Almost halfway through 2008 and already we’re seeing Asterisk everywhere. Asterisk has permeated almost every market in which VoIP is used, from the small business market to the carrier space. The question is, where is Asterisk going to pull ahead in 2008 and in what market? The past 12 months leading up to this point has seen Asterisk really emerge as THE small business VoIP solution, and whether it be a premise based IP PBX or hosted VoIP, chances are Asterisk is being used somewhere. It seems that Digium’s push right now is heavily into the SMB market, which is a good move because by capturing the SMB market, which is far more accommodating to new and cost saving technologies, you’ll eventually capture the large enterprise market.

Key players like Digium and Fonality have been going head to head in the SMB arena for a while now. You can’t visit a VoIP discussion about “which IP PBX should I get?” without hearing someone mentioning Asterisk. Digium is making the right moves with their acquisition of Switchvox in Nov. ‘07 and their release of the new AA60 which is ideal for any SMB business plus Trixbox is doing the same with their own appliance. I would argue that neither of these companies have a viable product yet for large enterprises (300+seats), for example the Switchvox software does not support clustering for fail over (they’re working on it). But with Asterisk almost a household name in the SMB IP PBX market, it’s only a matter of time until larger enterprises start to catch on….. and they are. Already many big organizations are using Asterisk to integrate disparate systems and provide communications enabled business processes (CEBP). Companies like Thomas Howe Company have made a living doing some very interesting CEBP projects… look em up. I’m more interested in Asterisks evolution as a full blown IP PBX within big business.

Fortune 1000 companies are already playing with Asterisk but the question is “can Asterisk be deployed to dozens of sites for thousands of users and be just as reliable as my Cisco infrastructure?”.. and answer is “it depends”. There is no question that there are live Asterisk systems supporting tens-of-thousands of users, offering the flexibility, scalability, and cost savings few large enterprises can ignore, but the real problem is that not all Asterisk systems are created equal. In 2008 we are going to see the emergence of key Asterisk implementation firms, not Digium or Fonality, but engineering firms who know how to mold Asterisk into systems that can satisfy the needs of a big business while providing support, maintenance, and administration which are services that must be offered if Asterisk is ever going to give Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya a run for their money.

I’d be interested to hear from this community about ones experience with Asterisk within a larger organizations and how Asterisk was able to satisfy their “big business” demands.