FreeSwitch Attempts To Punctuate Asterisk!
July 25, 2008
(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading ...IT geeks have long known about the open source world of Asterisk - the inexpensive PBX alternative which allows you to build the phone system you want in the way you want. Over the last few years, Asterisk has 
developed a huge community of members who seek to build applications, create configuration schemes, bug test, and build entire PBXs, often with advanced functionality. Users are creating applications and features which match those of the major PBX manufacturers. As a result, Asterisk’s power and influence have become disruptive in the PBX market space, forcing lower costs and increasing flexibility and features among the key players. Asterisk’s owner, Digium, has made quite a business selling equipment, PCI cards, and appliances which are compatible with Asterisk.
Asterisk is well positioned to make open source main stream in the PBX space. If it looks as though nothing will stop Asterisk from taking over the phone switch market, there is always something new on the horizon. For a couple of years, a scrappy, not quite fully baked alternative to Asterisk has also been brewing in the open source world. FreeSwitch and its fledgling community is not as active as Asterisk’s and it can be much harder to figure out how to get going with FreeSwitch and get the support you need. However, due to its robustness and superior ability to scale, the FreeSwitch momentum is rapidly building. And with a stabile new build of the code promising automatic speech recognition and text to speech, FreeSwitch is clearly on the path to win developer attention.
While Asterisk may still be the darling of small and mid sized companies looking to build a phone system on the cheap, FreeSwitch is finding favor with those looking to build advanced communication services and platforms which seek to serve hundreds or thousands of users.
Of course, all of this interest in “free” can only serve to create gas for the sales departments at Nortel, Avaya, Cisco, and Shoretel, who would be quick to tell you that their systems are more robust and reliable than their upstart competitors. They might also tell you that while open source is thought of as free, the systems that Asterisk and FreeSwitch run on are not. They must still be hosted, supported, configured, and maintained, none of which is free.
At the moment, innovation is leading to lower costs across the board, whether you choose an incumbent manufacturer or build it yourself using Asterisk and FreeSwitch. And most all of the new systems support modern VoIP/SIP connections which can save you even more on your monthly telecom expenses. The choices and possibilities in the phone system market today are nearly limitless. As long as your budget, patience, and vision is unlimited as well.
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4 Responses to “FreeSwitch Attempts To Punctuate Asterisk!”
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I would love to see a plug and play version of Asterisk or FreeSwitch that home users, SOHOs and SMEs can use without the aid of a Geek. It would have to be worth at least $50 a copy to a parent with teenage daughters and even more as a replacement for a TDM
small business phone system.
FreeSWITCH rocks!
Best telephony platform I ever used, I highly recommend it, it simple rocks.
We’ve done quite a bit of work with both FreeSwitch and Asterisk. They are both great, but FreeSwitch shows the potential to scale for much larger applications. It is really exciting stuff to be working with.
If the FreeSwitch community grows a bit larger, we should see some really astounding advances in the next year or so.
Re: “They might also tell you that while open source is thought of as free, the systems that Asterisk and FreeSwitch run on are not. They must still be hosted, supported, configured, and maintained, none of which is free.”
Let’s see. We can buy Dell’s biggest, baddest machine for about $5,000 and host literally thousands of extensions and connections with FreeSwitch for little more than the cost of the Internet bandwidth to support the connections. Run the hardware numbers AND license fees to support an equivalent number of users and calls on a Nortel, Avaya, Cisco, or Shoretel system. No Brainer or No Brains. I guess it’s a matter of perspective.