The Open Disruptor - A Day in the Life of Digium

Mobile Phones vs Office Phones, is it a race?

2009-05-23T09:37:00.022-05:00

There is no doubt many people would love one and only one phone for personal and business. The problem is, not one phone does everything that you need. Let's visit this concept:

- mobility is convenient and mobile phones are improving with larger color touch screens and much improved quality
- office desk phones have been improved with built in speaker phones and high quality, ability to run software applications, and personalization of these phones
- home phones have improved with multi-handset systems that cause much less interference between handset and base stations many with built in applications including caller ID

However, the requirements vary for each use and application and there are few people who can be totally satisfied for all applications using a single handset. Millions of people just like me love our iPhones and for most things can be very well suited as a desk set replacement, however, for business use it lacks easy basic transfer capabilities, its far too hard to do a 3-way conference call and can't do one larger than that, it's speaker phone is very weak and the screen although it is of high quality is not well suited to many day-to-day office routine activities.

The office desk phone has come down in price mostly driven by SIP standard (session initiation protocol) over IP networks for interoperability standards, but this also limits advanced features found in business telephone systems as proprietary systems always implement extensions overlapping the standards implementation. There is no mobility with desk phones except wireless 802.11 handsets that are more expensive per station because they always need a base station. Some companies have come out with wireless phones that work with both business phone systems (private branch exchange or PBX) and wireless carriers that suppot hand-offs when the user leaves the phone's range inside the business or home. This type of solution is few and far between today and is both expensive and requires cooperation of service providers who lose revenues and minutes when the user moves inside as a PBX extension.

Home phones are getting better and cheaper and the emergence of DECT wireless phones seem to work better than previous wireless handsets at home and "play nice" with home wireless networks.

So what's the problem? Let me count the ways. Many of my highly respected and some well-known friends and colleagues are loud (Twitter, blogs, conversations) about not wanting or needing a desk phone. They want one wireless phone, iPhone-like, that does it all. Some consultants and road warriors may have taken this step. But most people will not quite yet.

I have been collecting unscientific data from Twitter and Facebook survey's of strangers and friends and followers who are happy to provide their input. Although I have access to purchased research and privileged access to real users, vendors of phones, and customers of business phone systems, I believe my method provides as good of a cross section as one might find. Here are some comments in abridged form:

- I love my cell phone but when I have an important business call, I always say, "Can you call me back on my landline?"

- A job hunter (one of my good friends) says, "I'd never have a cell phone interview call for a new position, I insist we set up a time when I have a landline!"

- One of my contributors said, "I am in the VoIP business, can provide free SIP trunk to the house, connected to an Asterisk PBX but my wife insists a good old phone company connection with ma Bell!"

- One of my favorite analysts friends says, "We'll only need one phone, and it will be the cell phone. But it needs to access our enterprise network and tools!"

- One responded to me with this note: "We all know it will be a cell phone that wins this battle, so why don't you product strategy guys face the facts and make it happen faster?"

(My answer was when no one buys phones anymore except for cell phones. Today, I do listen to my customers!)

- One of my followers and resellers says, "It will look a lot like a cell phone... because it will be!"

- One person said, "I was needing G.722 (new HD Codec for IP Phones) which takes almost everything out of play!"

So herein lies the facts. Business phones, desktop phones are being sold in huge numbers. At the office, I have a growing number of IP phone partners most selling record numbers of handsets. Newer desktop phones are beginning to look and sound different with HD (High definition audio), larger screens - like netbook PC size screens - with the usual hard phone buttons, mixed with soft programmable buttons/keys and are completely embedded systems that run purpose-built processors and software. In meetings, on airplanes, at tradeshows and conferences, we all have our cell phones with many also having their laptops or netbooks - multiple devices, multiple phone numbers, multiple phone bills and briefcases or purses to carry it all. It's tiring.

What do I mean? Let's have some fun using one end of the spectrum. Your IT departments says, "You get a softphone for your laptop!" Its your office phone. I'll give you a headset. Your PC needs to be on 24/7. We don't reimburse wireless so if you get one, you are on your own. When you have a conference call, either use the one conference room with a Polycom conference phone or gather everyone 'round your PC to use your softphone or your Skype account! Think I am kidding? Well, think again, it's happening in places.

