Stories about: Asterisk

When TV production company FremantleMedia Australia had an opportunity to move to IP telephony during an office refurbishment, the open source Asterisk proved itself to offer everything required and more for the 150-plus handset deployment.

Media processing vendor Pika Technologies announced Friday that its Warp appliance line is customer-ready and ready to slay the Nortels and Ciscos of the world in a bid for the small to mid-sized corporate tele-space.

Hewlett-Packard has set ambitious goals to improve the energy efficiency of its printers and use more recycled materials in their manufacture -- and it intends to draw buyers' attention to the features with a new Eco Highlights labeling plan.

Small and midsize businesses face many obstacles when trying to compete with larger enterprises. One classic handicap of the smaller business is the second-class phone system, the shortcomings of which are both glaringly apparent to callers outside the organization and keenly felt by the employees inside, who know that sounding professional when clients and prospects call is a crucial part of building relationships and sales.

Critical Links' EdgeBox line includes three Asterisk-based appliances: Office (40 users), Business (100 users), and Enterprise (300 users). The 2U rack-mount servers vary in disk space (80GB to 250GB), connectivity (such as integrated Wi-Fi), and redundancy options.

Fonality takes a different approach with PBXtra, which, like cousin Trixbox and Critical Links' EdgeBox, incorporates the open source Asterisk. PBXtra is not only the most affordable system in this roundup, but is unique in being a managed product. Customers get a low-end Celeron tower PC that's set up without incurring any installation costs, and a Web interface that lets users customize the system (such as recording voice prompts) without IT help. Fonality remotely monitors the system, provisions the phones, and backs up data off-site.

Here are five questions for enterprise network managers to bear in mind when considering UC deployment:

Mark Spencer, founder and CTO of Digium, has successfully given open source VoIP platform Asterisk a voice in the enterprise, thanks in large part to an ongoing commitment to community development. Here's how Spencer sees open source's best bets for seizing business opportunities.

11 leaders from the open source and vendor communities discuss the current open source climate and outline the challenges and opportunities ahead.

11 leaders from the open source and vendor communities discuss the current open source climate and outline the challenges and opportunities ahead.

3Com has added a virtualization feature to its routers via a partnership with LineSider Technologies, a provider of policy-based network infrastructure control and management products.