WARP Xtra

Hi! Given that this is my first (of hopefully many) posts to Warp Extra, I should probably introduce myself.  I’m Paul Noseworthy, and am forced to be a bit schizophrenic at Pika; working as both a Software Development Manager and a Project Manager for our various offerings.  I manage a strong, diverse team of 15 or so software designers, and interface with all other groups to deliver projects of high quality that are generally on time and mostly on budget (hey – celebratory beers cost money).   Pika is small and open, so my group works directly with Hardware guys (aka the Dark Side), Sales and Marketing (aka the Very Dark Side), Product Management and Customer Care.
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I want to direct your attention to a discussion that is going on within the trixbox.org forum about the recent announcement of FreePBX being available on the WARP appliance.  If you are interested, you can follow it at : trixbox.org discussion on WARP.

David

As earlier announced on this site, we need developers to test FreePBX on the PIKA WARP. This is your chance to try out the images of FreePBX on the WARP. If you wish to participate, please download and install the images for FreePBX as follows.

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There have been many requests for a GUI to run on the PIKA WARP appliance. The one that has been requested most often has been FreePBX. We will be posting within the next couple of days a call for testers and details on how to put FreePBX on the WARP. First though, a little history and some credit to those who made it possible.

We began the process of getting FreePBX ported to run on the WARP several months ago. In this regard we owe a big thanks to Ethan Schroeder of Schmooze Communications LLC for integrating FreePBX and its dependencies into the PADS framework for the WARP. Ethan did the initial port and is responsible for getting it to work.

We also want to thank Philippe Lindheimer and the rest of the contributors to FreePBX for their excellent work in providing FreePBX to the Asterisk community and Philippe for helping in getting it to run on the WARP.

Keep watching pikawarp.org over the next few days and weeks as we will be posting the call for testers as well as many other posts about using FreePBX on the WARP and things learnt during its development.

Skar

Here’s a message from our Product Marketing group that will be going out in the next couple of days.  I draw your attention to the availability of a low density alternative platform for NMS developers looking for a change in vendors. Continue Reading »

Microsoft’s announcement of the February release of Office Communication Server 2007 R2 on Oct 14 didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.  Some might say they welcome Microsoft’s further forays into the phone system business as it validates the opportunity available to VoIP based phone systems.  I personally wish they would leave it alone.  Granted, it is a huge market out there but these guys have the ability to gobble up significant chunks of it quickly and efficiently.  In many cases they already own a good chunk of a business’s infrastructure so they are positioned nicely to add in the PBX.  The other slightly disturbing thing is that they are not being selective of the market segments they are pursuing.  The Microsoft Response Point solutions seem ideally suited for SMBs without an existing Microsoft back office infrastructure.  In larger organizations and on up to huge corporations they have Microsoft OCS to plunk in.  My suggestion to any developer out there building an Asterisk based PBX is to know your competition well, and be able to defend your value against the likes of what Microsoft has to offer.  I for one don’t expect them to go away.

David Clarke
WARP community director

Part of my job at PIKA is to identify valuable partner solutions that can be used by WARP developers to add value to their product.  Recently I have been on a bit of a VoIP QOS kick and have just started digging for what solutions may be available for users of Asterisk and WARP.  Here’s the scenario.  You are a VoIP service provider selling SIP trunks to SMBs.  To generate extra $$$ you have created an SMB PBX solution on WARP.  Now, with your Voip customers using your PBX you are in the enviable position of owning endpoint equipment at both ends.  My understanding of VoIP QOS is this now provides you much more control over quality.  My questions are……What QOS mechanisms make sense to implement in such a scenario?  Are there solutions available that help?  How can they be built into a WARP appliance running Asterisk?  If you build, sell, or dream of such a solution I would really like to hear your comments. 

In Greg Galitzine’s “From the Expert Corner” (TMC) last Friday, in an article discussing Telrex Call Recording Solution for Digium Asterisk,  reference is made to the agreement that was announced a year ago (Oct 2007) where 3Com would carry the DIGIUM appliance.  The Digium appliance packaged with Asterisk Business Edition was listed on 3Com’s website for a while, but has recently been discontinued.  Does anyone know what happened? 

Communications Developer eNews – October 2, 2008

3Com Asterisk IP Communication Platform EOL statement