I do believe these IT managers will be back to buy new desk phones and maybe even a cell phone for road warriors just not for everyone. At the same time, newer desk phones are in development. They will look different than today's phones, but who'd have thought this would even be a discussion a few short years ago.

On the other end of the scale, some businesses are putting in all HD phones with high end video phones for executives. For all of you who have moved to HDTV, there are many new fans of HD Phones and this is driving newer, HD phones, higher priced and with higher quality clear audio and mostly available in desktop phones. These HD phones are disrupting the traditional desktop phone market.

In my sample of 40 respondents, here is my split:

1. 10% want cell phones only in 5 years
2. 60% want landlines always to be present
3. 25% said basically that we will have multiple handsets, each for different special-purpose built purposes
4. 5% said they don't care

All in all, this was a fun and informative exercise and since this is important to me from a business standpoint, I can use this information but from a personal standpoint, we can all learn from what is actually happening in the workplace and in the consumer market as the phone becomes as important to carry as a wallet, purse, briefcase, backpack - whatever you use for carrying all your important personal and work items.

What do you think?
What is your preference?
How many phones do you have?
What will be the split of phones in 5 years?

Predictions for Last 3/4ths of 2009:

2009-01-04T18:34:00.023-06:00

I started this blog in early January and have had to rename and rewrite it for the last 3/4 not for entire year. It has given me a little visibility into some 2009 trends. We will visit here some marketing trends for this year including trade shows, marketing chatter such as social media tools (but believe me, not a focus as there are literally hundreds of "experts" on Twitter telling you all about this) and some technology trends. Those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook know I have been researching desktop phones for business over the next 5 years and will follow this with a series on this topic. I have had some great input from folks not in the phone business which was my hope.

As we move along in Q2 for calendar year 2009, President Obama uses the web and social media and has appointed a CIO - what a concept - a technology-aware white house. We have seen the AIG fiasco where employment contracts thus far have won out over taxpayers dollars and a politically charged environment where laws will be changed for bailed out companies. The auto industry is the latest casualty. Wonder whose next? Wonder how it plays out?

We are watching many companies hang tough but they experience cut backs and reduced spending making it painful to proceed. Many friends and former colleagues are jobless. We have seen some industry trade shows and conferences aimed at "targeted" audiences grow through larger attendance while others not be as successful. We are experiencing a stock market that makes us not want to look at our portfolio statements most of the time. How will we emerge when the economy turns around?

But through these challenging times live silver linings - potentially lucrative ideas, new solutions, new ways to reduce costs and save money with select investments, and overall a cautious optimism that the recession will start to turn around. Some of the best companies emerged nicely during previous recessions. I believe open source software will be the foundation of the future enterprise for many reasons. Control, flexibility, personalization, and lower total cost of ownership are some of the driving factors.

Let's look at some downsides before we visit the upside trends.

Not so good late 2008/early 2009 trends:

- Layoffs
- Foreclosures
- Corruption (ie Maddoff, AIG, Citibank, and many others)
- Stock Market decline
- Unsure business, financials and cash can delay spending

Reasonably good trends:

- Social media in the mainstream in marketing, customer service, and the news
- Interest in Open Source-based business solutions rising
- Filly beats the Colts&Gelding in the Preakness triple crown race for 1st time in 85 years
- Excellent business class iPhone Applications

Promising trends for the remainder of 2009:

- Enterprises looking at saving money while leveraging newer technologies such as VoIP, Open Source VoIP, and applications
- Opportunity: dynamic market changes, consolidation, and lost jobs leads to new opportunities, new business and the beginning of new products, services, and innovative ideas

Many of these new opportunities will disrupt traditional leaders. Will it be automobiles? Fuel? Laptops? Phones? Internet? Video mail? Military? I could go on, but I will be looking for the most disruptive items as I can write about in the upcoming months.

