{"id":5331,"date":"2007-03-26T09:58:48","date_gmt":"2007-03-26T09:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/asterisk-appliance.html"},"modified":"2007-03-26T09:58:48","modified_gmt":"2007-03-26T09:58:48","slug":"asterisk-appliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/sip\/asterisk-appliance.html","title":{"rendered":"Asterisk Appliance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Once of the more interesting areas of growth in the VoIP market has been that of open-source appliances. I had a chance to see the Asterisk Appliance from Digium which they deem is a full-featured and cost-effective way to provide the under 50 user SMB with VoIP &ndash; or as their press release <a title=\"http:\/\/www.digium.com\/en\/mediacenter\/news\/viewpress.php?id=asterisk-appliance\" href=\"http:\/\/www.digium.com\/en\/mediacenter\/news\/viewpress.php?id=asterisk-appliance\">espouses<\/a>, Internet Telephony. The appliance is about the size of a typical home router.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Some of the functions included in the $995 device include:&nbsp;<\/div>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Complete Asterisk server <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Support for VoIP and analog phones to allow customers to use the legacy equipment they already own <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Full-featured PBX, interactive voice response (IVR), voicemail, conferencing and automatic call distribution (ACD) software <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Administrative features such as a setup wizard and autoprovisioning of Polycom IP phones <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Call queuing functionality <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Hardware-based echo cancellation <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Compact flash card or MMC to support voicemail and wireless applications with no major parts <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Craft port for debug for field technicians <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Five Ethernet ports (1 WAN, 4 LAN) <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Built-in router ideal for small offices <\/li>\n<li style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Eight analog ports supporting a mix of foreign exchange station (FXS) and foreign exchange office (FXO) interfaces to standard telephones <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">My take? This is a great idea. One of the hot button areas of the communications space in the last few months seems to be appliances. Apparently people are not thrilled with having to deal with pesky hardware configuration.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">These devices will likely make business owners feel secure as they look like routers and hubs and any other sort of networking equipment you may find in a small office.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">In addition, from a marketing standpoint, these appliances look great. Asterisk, <a title=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/ip-communications\/applianx.html\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/ip-communications\/applianx.html\">Applianx<\/a> and other communications appliance makers seem to have learned from Apple that the look of a product can have a dramatic impact on its uptake.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">In case you are interested in a bit of history, the first few companies in the communications space with designs worthy of Apple were <a title=\"http:\/\/www.tmcnet.com\/articles\/itmag\/0899\/0899bos.htm#9\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tmcnet.com\/articles\/itmag\/0899\/0899bos.htm#9\">TouchWave&rsquo;s WebSwitch<\/a> IP PBX which was purchased by Ericsson and the <a title=\"http:\/\/www.tmcnet.com\/articles\/itmag\/0899\/0899pubout.htm\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tmcnet.com\/articles\/itmag\/0899\/0899pubout.htm\">ORCA<\/a> from Nuera &ndash; now part of AudioCodes.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Back to Digium &ndash; Mark Spencer and Co. tell me we can expect a range of Asterisk Appliances in the near future. Stay tuned.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Once of the more interesting areas of growth in the VoIP market has been that of open-source appliances. I had a chance to see the Asterisk Appliance from Digium which they deem is a full-featured and cost-effective way to provide the under 50 user SMB with VoIP &ndash; or as their press release espouses,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199,197,198,189,191],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}