Asterisk Gets VC Funding: Kiss Old-Time PBXs Good-bye

Digium, the company behind open source PBX software Asterisk, has just gotten $13.8 million in Series A funding from the Boston-based VC fund Matrix Partners. This should be the final nail in the coffin of old-style PBXs. Om Malik reports the funding news, and he points out just how successful Digium and Asterisk is already.

He notes that Asterisk has more than one million users, and adds that nearly, 1,000 copies of the software are downloaded daily.

So what will Digium do with all that cash? Most likely, Malik says, it will use it sell all kinds of Asterisk-based IP-PBX systems to corporations, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises.

Asterisk runs on cheap hardware, and is infinitely customizable. Given all that, why would anyone buy an old-style PBX, or not replace their existing PBX with Asterisk?

Beats me. There's always inertia, and for the moment, that's what's keeping back the world from moving to Asterisk or similar open source PBXs.But in time, Asterisk or software like it will ultimately run most PBXs, and this round of VC funding just brings that day closer.