My next blog series will be about business telephones - desktop phones, IP phones, Mobile phones, softphones and how applications are changing the way phones will be provisioned for use and how they are used over the next 5 years. All my information is personally gathered, it is not from customers of my commercial position or purchased from any analyst firms. Pure IMHO, 1st run primary Twitter and Facebook-based research and is all new material.

Hope to see you again soon! I commit to not waiting so long to publish a new blog post!

Closing 2008 on a High Note!

2008-12-31T21:22:00.018-06:00

As I look back over the past year I can honestly say it has been a successful year for disruptors. So let's see what my top 5 things are that make up my perspectives.

1. Sun Microsystems acquires MySQL for $1B.

MySQL is truly a disruptor of the data base world using open source. Like Digium, they can't track everyone using the free open source versions, but each and every installation in a business has taken revenues from traditional players or certainly has disrupted their thinking and changed their marketing strategies.

2. 28 straight profitable growth quarters for Digium

The creator, owner, and corporate sponsor for the leading open source telephony systems on the planet - Asterisk - has experienced a consistent growth path for 6 years. Yes, I beat this drum frequently, but it's very telling of the trends and growth. Day by day, week by week, and month by month each and every installation takes market share, IP lines and revenues away from traditional players. Soon, you will read more about growing market shares of Asterisk asnd Digium's role as leader of this market.

3. The PR world looks different each and every day

Yes, we use a PR firm - world class company as well. However, we are at the beginning of the end for traditional "non-evolving" PR. The Internet started the sea change. Bloggers, out-of-print trade publications, new web sites that replace print, advertising methodologies, and now the economy will change most PR. It will take some time to see the entire overhaul, but PR firms that do not change with the times and take the lead using new business and social media outlets will die. Like the original VON died, like BCR magazine moved into a blog and web site, we are seeing the metamorphosis take place in real time. You've seen me write about Twitter, you may have seen or heard or use Facebook or LinkedIn - they have changed the world for recruiters (a.k.a headhunters), keeping in touch with ex-colleagues and business partners as well as school buddies. Face it, press releases, books, and budgets will look different in the future!

4. Using cell phones as a phone

This one will be debated by different folks, but I make and receive fewer calls with my iPhone than anytime over the past 10 years. My iPhone is used for email, twitter, Internet access, single key weather reports, single key market reports, google maps, texting - but phone calls? Ok, maybe 10% of the time. Will email be next? How many emails go to your SPAM filter?

5. Video, YouTube, Podcasts and Webinars

As bandwidth availability and broadband ubiquity has grown, video has become a total disruptor. Having developed multimedia capabilities using ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and various broadband technology, it's finally here. More will occur during 2009 from 10-20 second segments to 2 minute segments you'll see instructions and "how-to's", personal branding, general branding, video mail, and short subjects. Simply go to YouTube, type in virtually any subject, you can find something. From music videos, to education to self-promotion, it has become acceptable and used by a growing percentage.

Over the next 12 months, many technology based advancements will change the face of communications, personal and business relationships, and in this economic uncertainty more people will be home discovering these new tools, outlets and entertaining advancements all while saving money. perhaps nothing is new to you as a reader, and if this is true, you are on teh wagon alreaday. The average person is not there yet and perhaps has no clue about these emerging changes in how we live!

Every day new bloggers arrive, new podcasts arrive, new webinars using basic low-to-medium quality cameras appear and people watch and enjoy these events. Businesses looking for targeted lead generation will expand their use of these tools in new and innovative ways!

Stop by and chat on Twitter and let's see together how 2009 evolves!

Business Communications - How much change is welcomed?

2008-11-16T09:48:00.018-06:00

Over the past few weeks I have attended and been panelists at both National Association of Realtors on Business VoIP and VoiceCon on The Role of Open Source Telephony in the Enterprise. Today's post will look at some trends from vendors I saw and customers I spoke with. Why is this a column for the "Open Disruptor"? The basic fact is because a large number of businesses are facing the same challenge: businesses must become more efficient and maintain or grow revenues with less budget or people. Basically, the network manager, IT Director, and small business owner's mantra has become a common theme, "I have to do more with less!"

