Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Nope.   The blog doesn’t have a cold.  Those are the names of some of the open source projects that Om Malik has highlighted in his latest story on the impact of open source in the telecoms world.  Or at least, Snort and XORP are… there is no sniffle to my knowledge.

There’s no doubt that open source is wreaking havoc in many industries.  At iotum, our servers are all built on open source — Linux, MySQL, python, Nagios.  We use Asterisk in house for our PBX as well.  You can build commercial grade systems from these parts with ease. 

The reaction to open source varies dramatically from business to business.  Most people assume it’s a threat.  However, that’s not always the case.  Last night I had dinner with the CTO of a very large PBX manufacturer.  We talked about Asterisk at length.  His assessment?  Call control has become a commodity.  If he can outsource it to an open source project, it lets him assign resources to the far more lucrative applications market, which is what customers are asking for.

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Fortune Magazine called DEMO American Idol for Entrepreneurs in their latest article on the conference.  Towards the end of the show, writer Adam Lashinsky was cruising the room, looking for entrepreneurs to chat with.  Howard grabbed the opportunity, and the last paragraph was about us!

As Demo draws to a close, conference organizer Shipley anoints ten of the companies as Demo "gods" on the strength of their presentations. Howard Thaw, co-founder of one winner, Iotum, which has developed ingenious software to screen incoming phone calls, e-mails me shortly before 11 P.M., just after the conference has concluded. "Some VCs are already sending congratulatory notes, with requests for confirmations of follow-up meetings," he writes. "One of them has summoned us to an all-partners meeting on Tuesday." Thaw, in a moment of exuberance, has revealed what Demo is all about. Producing nifty technology and nailing your demo, after all, are nice. Collecting the cash is what makes you a true Demo god.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.  Enjoy

Asterisk is hot, no doubt.  But how hot?  Recently I’ve been trying to wrap my head around useful Asterisk statistics in order to figure this question out.  However, I can’t find any analyst reports, or other market research that gives a definitive answer on how quickly they’re growing, and their current and forecasted market share. So, in the interests of figuring this out, I’ll share what I know, and in return, if you know something I don’t, either add it as a comment to this thread, or email it to me.  Perhaps we can figure it out together.

Here’s what I know:

Momentum: in January 2004, Mark Spencer reported 20,000 Asterisk installations globally.  In June 2005, he was saying 200,000.  In January of 2006 he said "over 250,000". 

Usage: On Sunday, I was chatting with Jeff Pulver. He told me that, right then, well over half of his FWD users online were using Asterisk.

Ecosystem: VoIP-info lists probably 200 companies who today will ship turnkey Asterisk solutions to customers — hardware, software and phones.  VoIP-info also lists many more consultants who will help you with an Asterisk system. 

Partners: There have been some prominent startups using Asterisk, such as Fonality.  Less visible, but probably more important, are Intel (working with Digium on incorporating drivers for their Dialogic products into Asterisk), Linksys (their new SME PBX, the SPA9000 uses Asterisk), and IBM (developing a fault tolerant Asterisk).

I dropped by Om Malik’s office at Business 2.0 yesterday, and got a pleasant surprise.  With a big grin on his face, he handed me a copy of the March issue, and said "Congratulations". This issue highlights "The Next Net 25" — 25 companies that are reinventing the web.  There, on page 94, iotum is named as one of the five companies that Business 2.0 believes is reinventing the phone. 

Congratulations to Skype, SIPphone, Vivox, and Fonality who were also named.