On VoIP

Over the last few years I've used the Open Source Asterisk VoIP phone systems personally and with client businesses. I've installed them in locations ranging from a 5-person hedge fund office to multi-site company doing hundreds of millions in annual revenues.

Ryan Thrash // 30-Jan-2007

SIP, Open Source and the Future of Telephony

We're at an interesting juncture in the world of telephony/communications. I'm working on Collabpad's strategy for making this a core service offering and there's some interesting possibilities right now. It ties in with our mantra of helping people work together, better. For example, converged messaging is now very much a reality and the installs with unified inboxes (email/faxes/voicemail), cell phone message notification and remote soft-phone clients tied to their "main" desk extension love it. More on that soon...

In the interim, some observations:

• Digium grows up—first there was VC money, now they bring in proven management that knows how to grow a company. Mark as the CTO/Chairman is about the smartest move possible for the long-term prospects of Digium and Asterisk in general. This should have some of their competitors closely evaluating their strategy.
• The iPhone has the ability to be a game changer. If someone manages to get a SIP client working on it, or if it fully supports Flash, it will be incredibly disruptive and should help propel AAPL to north of $150/share within 18 months of iPhone's launch. If not, look for AAPL around $125/share in the same timeframe, the iPhone in any guise or market still brings a lot to the table. ;)
• Open PBX is one to watch—take all the good from Asterisk, add in a more transparent development process, and use the best practices solutions for various core bits (SIP, soft-DSP, conferencing, etc.) and you've got a legitimate alternative to the Asterisk dominance. Some of the best and brightest Asterisk developers including Steve Underwood and Brian West have left the * community in favor of Open PBX.
• The future is clearly going to be a single handset for business. On the road it's cell phone. At Starbucks or in the office, it's a wifi-connected SIP client. Look to companies like Devicescape, Apple (link not needed), Nokia, D-Link, and maybe even FIC to drive innovation here. The Networks Operators will fight this, but it's an inevitable reality. Others device manufacturers will surely play a part as well, though a reported 200-some-odd patents on the iPhone and an aggressive legal department at Apple will be interesting to watch.
• 2007 will see interesting things happen with presence and relevance. See Iotum ... the first company to offer similar functionality free of a required link to Outlook and MSN has a winner on their hands. Fonality's HUD in fact may be the right platform and could potentially make this happen. (Speaking of Fonality, HUD absolutely rocks.).

Why Open Source