The global economic downturn has increased the urgency among companies of all sizes to reduce costs and find smarter and more efficient ways to do business. From our perspective, this imperative is moving VoIP and open-source telecom solutions, like Asterisk PBX, to center stage.
Clearly, the march to VoIP - among customers and carriers - began before the current worldwide economic crisis. Still, for us and other VoIP providers business is brisk as more and more companies rush to implement VoIP solutions. Enterprise customers in growing numbers are turning to VoIP for inter-branch, intra-company calling while more and more call centers, hotels and SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses) rely on it for all inbound and outbound international calls.
Another smarter, less expensive way to do business is open-source telephony - specifically, Asterisk PBX. So far this year, we’ve noted increased awareness and acceptance of Asterisk PBX among customers in South Africa, Latin America and other markets. We’ve even seeing PBX procurements by multinational companies where Asterisk is being considered side-by-side with Cisco and Avaya.
The reason is simple: Asterisk PBX is a flexible, scalable and reliable solution that offers the same advanced features and functionality as proprietary PBXs but at a fraction of the cost. For these reasons, Asterisk PBX now has a seat at the table.
In the Caribbean, we’re also seeing keen interest in Asterisk PBX but for one additional reason: the large, installed base of Nortel PBX. For many years, Nortel was the PBX that Cable & Wireless (now Lime) installed for customers throughout the region. Many of these switches are at or near the end of the product’s life-cycle. Compounding the normal anxiety over switch replacement is Nortel’s bankruptcy filing earlier this year. At this point, nobody knows what Nortel will look like when it emerges from bankruptcy protection. In the meantime, customers are worried about replacement parts upgrades and service and many of them are turning to Asterisk.
We expect an even stronger second half of the year in the sale of Digium Asterisk and Digium Switchvox IP PBX. In any case, we believe VoIP is moving to center stage and Asterisk is right behind it.
