Open Source: How it benefits the Telephony Market Jim Webster Director, Technology Partnerships Digium, Inc. IT Expo Fall 2008

What is Open Source? “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.” -- opensource.org

Open Development Concepts are Thriving... “Wikinomics”: Wiki tools widely used in corporate as well as online Wikipedia now more widely used than Britannica Studies have also shown it to be more accurate Much more up-to-date Based on the Open Collaboration Concept Anyone can participate Open process “Peer-to-Peer” review and correction Result: Faster, more reliable, more current

Open Source Software Survey PidginIM ZimbraMessaging & Collaboration Thunderbird Client FirefoxBrowser Ubuntu – Edgy EftDesktop OpenOfficeOffice Suite AsteriskTelephony /PBX JBoss for JAVA, PHP on ApacheApplication Server MySQLDatabase Layer ApacheWeb Server LinuxOS Open Source SolutionFunctional Application

Open Source in the Enterprise Search Eng – Apache Lucene, ht://Dig Process Mgt Apps - OpenFlow Enterp Svc Buses – Open ESB, Mule Integration Svcs – openadaptor Embryonic Virtualization SW - Xen Portals - Jetspeed, Zope Enterp Apps – SugarCRM, Compiere Databases - MySQL, Ingres Emerging Directory Svcs - OpenLDAP Content Mgt – Alfresco, OpenCms Collaboration – Zope, Drupal Growing Security SW – Snort, Nessus App Servers – JBoss, Geronimo, Maturing Server OS – Linux, FreeBSD Dev Tools – Eclipse, Hibernate, Struts Most Mature Sources - Gartner, Network World Asterisk fits here

What is Asterisk? An “Open Source PBX” Supports both IP and traditional TDM telephony Started as a solution to a telephone expense problem of a small business Evolved into an Applications Development Environment for telephony Designed to flexibly interface with telephony applications and hardware/software

Where Asterisk Fits

The Big Picture

The Asterisk Community Over 3,000 downloads per day 4 million Asterisk servers in service worldwide ~ 500 total developer contributors ~ 30 regularly active core developers Over 50,000 active on Asterisk mailing lists Hundreds of “Asterisk-centric” companies

Advantages of Commercial Software Development Support: Warranty, Tech Support, Training, Certification Formal testing methodology Comprehensive Documentation Predictable release cycle (not a “moving target”) Corporate Structure dedicated to product In-house development team Management and coordination Support team for bug fixes, updates, follow-up Legal assurances for Intellectual Property rights

Advantages of Open Source Software Development Economics – lower costs to try and implement “Free market” analogy: Minimal central planning “Community” of self-interested developers Features and fixes follow community (market) needs Quick time to market, short development cycle Quick fixes to problems: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” (E. Raymond) Open Standards No one company controls

Commercially-supported Open Source Software Open Source software development model Commercial product based on open source Adds Support, Documentation, Warranties Regression testing to assure reliability Certifications with partner products Predictable code updates Stable company backing The Best of Both worlds

Open Source vs. Traditional PBX Software Open Source economies vs. High cost Open Standards vs. Proprietary protocols Standard hardware vs. Proprietary hardware Extremely rich feature set vs. Limited features Easily Modified vs. Expensive to change Open APIs/Interfaces vs. Closed architecture Customer Choice vs. Vendor lock-in

How does this Affect SIP? Open source promotes adoption of SIP Community promotes ground-up adoption Asterisk the most widely used platform Free to download, use, modify Strives to be the most interoperable Can be modified by user to add, make fixes Digium promotes more traditional standards efforts Member of SIP Forum and one of founding members of SIP Connect™ Formal Interoperability testing with partner products

Questions? Thank You!