It was a typical day at Digium, so I thought I'd share a few things "I heard" today.
- - - - -
My favorite:
ZAP-Dahdi
- - - - -
Also heard:
"They need to sign the waiver before going up with Mark and Danny"
"Can we really sell that many?"
"The Community wants this!"
"Will he really be the keynoter at Astricon?"
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Do CIOs Welcome Open Source?
I follow as many open source bloggers as I can find regardless of market, perspective, or message. Today I read Matt Assay's blog and thought I'd share it with my readers who follow Digium and Asterisk.
Check Matt's blog out at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9968932-16.html
and check out the original Simon Phipps (Sun) referenced blog inside Matt's blog.
As our commercial business grows around Switchvox and Asterisk Business Edition, and as it grows around larger companies getting the message, Matt's message is true in many cases as people in the purchasing process have chosen to continue to embrace the larger company "wine and dine" sales process, corporate boxes at professional sports events (ah, been there, done that!), and choose to hire and/or train IT staff to administer and manage their proprietary systems.
Although I understand why this decision is made, CIOs and IT Executives should consider options and consider running a pilot or two with open source based solutions. Are you one of these IT executives who just laugh off Asterisk and other open source choices because of "support" issues? What are you thinking?
There will be a day we have corporate boxes and wine and dine you, but for today, we can help you get access to Astricon (www.astricon.net), the only open source telephony conference for business and developers, and more importantly could reduce your TCO for your business telephony solution.
Check Matt's blog out at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9968932-16.html
and check out the original Simon Phipps (Sun) referenced blog inside Matt's blog.
As our commercial business grows around Switchvox and Asterisk Business Edition, and as it grows around larger companies getting the message, Matt's message is true in many cases as people in the purchasing process have chosen to continue to embrace the larger company "wine and dine" sales process, corporate boxes at professional sports events (ah, been there, done that!), and choose to hire and/or train IT staff to administer and manage their proprietary systems.
Although I understand why this decision is made, CIOs and IT Executives should consider options and consider running a pilot or two with open source based solutions. Are you one of these IT executives who just laugh off Asterisk and other open source choices because of "support" issues? What are you thinking?
There will be a day we have corporate boxes and wine and dine you, but for today, we can help you get access to Astricon (www.astricon.net), the only open source telephony conference for business and developers, and more importantly could reduce your TCO for your business telephony solution.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Astricon Takes Shape
With a nice mix of the former Sokol & Associates team of Lisa and Steve plus others, along with the new Digium team of Julie and John, we are getting very close to publishing the conference tracks at Astricon (www.astricon.net). We have added two excellent moderators, solid sponsors and many more are interested in signing on, and we have added a new first-time Astricon keynoter from Google (watch the web site soon for posting)and we are working on another new keynoter.
Our team is electronically charged up for the best ever Astricon, to be held in Glendale, AZ in September. See you there! Check out the site!
Our team is electronically charged up for the best ever Astricon, to be held in Glendale, AZ in September. See you there! Check out the site!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Office and Parking Lot Filling Up
Well, it's been a while since my last post. Will try and do better. Our building is fast filling up. Good offices are getting scarce and we are having large orientations weekly. It is quite fun. Now the parking lot is another story. People park all over so no one bangs their doors. A 1985 Toyota sits in the back of our lot trying to avoid anyone. I figured its so he won't hit anyone else. What frightens me, is I park a ways away as well so no one hopefully parks next to me. When I saw the Toyota and an older beat up van almost next to me, I cringed. I might have to park even further away.
Seriously, it's great we are growing. We have added some pretty strong community, customer quality, sales folks, software developers, and marketing folks and expect to be busy this coming summer. We are planning Astricon (www.astricon.net).
What is also fun to follow is Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Does anyone think this is an interesting story to follow? Who gets the handicap? Who gets the prize? Do they go it alone? I love the scenarios in front of us. Makes for something to watch besides a few twitter posts!
Seriously, it's great we are growing. We have added some pretty strong community, customer quality, sales folks, software developers, and marketing folks and expect to be busy this coming summer. We are planning Astricon (www.astricon.net).
What is also fun to follow is Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Does anyone think this is an interesting story to follow? Who gets the handicap? Who gets the prize? Do they go it alone? I love the scenarios in front of us. Makes for something to watch besides a few twitter posts!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Digium Culture
She made my day today. A fairly new Digium employee told me one thing that sold her on working at Digium was this blog. Thank you.......
The Digium culture is unlike any other. People work hard, play hard, party hard, and are always looking at enhancing the working environment at Digium. We have a new newsletter, we have a new employee-driven unique cultural team, we have an awards recognition program, and we have an active group of softball and volleyball players. We have passion for Asterisk, the Asterisk Community and a passion for Digium.
