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On Wednesday,
Digium, founder of the open-source Asterisk
IP-PBX will announce its first round of VC funding – receiving $13.8 million from Matrix Partners. Matrix Partners was JBoss' initial investor, also an open-source solution - a Java application server. Matrix's expertise in open source was one of the deciding factors for deciding to invest in Digium. Asterisk is now at 1 million Asterisk users compared to 1/2 million at the beginning of the year - a phenomenal growth spurt and with over 1,000 downloads per day.
The funding will help the continued growth of Digium and Asterisk, especially in launching new offerings for the enterprise communications market, ranging from small to large businesses. Profitable since 2002, Digium has experienced 100% growth in each of the last several years.
"We believe Digium has the potential to become one of our most successful open source companies, as every company in the world relies on telephony and the use of PBXs in order to run their businesses,” said David Skok, a general partner at Matrix Partners and JBoss board member. "As companies continue to be attracted to the cost savings and powerful new capabilities of Voice over IP, the opportunity for Digium becomes massive. Digium is definitely in a position to become the next big open source company, behind Red Hat, JBoss and MySQL. Their current revenues, profitability, and growth rates are extraordinary.”
Update: 11:44am WednesdayI just had one other important thought with regards to this VC funding. Mark Spencer, the founder of the open-source Asterisk movement and Digium wasn't beholden to anyone else due to any sort of major financial investment. While I am pretty certain that Adtran gave some funding to Digium, I don't think it was on the scale of this multi-million dollar funding. I hope that Mark, the Asterisk guru and "telecom rebel extraordinaire" won't have to change himself or the company too much to accomodate Matrix Partners' wishes. Let's hope Matrix Partners has a pretty much "hands off" policy, except to help grow Digium and Asterisk.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Recently, I received an email from a pizza delivery solutions provider seeking my assistance in an interesting application that involves VoIP, GPS coordinates, Bluetooth, and of course pizza. This is not the first time I have linked pizza with VoIP. No siree bob! In fact, my
Vonage VoIP line resulted in me getting a cold pizza. Almost
sued Vonage over my damn cold pizza too.
I know what you're thinking. What kind of VoIP application does a pizza delivery company need, right? Well, the best way to explain the application that ties VoIP, pizza, Bluetooth, and GPS together is to include the request they sent to me.
We sell software services to pizza chains. Our system tracks drivers as they drive around town. Since we know where they are and where they are going, when they are about 4 minutes from the customers’ door, we want our computer to initiate a telephone call to the customer to say the driver will arrive momentarily. We imagine some kind of a softphone application running on the PC connected to a VoIP access point to the phone system. Our software already has the .wav files prepared to “speak” to the customers.
Any suggestions on how to configure this or who we should be talking to that might sell the necessary hardware software? Is open source stuff available?
PS Our system is written in C#, so is pretty flexible.
Pizza Pilot recently announced the completion of a multi-store test in Boston-area Domino's Pizza Franchises. Pizza Pilot was successful in reducing labor, mileage theft and lost drivers. New tools for measuring each driver's "Smart Hustle" factor as well as data mining techniques to identify and prioritize target customers with Platinum, Gold or Silver service levels were also introduced.
Pizza Pilot is a software-based product that works with any POS-including Pulse and TMS/National Systems. In combination with Bluetooth and GPS-enabled cell phones, it tracks the location of each delivery driver every 60 seconds. Pizza Pilot mapping software determines the optimal dispatching and automatically assigns orders to drivers-allowing managers to focus on inside operations.
Due to its ability to track each driver's progress on their way to each destination, Pizza Pilot can determine the moment actual deliveries are made and to update drivers' estimated return times as they return to the shop-making subsequent dispatches more accurate. Maps or on-board navigation is also available which reduce lost drivers, while real-time tracking identifies and discourages unauthorized stops.
I'm most impressed with the fact that they want to call you when the pizza is 4 minutes away. Imagine that -- a pizza company that is courteous enough to call you when they are about to arrive. How many times have you been told the pizza will take 30 minutes only to see 90 minutes roll by; then when you call to check on your pizza they simply tell you the pizza guy is on the way. Really they have
no idea where he is and they're simply patronizing you. Well, with this pizza delivery company, they track all their vehicles so they can tell you exactly where the vehicle is and on top of that they plan to call you using an automated dialer using a VoIP line.