How does one do this? There are many ways to explore, and depending on the individual, the priorities change but here are my top 10 "take aways" from these past few weeks:

1. "I need new tools that make me more efficient"

* IT departments need more efficient management tools to optimize performance and save costs
* SMBs or Small and medium sized businesses need to save costs and be more efficient
* Think Web 2.0 Services

2. "I can't afford to buy a new system even though I've been planning for it for some time! How can I get what I need accomplished now?"

* Oops. Delays, lost budgets, layoffs in larger companies and now it's "cap (spending) and grow" a different way (more efficient, less costly)
* SMBs have little or no money to spend as they need to survive the economic challenges
* Think open source and Web 2.0 Services

3. "All I see are large players delivering more features that are more expensive! They look great: video, integrated cell phone with office, web-based tools. But my system can't handle these capabilities without a rip-and-replace or very costly investment!"

* Many IT Directors have outdated legacy systems that can't be expanded thus new systems need to be purchased to get the benefits they need to solve today's problems.
* SMBs are more open to newer solutions that can make their businesses more effective.
* Real Estate offices are looking to be both more efficient and maintain control of their client base in spite of high agent turnover
* Think open source, VoIP and Web 2.0 Services

4. "Too much fluff!"

* A couple of end users I spoke with sat through one large vendor's presentation only to say, "Huh? What was that all about?" They did not tell me anything except I need to spend more money and get trained!"
* Think open source to reduce total cost of ownership

5. "I want to take advantage of the Internet but have tight money and not a senior IT team!"

* This is where I told users to look at disruptive companies. Some have open source software-based solutions lowering total cost of ownership; some have new business models offering special lease programs and tradein programs
* Think open source

6. "Twitter Twitter everywhere!"

* New PR and Marketing tools are being used around social media. At least one VoiceCon exhibitor and competitor went and followed competitors and pre-registration lists pre-show. When I caught up with the PR firm who did this, the person was a new-hire PR team addition to leverage new media and gt their message out.
* Digium has been using Twitter and created Digium, AsteriskPBX, Astricon, AsteriskNOW and Switchvox accounts on Twitter to inform people and build community goodwill since earlier this year. Others are following suit but this is a huge trend and will evolve more. We used Twitter at Astricon, an Asterisk community event in September, and placed large plasma screens around the show floor.
* Think young and growing fleet afoot companies

7. Less people are traveling even to the best events

* These two events are important for their respective industries. Both had down attendance
* Quality of attendees is higher because there is no "perk" trips, only serious buyers. we have had great leads from both events that will produce revenues
* Think the fact that smaller events with more serious buyers are good, not bad

8. There are some traditional companies and analysts that just don't get it

* Working at a young company where the average age is about 26ish, I have to learn how to work with millennials. What I saw in some sessions that I attended was some traditional companies and subject matter experts refuse to acknowledge evolving trends such as open source, Twitter and other social media, and that younger workers are savvy you just need to know how to work with them.

9. More on Twitter

* During keynotes, sessions and the VoiceCon event as a whole, Tweeters would talk to each other and their followers about goings on. During one keynote, there were some interesting discussions between Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens, Digium and IBM executives
* During the NAR event, there were more breakout sessions and meet-ups on social media and blogging and how to leverage in your business than any non-social media event I have seen yet!

10. Final word on social media and Twitter

* At least one cross-over occurred between the two events as I met up with a friend I met through Twitter. She helped myself and a colleague understand unique requirements of the real estate small and medium business segment when it comes to contact management, integration of cell phones and office phones and a variety of other topics related to our respective businesses. Years ago, this would never have occurred as we learn new ways to leverage Web 2.0 and new ways to network.

Find me on Twitter here

Find Digium on Twitter here

Find asterisk here

Find Digium here

Disruption - 140 characters at a time!

2008-10-25T11:33:00.016-05:00

I have been collecting primary market research data in order to build a stream of posts that offer emerging trends and "realism's" to folks who care! This one will discuss how business is using twitter, one of the most disruptive tools I have seen yet, and it's just scratching the surface. I can't believe I am actually ahead of my daughter using a new web-based trend (not totally true, but it sounded good!). See Wikipedia for definitions and history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter.

