beelinebill September 27th, 2007

Today Digium announces that Switchvox has become part of the Digium family. This is a group of talented people whose mission in life is to change the world by making things that simply work. In their past lives, the founders developed small systems that were self-contained and each time they progressively improved their vision. With their Switchvox IP PBX technology to deliver VoIP and hybrid solutions to small and medium businesses, they accomplished just that. Their asterisk-based IP PBX software simply works. It’s GUI is second to none to run an office phone system. It’s Web 2.0 Mashups are simply elegant, informational, and cool. The people are terrific and they are welcomed into Digium.

Today at Astricon will be an event of large proportion in the Asterisk open source community. For the first time, we will unveil the Digium Switchvox software in our booth. Users will see this simplicity, already installed and used in some 1400 installations with over 65,000 connected IP and analog phones. The personalities of the creators of this user-friendly software based on Asterisk are integrated into this offering and each release becomes easier to use for more people and businesses - driving Asterisk-based solutions into the mass market.

Digium and Switchvox executives will talk to attendees and community members today and answer any questions as best we can on the first day of an announcement. More details will be unveiled over the coming months. Some Bloggers who were briefed have already posted their first stories. Some posters are much more professional than others. I’ve seen the initial posts from people who were briefed earlier in the day and people who were in the right place at the right time at Astricon later last night after the Digium-Switchvox team had a joint signing celebration. Like software based on Asterisk, the blogs vary from easy on the eyes to read and understand to not so easy to understand or even comprehend what angle the writer was trying to take. Switchvox software based on Asterisk is clearly superior and easily accomplishes the workhorse tasks of a phone system in easy to read and understand graphical formats integrated with the web.

Other Asterisk-based software has lots of stuff and can do lots of what Asterisk can do, which is “immense” as described last night but is not elegantly presented or easy to use.

So read the blogs and the articles. After days of briefing press and analysts, you will read upcoming articles that you personally can compare, to describe the writer’s personal felt impact of what Digium’s acquisition of Switchvox will have on the Asterisk Community, Switchvox customers and partners, and Digium’s customers and partners. You decide which writers are bizarre, which writers are aligned with competitors, which writers “get it” and which writers are aligned with Digium’s and Switchvox’s vision.

The open source community will gain from Digium’s move. Elements of Switchvox’s solution will be contributed back to the community over time. Digium’s success is always shared with the community by continued and increased investments in open source resources and events such as Astricon and Digium Asterisk World where users and prospects meet and learn more about how to use Asterisk, how to market Asterisk-based products, how to build dial plans that can turn the tables on a telemarketer, and on and on. Customers and prospects learn about more open source based choices.

Danny and Josh, the two respective CEOs will publish their thoughts here shortly, I am prefacing their post by telling you, “Woo hoo!!!!!!!!!” Get ready to Rock and Roll with Digium and Switchvox. When “best of breeds” get together, the results are “best of the best” so join us for the ride!

• ABE , AsteriskNOW , AstriCon , Community , Products , Tradeshows