AsteriskNOW! 1.0.1 Hits The Streets
ssokol February 18th, 2008
After nearly a year of cooking, AsteriskNOW! version 1.0 is ready for your dining pleasure. (So it took a year…. Blame the folks at Google. They’re the ones who made long-term beta tests popular. Some crazy idea about getting things right before they actually release them as products. Silly people.)
So, you ask, what is AsteriskNOW!? It’s a complete installation of Asterisk that doesn’t require a masters degree in Linux geekery to use. Download the image, burn it to CD, drop it in the tray, fire up the PC and 15 minutes later you’ve successfully converted an ordinary computer into an amazing telephony server with an easy-to-use web-based graphical user interface (a.k.a. the Asterisk GUI).
So, you ask, what can I do with AsteriskNOW!? Well, !?#& near anything. At least !?#& near anything that involves telephony. You can build a basic IP-PBX. You can VoIP-enable a legacy PBX. You can build a conference bridge. You can replace your ancient and limited voicemail system with a state-of-the-art Asterisk-based unified messaging system. You can make your one-man shop sound like a Fortune 500 enterprise with automated attendants (a.k.a. IVR menus). Oh, and you can do all of that from the comfort of the web GUI.
Want to take it up a notch? Ok. Dig in just a bit and you can build you own IVR system using the Asterisk Dialplan scripting language and either web-service or ODBC data sources. Want to stretch things a bit further? Learn the ways of AGI (the Asterisk Gateway Interface) and build a sophisticated voice communications application in the programming or scripting language of your choice. Feel like jumping in with both feet? Bust out your C compiler and build your own low-level applications using the Asterisk C API.
So what’s new since the last beta release? Great question:
- Over 1000 updates and improvements to the GUI
- Updated to Asterisk release 1.4.17
- Updated to Zaptel release 1.4.8
- Updated Linux Kernel 2.6.22
- Polycom phone auto-provisioning
- Improved package management and update capabilities
But wait…. That’s not all. This 1.0.1 version includes a few extras that aren’t part of the canonical Asterisk 1.4 release (including the Open Settlement Protocol and the phone provisioning module). Starting with the next release, AsteriskNOW! will be available in two flavors: AsteriskNOW! Pure, which contains only pure GPL and GPL compatible components and runs only the stock version of Asterisk, and AsteriskNOW! Plus, which includes non-GPL components and a limited number of features back-ported from the development version. As they say in in the burger commercials, have it your way!
One last thing: <shameless-commercial-plug>AsteriskNOW! is a great way for developers, VARs and ISVs to get started with Asterisk. Once you’ve seen the power, flexibility and feature set that makes Asterisk the most popular telephony SDK in the world, you’ll probably want to take a look at Asterisk Business Edition (ABE), which is AsteriskNOW!’s commercial counterpart. ABE uses the same simple installation, the same GUI framework and includes a range of support options and a flexible license model that make it ideal for commercial deployments.</shameless-commercial-plug>.
About the Author
Steven Sokol is the Asterisk Marketing Director at Digium. He joined the firm in the summer of 2007 when his company, Sokol & Associates, was acquired. While at Sokol & Associates he developed and marketed the Asterisk Bootcamp, a highly successful training program for Asterisk users and administrators and managed a staff of Asterisk consul… more about ssokol