For those not familiar, twitter is a microblogging tool that allows people to create an online ID, then follow and be followed by fellow enthusiasts. I have so far found this very useful for both business and pleasure. Nearly every day there are new tools that make it easier to accomplish some mundane or tedious task on twitter. People can post messages up to 140 characters.

For businesses, you can create alerts similar to "Google Alerts" on certain keywords. I have done this for products, company, and topics. So far, I have connected to several folks that I find that try Asterisk, Digium's world leading open source phone system software and Switchvox, Digium's turnkey business phone system solution that runs on top of Asterisk. I have helped a customer who felt compelled to post a comment and today I have connected to folks trying the Switchvox Free edition. There are Obama and McCain and Palin twitter accounts for latest news.

During the hurricane season, a group of folks collaborated on following the storm faster than almost anything I've ever seen with people in the eye of the storm passing real time information. Companies helped and people helped. It was an amazing lightning fast deployment of people and news - another application of "community"!

For fun, I am an avid Red Sox fan. The nights of Red Sox playoff games, I did use tweetscan, roomatic, and other tools to follow Red Sox related posts and made new friends who have a common bond of the Red Sox. The nights of presidential and VP debates, it was the same thing. This is collaboration and debating at its best - online among most people who are strangers and newfound online pals.

If you look for ways to learn, besides using google to search, find the top 50 or 100 twitterers and follow them. You''ll start to see the picture.

This tool can help micro-communities grow and be noticed. I have seen PR, community managers, real estate professionals, programmers and web 2.0 geeks, food critics and enthusiasts and just all kinds of good folks who want to openly communicate with others everywhere in the world!

Now I have nothing to do with the company or the product twitter, but I am a user who sees value from this disruption. There are web marketing firms, like Hubspot (www.hubspot.com) that leverage twitter among other tools for Internet Marketing. TV News liks CNN uses twitter to spread new stories. Once you get used to it, you will learn all sorts of tricks. Also, search for tools for your cell phone, iPhone (I use Hahlo), tools to build subgroups, real time tools like twhirl and it goes on on an.

The disruption is obvious. New ways to reach thousands to millions, new ways to communicate, and if you are anything like me, email, text messaging, even IM become niche products. Imagine saying email is a niche product! It's a new way to virally spread information. I post a URL/article to my followers, a few of them like the post and re-tweet to their followers. As you build your house of followers, you begin to get the picture of viral marketing and viral messaging.

Want to try it? www.twitter.com and sign up.

A little note of caution: with good things come not so good things. You will find businesses send spam, market to you, etc. You can block these users easily.

Have fun, and feel free to share you thoughts, good bad or indifferent.

Oh and finally, be careful. It can begin to waste a lot of time if you are not selective. Most of my time on real time twitter is evenings and weekends when relaxing at home. I do use the tweetbeep tool ("google" type alerts for twitter) to send to my email where I receive work-related twitter posts to follow up and/or track.

(Find me at beelinebill on twitter)

Office of the Future

2008-09-30T19:41:00.015-05:00

Its been a while since I looked at the business office of the next decade and what technological advancements will move companies forward. As a disruptor to the IP PBX and telephony market, Asterisk plays a role in this change. So do many other disruptors: iPhone, Android, Blackberry and maybe the new tablet computing modules.

What's unique these days is the increasing acceptance by a larger contingent of adopters of the new technology. This proves once again convenience wins over price or perfection. We know version 1.0 of anything has challenges. We know there are bugs in the software. We know budgets are being reduced.

Based on these data points, open source business phone system + mobile phone = new remote office. Its cheap, it's powerful, it works!

Now, that scratches the surface. Here are some other questions:

1. Will we use desk phones in 5 years?
2. Will we all use just a softphone or Skype for Business client software in 5 years?
3. Will we just use our cell phone which will essentially be a small PC or MAC clone with wireless network connecting to virtually anything and everything?
4. Will iPhone and Android "type" phones be our choice?
5. How will we buy our business phone system and cell phones? Web? Retailer? Vendor?
6. Will we have separate business and personal phones and/or computers?
7. In 2000-2002 during the meltdown, we had a huge increase in small business startups of 1 and 2 persons. How will 2009-2010 be in the face of today's economic times? Similar? Different?
8. Will Cisco be around as we know them or will they become different again?
9. Will Asterisk be ubiquitous enough to displace all traditional telephones as we know them today?