We have make-a-wish foundation volunteer where the other day we honored the young man who benefited from our "Kiss-a-Pig" contest and year-end contest among employee teams. Where else can you get all this and work for the coolest company!?!?!?!?!
Check us out at www.digium.com. You'll also find a flickr link there.
Very nice feedback today to learn this blog helped convince someone to work at Digium. Tomorrow is our casual day. Last time Mark Spencer sent out the one line email we had folks in very creative dress. Pictures were on both this blog and Digium's. Check us out in the next week or so, we will have some new pictures!
The Digium culture is unlike any other. People work hard, play hard, party hard, and are always looking at enhancing the working environment at Digium. We have a new newsletter, we have a new employee-driven unique cultural team, we have an awards recognition program, and we have an active group of softball and volleyball players. We have passion for Asterisk, the Asterisk Community and a passion for Digium.
We have make-a-wish foundation volunteer where the other day we honored the young man who benefited from our "Kiss-a-Pig" contest and year-end contest among employee teams. Where else can you get all this and work for the coolest company!?!?!?!?!
Check us out at www.digium.com. You'll also find a flickr link there.
Very nice feedback today to learn this blog helped convince someone to work at Digium. Tomorrow is our casual day. Last time Mark Spencer sent out the one line email we had folks in very creative dress. Pictures were on both this blog and Digium's. Check us out in the next week or so, we will have some new pictures!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Open Source Download - Buy or Not?
----------------------------------
We like the folks who do (buy something)
We like the folks who don't (buy anything)
We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't
But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!
- - - -
What would the downloader possibly buy today?
1. TDM gateway boards
2. G.729 Licenses
3. Voice Prompts
4. Speech to text channels
5. Text to speech channels
6. Support
7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform
8. Training and certification
9. Commercial software license
10. Consulting
So, happy downloading:
Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org
Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org
Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq
= = = = = = = =
Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com
----------------------------------
We like the folks who do (buy something)
We like the folks who don't (buy anything)
We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't
But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!
- - - -
What would the downloader possibly buy today?
1. TDM gateway boards
2. G.729 Licenses
3. Voice Prompts
4. Speech to text channels
5. Text to speech channels
6. Support
7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform
8. Training and certification
9. Commercial software license
10. Consulting
So, happy downloading:
Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org
Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org
Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq
= = = = = = = =
Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Math of Open Source
A few engineers were joking around today having some tongue in cheek fun talking about personalities of open source code "downloaders" of almost any open source project. Here are some fun comments. Note some are telephony related.
- - - - -
When Open Source is Free and you insist keeping it that way:
- You support yourself and ask the community for help which sometimes might work
- You have technical expertise with Linux and tools which makes you tick
- You tinker and it takes a long time typically because you need to know how it works
- You prefer command line or free GUIs, which may at times work just fine and dandy
- You refuse to pay for training because you have no life
- You won't pay for echo cancellation thus voice quality likely suffers or you are pure IP and have FIOS or high bandwidth solution; so lucky you with your SIP trunking provider who will probably change a SIP Invite message or something else tomorrow and your line won't work anymore! Tehe...have fun!
- You won't pay for any voice quality so the customer is unhappy - shame on you!
- You don't care about your customers, and if it costs 'anything' you refuse.....
- You are going broke as no customers return
- You buy cheap PSTN clone cards because you don't care to support the project who created the software you use for free
In Summary, you spend all your time on forums of the open source software projects you use. You pay for nothing. You want to make money but refuse to pay for anything or support your favorite project, and your customers are not coming back. Get real. It's just business!
- - - - -
When Open Source is Free and you insist keeping it that way:
- You support yourself and ask the community for help which sometimes might work
- You have technical expertise with Linux and tools which makes you tick
- You tinker and it takes a long time typically because you need to know how it works
- You prefer command line or free GUIs, which may at times work just fine and dandy
- You refuse to pay for training because you have no life
- You won't pay for echo cancellation thus voice quality likely suffers or you are pure IP and have FIOS or high bandwidth solution; so lucky you with your SIP trunking provider who will probably change a SIP Invite message or something else tomorrow and your line won't work anymore! Tehe...have fun!
- You won't pay for any voice quality so the customer is unhappy - shame on you!
- You don't care about your customers, and if it costs 'anything' you refuse.....
- You are going broke as no customers return
- You buy cheap PSTN clone cards because you don't care to support the project who created the software you use for free
In Summary, you spend all your time on forums of the open source software projects you use. You pay for nothing. You want to make money but refuse to pay for anything or support your favorite project, and your customers are not coming back. Get real. It's just business!
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