Being at the right place at the right time can either be the result of visionary foresight and meticulous planning – or a fortuitous turn of events. If you live in Miami, then you are the beneficiary of a fortuitous turn of events given that IT Expo/ Digium Asterisk World is being held in your fair city beginning next Monday. For the rest of us, given that half the country is currently being blanketed by ice and snow, a little meticulous planning to make our way to sunny south Florida for the show seems very worthwhile. Plus, who could object to a brief reprieve from winter?
IT Expo/ Digium Asterisk World is the perfect venue to better understand why open source telephony is a technology that is at the right place at the right time. Underlying weakness in the economy is forcing end-users to conservatively allocate each and every dollar spent. Voice over IP is a technology that offers a demonstratable return on investment and is predicted to surpass traditional telephony in the number of lines installed this year. Couple the movement to VoIP with the increasing adoption of open source as a lower cost alternative to traditional proprietary solutions – and you get Asterisk.
We’d like to think that Asterisk emerged as the world’s leading open source telephony platform due to visionary foresight and meticulous planning; however, it’s really more of a fortuitous turn of events. Who, ten years ago at the time Asterisk was begun, would have predicted today’s simultaneous intersection of high level trends that are now driving the adoption of Asterisk - namely, VoIP, open source, and a struggling economy? As a result, the numbers associated with Asterisk adoption are truly amazing. I’ll be talking about these Asterisk adoption statistics along with more detailed information on the industry and economic trends mentioned here during my keynote address at IT Expo/Digium Asterisk World. Please join me at 10:30 on Tuesday in room B217/218 for the address. Hope to see you then – and don’t forget to pack your flip flops!