In general we think about these questions daily. Open Source developers subscribe to the notion of all choices being open source. Do you?

New Name....Almost

2008-09-20T00:01:00.005-05:00

Tonight I have added, "The Open Disruptor" to the front of "A Day in the Life of Digium!"

As I said before, I will add to the mix on this blog: (1) open source elements, (2) disruptive technologies, and (3) IP Telephony.

Watch here. Several items came out of IT Expo this past week and I will address log!

Don't ya hate it when.........

2008-09-06T13:48:00.008-05:00

I wrote a short tweet on Twitter, that started like this title, and decided it would be fun to create my top 10 list from the past two years at Digium of "Don't ya hate it when........." new generation we-related events. Lets take a quick look. What are your favorite "Don't ya hate it when.........events!"

Don't ya hate it when.........

10. ....the phone rings Friday afternoons at 4:30 PM and your co-worker has a problem that must be addressed immediately before the end of the day!

9. ....you spill coffee or tea on your clean shirt or blouse in a business meeting

8. ....you select reply all when you did not mean to

7. ....you select "delete", the response is slow, so you select "delete" over and over.....then each stroke deletes one message only to not be able to recover the deleted by mistake messages....oops!

6. ....you forget the receipt on a business trip and either the client or your boss requires receipts!

5. ....Google Customer Service does not return your call when you "have to contact them" about a serious Adword problem

4. ....you hit send before running spell-check

3. ....the "press" get the story twisted

2. ....your flight is canceled

1. ....the bird of paradise writes an incorrect flag in your payroll record

Visionary Quadrant Raises Some Eyebrows

2008-08-23T14:30:00.029-05:00

As I said in my last post, I'd focus on some new messaging and today kicks it off with some Microsoft thoughts. Digium, Microsoft and Shoretel are the ONLY 3 companies in Gartner Group's magic quadrant for Enterprise IP Telephony. This appears to be an honorary position for the three companies and what's interesting is the blog on nojitter - http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/08/what_is_visiona.html - where Marty Parker (ex Avaya executive and now a UC consultant) is questioning why Microsoft OCS gets this placement with such basic UC features.

I am not sure where Marty is parked on Digium's placement in this visionary quadrant but he sure provides some food for thought. He mentions in his point #2 so many companies that may or may not have places in today's world all trying to find their new place in UC/VoIP world, but Digium is a no-show meaning he is already underestimating open source's capability. Why do I believe this?

This is easy to answer: Open source by nature is a global phenomena ignored by some traditional TDM folks (i.e. Avaya); the shared delivery ecosystem today exists for open source telephony; it is software-based already today; the acquisition cost model is compelling and the ongoing support of open source is building infrastructure for traditional 24/7 based support; companies who are early adopters are well on their way to customize their UC systems as they grow.

Yes, companies like Digium are focused today on SMB, opportunistically penetrating Enterprise, but worldwide there are emerging Asterisk-based applications that build this shared delivery system that UC lends itself to and its all software based.

So Marty, don't underestimate the open source global ecosystem and its place in your UC model. I think we will be in for some healthy debates over the next few years as major traditional players consolidate, go by the wayside, and consolidate, while open source continues to be a major disruptor for UC and PBX.

I can't end this blog post yet until I comment on Microsoft. I love their marketing budgets for educating the world about UC, IP Telephony and VoIP. They do some nice PowerPoints. It will take gazillions of dollars to train systems builders, server and Windows resellers and it will take years to get their feature set correct since they have this baggage that has generated all this revenue already. But the purchasers and buying criteria are changing for them now. I for one, look forward to each event such as VoiceCon - http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/ - when Microsoft spends budget dollars and many of their employees visit our booth!

Note: I am still evaluating blog name changes. Stay tuned.

