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Open-Source VoIP Takes A Few Steps Forward: Page 2 of 2

Conference organizer Steve Sokol says AstriCon has grown each year since the first event two years ago. This year, for the first time, there also were a significant number of enterprise users at the conference. Sokol suggests news stories, venture capital funding for Digium, and developments like Sam Houston University dumping Cisco VoIP for Asterisk have solidified open-source telephony as an option.

Other companies have also recently bought into open-source communications. Amazon said last month that it would be rolling out open-source telephony from Pingtel enterprise-wide after a pilot in its Seattle headquarters; and marketing group InterMedi@ Marketing Solutions' 1,000- seat call center will soon be powered by Ranch Networks' Asterisk switches.

Fonality's Lyman says the examples of his company, Digium, and Pingtel show that there's a support model out there that works for enterprises and raises examples like Apache Web servers to show where open source is being used today in other critical applications. Still, don't expect an immediate groundswell of support for open-source IP PBXs just yet. The open-source telephony movement is in its early phases—Asterisk is a fly to Cisco's 800-pound gorilla—and most large vendors and customers haven't jumped on the bandwagon.