Businessweek just compiled a great list of the open-source telephony applications that are out there. For those of you who have little familiarity with the world of open source telephony, this list is a good starting point for you to learn more.
Don’t just read their tips like a grocery list. Once you start clicking on the links you’ll notice the fascinating interdependencies of the different items.
Take Jaduka and Asterisk, for example. Even, Thomas Howe, previous CEO of Jaduka, wrote on Ostatic that:
Starting late in the 90’s, the rise of high-speed networks and the open source movement marked a sea-change in communications. The most important and obvious open source example to come from that era was Asterisk, the open source PBX. Not only has it been a complete success in terms of deployment numbers, but it finally proved to all that open source solutions can be reliable enough to handle demanding applications like packet voice.
And while Jaduka’s “voice mashups” themselves incorporate open-source, Howes believes that voice application developers will slowly migrate away from open source, and towards “web-as-platform approaches that use web services to access data and functionality.”
Howe’s comments bring to light that while all of Businessweek’s open-source telephony links may be interesting, few occupy as central of a role in the world of open-source as Asterisk. In fact, that’s why Irv Shapiro, CEO of Ifbyphone, writes about how Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP. (To check out Asterisk’s page about Skype for Asterisk, click here.)
Shapiro comments:
Just to recap the details. Skype for Asterisk, which is still in closed beta, is a true Asterisk channel driver. This allows Asterisk based solutions to make, receive and transfer Skype calls. A significant capability of the SFA solution is its support for terminating a call to a Skype user name, for example a PC based user of the Skype client…
From our perspective as a cloud telephony company, providing hosted telephone applications, SFA is much more interesting. While either service would allow us to provide IVR services to Skype users, the SFA Asterisk channel driver architecture allows us to terminate calls into call centers with no PSTN transport. Each call center Agent would just utilize a headset connected to a computer running the traditional Skype application…This has the potential to change the cost structure associated with supporting call centers…The call center agents could be virtually located anywhere in the world on high quality Internet connections.
These two examples, from Jaduka and Ifbyphone, show the interconnectivity of the world of open-source. Each development in the world of open-source impacts another telephony player. Whether the open source application provides the platform for the past or the building blocks of the future, its power and infiltration in the world of Voice 2.0 cannot be ignored.
Related posts:
- Cloudvox Launches Open Source Phone API
- Snom Expands its VoIP Phones for Open Source Systems
- Digium Announces Seventh Annual Astricon
- Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Changes the Game of Cloud Telephony
- The Winning Fruits of An Acquisition