Blog Change

2008-08-06T22:02:00.005-05:00

Over the next few weeks I will be changing the name and focus of my blog. Since this is a personal blog, not our corporate blog, we will be focusing on the corporate blog on blogs.digium.com and I will begin blogging here about trends and challenges facing Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others as well as web changes for business but from a different perspective than today's bloggers who copy and reference others, write about how to leverage social networking, and various other topics that are now starting to appear to be repetitive and overlap quite a bit. There are a few that are cool.

Expect me to draw on my 25+ years experience to share changes today and how it impacts both traditional companies and emerging companies. I may do some comparisons of old vs. new and share how people tend to deal with these changes. As a member of the "old" way of doing things that works in a younger and newer open source company, I have made the transition to today's company and want to share this with others.

I am considering new names for the new blog focus. With all the wacko blog names and web site names it will be a fun challenge to find a catchy name.

See you soon in new skins!

Growing Up!

2008-07-24T23:08:00.010-05:00

We are experiencing growing pains. Offices are filling. people are being promoted inside to new positions supporting "growth from within" plus outside hiring brings in new blood and thinking. You can see them roaming here!

As we grow, our event grows: Astricon. Weekly calls. Expansion of keynoters outside of Digium folks. Less Digium speakers. Check it out here: www.astricon.net

Meetings. We strive to keep short, focused, and over with.

We strive for rapid decisions....but with all the facts.

Documentation for commercial products!

We hope to see you in Phoenix!

Shorts

2008-07-16T00:07:00.004-05:00

This summer, our VPs are wearing shorts to work, including me. It used to be Mark Spencer and just engineers. Now, several executives. Glad to see this "Flip Flop" type culture.

Does anyone think a loose summer dress code increases productivity?

Has anyone done a study?

I'd think this would be a huge plus for most people. Comfort. Relaxing.

What do you think?

iPhone Day at Digium

2008-07-12T16:02:00.004-05:00

Friday we had a short staff at the office. A fairly large contingent were in line at both ATT stores and the Apple store in the local new Bridge Street shopping district. The Digium folks started lining up early like 5 AM. By noon the first one showed up at the office, and by 2 PM the rest returned. As far as I know, all employees who waited received them. The Apple store had more of course than ATT did.

All were either waiting for syncing of the new units or it had just been completed so they could now twitter, text, email or surf. I don't have one as my entire family is on Verizon service, but ATT has done a tremendous job locking Apple and iPhone users into their service.

The unit is nice, nearly the exact size and weight of my Moto Q and of course both are color. But they are far from similar. My Q is great for conference calls as it has a terrific speaker phone, I have very nice Internet access, email and I like the size and weight. The iPhone however is beloved by those who buy them. I don't know a Moto Q user who can say that.

Reminds me of Asterisk - it is beloved by passionate Asterisk Community, users and developers. Can't say that about the big boys of IP Telephony!

I read one blog post today already that Asterisk download for the iPhone will be done sometime today. A Day in the life of Digium moves on!

For the Asterisk Community

2008-07-05T10:48:00.004-05:00

We have a new initiative that has been under way for a few weeks now. It will appear in more detail soon on both this and the Digium blog. The series of events will be a nice lift for the Asterisk Community. As in any project, we have to weigh priorities as we have so many items on our plates. A Digium day is like no other in my long career. Yes, I make typical decisions for products, features, roadmaps, people, etc. But, having a community that broadens Asterisk's reach - now that is both a challenge and a huge part of Digium heritage and culture.

Stay tuned.

Another from the book, "You can't make this stuff up!"

2008-07-02T13:08:00.005-05:00

Russell is co-maintainer of open source Asterisk and he was busy doing something physical today. Although this is a link to Russell's blog, there is no other way to do it justice:

http://www.russellbryant.net/blog/index.php/2008/07/02/this-post-brought-to-you-by-dr-pepper/"

Balancing Act: Open Source Asterisk

2008-06-28T08:41:00.004-05:00

Not a day goes by when a choice or discussion occurs that encompasses open source Asterisk vs. proprietary elements of a complete solution. Not all portions of "free and open" source are available in pure open source. Components like codecs (i.e. G.729) may be patent encumbered and we have to learn new ways to effectively provide these to the world at large in the best possible manner.