Now if that isn't a
hot application for VoIP, I don't know what is. Mmmm.
hot pizza... Ahhhh. GPS & Bluetooth gadgetry... Ooooo... VoIP coolness... Ahhhhh... All I need now is some cold beer &
ESPN -- and I'll be in heaven. Maybe I'll launch
SightSpeed 5.0 and watch some ESPN from work.
I suggested to Pizza Pilot that there is C# code out there to initiate SIP calls and they he may want to consider looking at Asterisk, the open-source IP-PBX. I also referred him to
Erik Lagerway and Ward Mundy over @
Nerd Vittles, an Asterisk blog. Erik suggested that since he was using C#, that something in
Microsoft LCS might do the trick - or paid kits like those offered by
Counterpath. Ward Mundy said he could code something for him and asked for more details on the size and scope of the project.
I'll keep you posted if the pizza/GPS/Bluetooth/VoIP application ever goes live.
GPS VoIP pizza delivery just might be coming to a neighborhood near you!
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 25th, 2006 with no comments.
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Apparently, development on Asterisk@Home, the "turnkey" Asterisk solution with many third-party add-ons pre-installed has ended. However, the developers have created a new product called
Trixbox. Just like Asterisk@Home, Trixbox is a complete Asterisk PBX including, a Linux OS, Asterisk PBX software, a Web GUI, and many other useful add-ons. As with Asterisk@Home, Trixbox can be quickly installed in less than an hour.
Besides being reminded of that wacky Trix rabbit character, I'd be curious why the need for the name change, especially since Trixbox is based on the same exact source code as Asterisk@Home. I liked the Asterisk@Home name - it gave the product a connotation of being "easy" to use and install. (e.g. even a "home" user could install it, or it was designed for a "home installation" by a hobbyist or entrepreneur.)
I can speculate that
my pal Mark Spencer over at Digium sent Asterisk@Home a "cease & desist letter" to protect his trademark. Although, I'm not sure if Mark even has a trademark on the brand "Asterisk". I'll have to shoot him off an email and ask. But if he does, then you can't blame him if he is indeed trying to protect his brand. If you don't vigorously protect your brand and it becomes watered down and used by everyone, then you can lose your rights to the trademark. This whole point may be moot since I believe you can't trademark GPL open-source code projects. Where's a trademark lawyer when you need one?
[Update: I received an email from Ward Mundy stating that Digium did give permission to use the Asterisk@Home name. He stated "Asterisk@Home was suitable for home and business use. A lot of customers were apparently put off by the @Home moniker." I suppose I can see the @Home moniker hurting its "business-class" image.]In any event, the latest release of Trixbox 1.0 (technically Asterisk@Home v3.0) was released on May 31st (less than a week ago). Interestingly enough, I noticed that Fonality is offering their HUDLite softphone client for Trixbox. I just shot off an email to Chris Lyman over at Fonality to see what exactly the relationship is between Fonality and Trixbox, especially since I could have sworn that I saw Fonality as the one that registered the trixbox.org domain.
However, when I checked the whois database today, it's registered to one of those "anonymizing" proxy domain registrars with a date stating it just changed on 6/5/06 (just 2 days ago). I then did some more investigating to see if I could figure out who owned trixbox.org. I won't get into too many details on how I figured it out, but suffice to say I did a
whois on www.hudlite.org, which is registered to Fonality, Inc. I then looked at the IP address for this whois record and it displayed "66.234.135.90". I then do a
whois on trixbox.org and lo' and behold the IP addresses were the same! Apparently trixbox.org and www.hudlite.org are running on the same web server and using the host header to figure out which web page to display.
Did Fonality by out the rights to Asterisk@Home and then change the name to Trixbox.org? What does this mean for the popular open-source Asterisk@Home distro (now Trixbox) considering Fonality is a for-profit Asterisk solutions provider? Is the plan to try and convert Trixbox users (generally novice Linux users) into paying Fonality users? Fonality certainly focuses on businesses that have little or no Linux experts, so there is certainly a potential synergy there. Well, the mystery continues... I'll post more when I hear back from Chris @Fonality.
