an application environment, but lots of friends were telling me about specific markets they were now serving with dedicated applications in healthcare and energy.
Other interesting observations,
- no one started a conversation with me “In this economy”.
- National Harbor is a pleasure to get to in comparison to other venues around Washington, DC
-Communities that are cohesive are the best.
Tag Archives: Asterisk
Thank You Digium
I want to thank my hosts at Digium, for allowing me to support their efforts at Astricon.
I enjoyed the event, and was impressed with the level of care given to running the event as smoothly as possible. While it was a team effort, one person who deserves special notice is Lisa King. She does not make a big deal of getting the work done, but she and her team did it quietly and efficiently.
Digium, is working to bring the Red Hat experience to the telecommunications world. And their community is looking to change the way we all communicate. The Digium Asterisk community is rich with diversity. From ISPs to PBX partners from developers to business users the group was rich with opportunity.
It was a pleasure to watch and I hope I continue to contribute to the progress.
Skasterisks Me!
Yesterday, the VoIP industry had a victory. As Mark and Stefan were on the stage of Astricon, they did a demo of their beta allowing Skype to be an in and out experience directly to Asterisk. They are heading to beta and it is going to be a while before it reachs us. So What?
So enabling free calls between end users and asterisk pbxs has a lot of implications let me give just a few.
Skasterisk In: The ability to build a directory of skype names to extensions can enable better work at home and better productivity solutions.
Skasterisk Out: The ability to use Skype out as a trunk has just made international calling alot easier for the marketplace that did not have enough volume to connect to the clearinghouses.
Skasterisk Me: All those call centers have a nice easy way to connect with portals and social networks etc all with the Skypme connected to Asterisk.
Skasterisk Trunk: Several friends said the implication for SIP Trunking was enormous. SIP trunking that can also support Skype in (yes, you can just enable it in one direction) means that add value has just occured for free.
Skasterisk US: And if we connect DUNDI / ENUM to the mix federation opportunities become interesting again. I would tell you more, but I have a company working on this already.
Skasterisk Que: This one is hard to explain, but queing and transferring are not Skypes strong suit. So Asterisk as a gateway in the cloud just became a valuable addition to the supernode world of Skype.
Skasterisk Clue: From a Regulatory perspective its a great example of the Internet providing a service independent of the existing frameworks and beyond any boundaries. This is important for the regulators to understand the commercial opportunities and the public good that this ability will create.
I am looking forward to this.
Asterisk Expectations
Astricon is doing very well and I have had some great conversations. I think expectations at this show are very much in line with the realities of the market.
Back when Jeff started VON there was the belief that a little guy could grow into a big guy. Some of the companies that started in VON grew into something bigger. But most of the carriers never grew into much, while many of vendors survive by being more than VoIP.
Here, I hear a lot of small ISPs (I think more than are at ISPCon) all looking to take advantage of their committment to the Open Source LAMP and adding Asterisk to their mix of services.
Great ideas, but best of all. They come with their customers in hand. As one partner to a previous PBX vendor told me. My customers want me to manage their systems, for them its not a sale its adding solutions to their existing contracts.
It will be interesting to see what today yields.
Beyond T-shirts
I am here at Astricon and its a going very well.
The event has the show well organized, and while they are feeling the noticing the gaps, the delegate is having a good experience.
The developers session had about 80 people when i looked in and the Intro class had over 100 people.
I have talked to more ISPs at this event then I have in a year and they are offering phone services to their customers.
Its a pretty interesting crowd and it comes in two camps so far. Making money and making services.
As always there is a gap in the conversation between the T-shirts and the business casual. (I think I will be one of 5 in a jacket today)
And I think thats the point of where Digium is heading. They are bridging the gap between the innovators and the customers with their efforts to provide the marketing and distribution resources for the community.
I am looking forward to todays session.
ClueCon is a month away
One event that friends go to outside of my normal vantage point is ClueCon . Some of the names that are speaking are long time friends who have been in the VoIP space as long or longer than I have. And that means something about their depth of knowledge and breadth of experience. Its a combo of new and old protocols but has a great reputation for people who just want to get things done.
August 5-7, 2008 Chicago, IL