Mark Spencer's brainchild Asterisk has become a key core element of telephony solutions these days meaning a large number of people and companies have built their immediate future on Asterisk. As Asterisk matures, and attention moves to scalability and reliability, Digium has moved with it and enables others to build valuable solutions and components.

Some folks understand and appreciate the community vs. commercial elements and accept and work with them, others just don't however some certainly like to chastise the balancing act choices we deploy.

Being an executive on this team I get to see and hear about virtually all elements of the positive and negative surrounding our choices. Well, we are in business to grow a business, make money and to support Mark Spencer's vision and philosophy: provide an always open version of Asterisk compliant with GPLv2. We have both commercial and community priorities at play daily for precious resources. Choices abound.

All in all, "Digium Days" are among the most exciting in my 25+ year product management oriented career. The core elements (product strategy planning, market segmentation, roadmaps, product requirements, features, pricing models, packaging, etc) are the same, but the "Digium Difference" and "The Digium Way" are the most fun,interesting, hair raising and exhilarating. After over two years following my 3Com stint, this by far has been most interesting in the current pinnacle of my long career.

I've been thinking of which of those moments to write about in upcoming blogs. For those that think it's always an easy decision you are missing the more interesting part of working with Mark.

See you again soon! Off to the Huntsville Air Show with the Blue Angels!

Heard Around The Office Today

2008-06-25T23:03:00.004-05:00

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?"

Do CIOs Welcome Open Source?

2008-06-15T08:23:00.028-05:00

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.

Astricon Takes Shape

2008-05-30T23:32:00.006-05:00

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!

Office and Parking Lot Filling Up

2008-05-22T20:59:00.006-05:00

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!

Digium Culture

2008-04-24T21:24:00.004-05:00

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!

2008-04-19T16:21:00.012-05:00

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

The Math of Open Source

2008-04-18T21:54:00.009-05:00

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!

Resellers A-plenty

2008-04-02T21:07:00.006-05:00

Last year at this time we were just defining the authorized reseller program. We were gearing up for a whole new world coming from pure open source software with some commercial business to today where we have much more open source Asterisk and exponentially more commercial Asterisk business. This is all good as Digium continues to invest in open source and commercial development.

Well, this year we have implemented what we believe to be a pretty substantial program with solid benefits to the resellers and the best open source telephony products out there.

So being attacked by competition is the sincerest form of flattery - being called out by a competitor on a press release gives us free press. Marketing 101: get your facts straight. Marketing 102: Don't call out your competitors. Especially when the story is not really 100% accurate, at least by company records. Good thing we don't list all the resellers that have signed up with us who currently are selling and phasing out other telephony systems today - from open source competitors to tier one IP Telephony leaders. Good for us. In the past 3 months, we have signed up and qualified over 250 data and voice resellers and continue to work closely with our new distributors to recruit resellers. Revenues reflect the success.

Our goal is to be the most channel friendly company in our segment. Offering best margins, great support, and best-in-class products to enable successful growth.

We love the channel, we love our strategy and we are making huge inroads while we continue to set sales and growth records.

Check us out: www.digium.com

Switchvox SMB 3.5/AA60 Shipped Today

2008-03-31T23:59:00.004-05:00

Just another fun day at Digium.

The San Diego team completed the software release and shipped ON TIME and as announced at Digium Asterisk World/VON and VoiceCon two weeks ago. The team really nailed it and busted tail today shipping all they could with pre-installed software, configured systems, and shipped to purchasers.

What is included?

Switchvox SMB 3.5
Switchvox A60 Appliance with Switchvox installed on the appliance (SOHO or SMB 3.5)

Take the worry out of unknown hardware and use the Digium AA60 and AA350 Appliance family for top notch operation and performance!

The web, the collateral, the channel training and slide decks via reseller portal, pricing, performance, you name it and the team finished it and more!

We have gotten far better at announcing and shipping products at Digium.

Check it out at www.digium.com/switchvox.