Finally, Nerd Vittles has an excellent
three-part series on how to install Trixbox along with FreePBX, a web-based GUI add-on for making Asterisk easy to manage. If you ever wanted to try Asterisk, but find Linux a bit daunting, then head on over to
Nerd Vittles and try the tutorial.
p.s. Silly Windows users, Trixbox is for Linux! 
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on June 7th, 2006 with no comments.
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Pingtel, a provider of open source, Linux-based enterprise VoIP solutions, and
Voxbone, a provider of international VoIP origination services will announce on Monday the completion of interoperability testing between their respective offerings. As a result of this certification, customers can select Pingtel's SIPxchange
IP-PBX VoIP software solution in combination with Voxbone's call origination services and thereby benefit from cost-effective calls routed to a SIP-based device (IP-phone, IP-PBX, etc.).
When a customer is in need of an international presence the customer interconnects via VoIP to the
closest Voxbone POP. Voxbone then allocates the desired amount of numbers and capacity to the customer. When someone calls to one of these numbers Voxbone forwards the call via VoIP to the customer. Unique to the Voxbone offering is that they only charge a
fixed monthly fee for this service - there are no per-minute fees. Here's a diagram explaining the architecture. The POPs are on the left and the SIP device (such as Pingtel) is on the right. The middle is the network/Internet.
Voxbone leases international VoIP virtual phone numbers and worldwide origination services via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. Using either direct inbound dial (DID) or virtual numbers from Voxbone, customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls from 50 countries and 4,000 cities throughout the world.
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Mark Spencer, founder of the
Asterisk movement, lead off the conference call by saying, "Today is one of the most exciting days in the history of the company." Them's some mighty big words! Mark explained that this came about while searching for a COO and VP of Business Development and they were then approached with something even more exciting.
Mark explained why Digium hired a new CEO and why Mark changed his role within Digium. Mark, "When you start a company and you're just one person, you have to do everything yourself and that is the history of Asterisk got started really - because I needed my own phone system and they were too expensive to go out and buy one. But as you grow, you have to start delegate stuff out. The easiest thing to delegate out in the beginning is to delegate stuff you're bad at and don't enjoy doing. Delegating stuff you're good at but don't enjoy doing. Then there is stuff you enjoy doing but are still bad at doing. Lastly and the most difficult part is delegating away stuff that is very enjoyable to you and that you have a propensity for doing well. Digium has reached a size that that was a decision I had to make." (
Note: I'm typing this during the call, so the exact quotes may be a bit off)
Mark added, "While hopefully I've done a (
cough - nervousness? I think its modesty since he didn't want to toot his own horn) fairly reasonable job getting the company to this level, I felt that the part that is more interesting to me and that part where I can bring the most value to the community, employees, and the customers, was focusing on the technology and strategic vision of the company in the long run. When I had the opportunity to bring on someone who has an incredible operational background and whom I have a relationship of trust for the past 7 years, it was simply a very easy decision to make and to make this transition happen."
Bill Gates (Windows)
role and title famously shifted and now Mark Spencer's (Linux) role has shifted. This is all part of the
1st law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) and keeping the universe in balance. That's my theory anyway.
Mark Spencer is to
Bill Gates was Neuman was to Jerry Seinfeld, what the Red Sox are the Yankees. It all makes perfect sense now. If Mark didn't change titles, the universe would explode.
Mark explained that Danny Windham "has been a board member since 2000 and actually has been with the company longer than any other employee has been. He was able to come on and be the CEO of the company and allow me to be able to focus on the community and the customers and the technology of the company in a much more focused way."
ADTRAN explained that they have a 7 year relationship with Digium, with a significant investment in Digium but a minority investment. Since I want to get this news up and let everyone listen to the conference call themselves, I'm going to post the entire conference call here as a podcast. I may update this post in a bit with some more interesting quotes.
Here's an MP3 podcast of the conference call:
Conference Call with Digium about new CEO
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