ssokol October 13th, 2008

Last month at AstriCon we announced the upcoming launch of AsteriskNOW 1.5, a new version of Digium’s  award winning software appliance that incorporates the FreePBX graphical user interface.  Today I’m very pleased to announce that the first beta release of AN1.5 is available on asterisknow.org.

For those of you not familiar with the product, AsteriskNOW is a free Linux install image (.iso file) that reduces the process of building an Asterisk-based system to “burn, boot and run”.  Simply download the .iso image, burn it to a CD, drop the CD into your soon-to-be Asterisk computer and boot.  The integrated installation process will ask a few basic questions, install Linux, Asterisk, the FreePBX GUI and all the other bits and pieces necessary to transform an ordinary PC into an extraordinary communications platform.

AsteriskNOW 1.5 accomplishes the same goal (easy-to-install Asterisk) as AsteriskNOW 1.0 did, but that’s where the similarity ends.  We’ve been collecting feedback from users since the launch of 1.0 and the changes in 1.5 reflect the general consensus.

CentOS Linux 5.2

We’ve replaced the original rPath Linux distribution with CentOS 5.2.  While rPath has some amazing capabilities its focus is on building fixed-function appliances, which makes it complex and sometimes awkward for end users to add packages or customize the system.  CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.

Yum Package Management / Updates

With CentOS 5.2, the native ‘yum’ package management tool handles software updates and customizations, making AsteriskNOW 1.5 simple to manage.  Digium has launched its own yum software repository so updates to Asterisk, LibPRI, DAHDi and other core packages are as simple as “yum update asterisk”.  We’ve also drastically simplified the process of upgrading Asterisk.  Want to go from 1.4 (and associated packages) to 1.6 (and associated packages)?  No problem.  Install an upgrade package and the system will be reconfigured to run the latest stable version of 1.6.

FreePBX GUI

Another key change in AsteriskNOW 1.5 is the addition of the FreePBX graphical user interface (GUI).  AsteriskNOW 1.0 used AsteriskGUI, the light-weight UI that was originally built to run on the AA50.  While the AsteriskGUI is a compelling example of Web 2.0 capabilities, many developers have already created add-on packages that are compatible with FreePBX, and many users are already familiar with FreePBX administration.  Like the rest of the packages in AsteriskNOW 1.5, you can keep your installation of FreePBX up to date with yum.

DAHDi

Over the past six months Digium has been working to retire the name “Zaptel” (long story) and roll out DAHDi (pronounced like a wealthy and precocious British child would say “Daddy”).  DAHDi stands for “Digium|Asterisk Hardware Device interface” and describes the kernel-level framework that allows Asterisk to communicate with a wide range of telephony cards and devices.  The name change gave us the opportunity to make some under the covers improvements, so DAHDi sports a shiny new modular architecture and driver performance improvements.  Look for more DAHDi-related news in the coming months.

So, Why All The Changes?

As Mark Spencer mentioned during his portion of the AstriCon keynote address, Asterisk started life as an application but has become the platform on which other applications are built.  Our first cut of AsteriskNOW was a solid application (SoHo PBX) but a poor application server.  AsteriskNOW 1.5 is our first big step towards a building a platform that’s both end-user friendly and developer-ready.  Over the next several quarters you’ll see more of this as we launch:

• Support Subscriptions for open source Asterisk
• AsteriskNOW 2.0
• Asterisk Marketplace 2.0
• Asterisk Application Manager (a2m)

Each of these deserves its own blog entry (perhaps its own blog) so I’ll not go into details here.  Suffice it to say that AsteriskNOW 1.5 is a tasty sample of the shape of things to come.

Download Here

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roderickm October 10th, 2008

It’s been fun having the Open Telephony Training Seminar here at Digium headquarters. Thanks to Phillipe, Tony, and Ethan for a power-packed week of training on FreePBX. If you haven’t seen the things these guys do with their Aastra phones, XML apps, and the Lumenvox-powered Magic Button, you should catch the next OTTS. And that’s just the gravy: much of the week is spent in the meat of FreePBX, leaving students with a strong understanding of this flexible, hackable GUI for Asterisk and what it’s doing under the hood.

Here’s a photo from earlier today, with Tony talking about the importance of user documentation.

You guys are welcome to come back anytime!

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danny October 1st, 2008

I considered looking at my retirement account balances today, but with the sinking feeling I got the last time I did this, I elected not to subject myself to that torture today. We are truly in the midst of a financial market meltdown of unprecedented proportion. The road kill became clearly visible here in Huntsville, AL on Monday with the sell of Wachovia, which had previously acquired Southtrust Bank – a bank with a broad investor base in the state whose linage can be traced back to its founding in Birmingham, AL in 1887. Many Alabamians watched in horror as the share price fell from more than $50 to less than $2 over the past 12 months. The impact of the economic meltdown will certainly be felt for years to come.

During periods of economic turmoil, businesses often become much more conservative in managing expenses as a hedge against an uncertain outlook. Couple this with a dramatic change in the availability of credit, and the market for IT related expenditures, and more specifically communications infrastructure in the case of Digium, could suffer a real setback over the coming months. While this intuitively seems negative for equipment suppliers, this sort of financial turmoil has proven beneficial to Digium’s business in the past. During periods of strong economic growth, companies are less motivated to find ways to preserve capital. However, when forced to trim budgets out of necessity, IT managers often entertain lower-cost alternatives to traditional solutions.

Open source is one of those alternatives that deserves a closer look. With the growing adoption of open source based solutions across the corporate landscape, history suggests that once an organization becomes receptive to the idea of utilizing open source – the end result becomes their adoption of open source. Look for this to be the case over the coming months. An economic environment so strong that the tide rises all boats is not a bad end to the current melee. Until then, necessity may be the mother of all invention, but I contend that she’s a close family member of collaboration too.

• Asterisk Global Online Community , Community , Digium , Digium Asterisk World , Open Source , Partners , Products
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