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Presence with Asterisk

Aaron Rosenthal — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:42:45 +0000

Presence is one of those nifty little features that just totally impresses the heck out of most users… and it’s entirely possible with Asterisk+bluetooth. Presence is the ability for the IP PBX to recognize when someone’s in or out of the office. When you’re in the office, the IP PBX will route calls to your desk phone, and when you’re out of the office calls are automatically routed to your cell…its like magic.

Bluetooth is the primary technology that makes all this possible since most cell phones these days have bluetooth, plus it’s the perfect proximity based technology that just happen to be in our cell phones; ideal for presence. Here’s an article by Little Nerds which discusses how to get presence up and running specifically with Asterisk.

To make this work in a much larger office, and to have it work for an entire user population, I think it would be a great idea for handset manufacturers to start incorporating bluetooth into their phones for this very purpose. This way my desk phone is what recognizes my presence and the IP PBX could route calls accordingly even if I were in the office but not at my desk. I wonder if you could combine presence with extension mobility… that might be excessive!

Has anyone gotten presence to work with Asterisk using something other than Bluetooth?

Polycom SoundPoint IP 670 – now available for order

Aaron Rosenthal — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:41:25 +0000

So I just heard from my Polycom guy today that as of yesterday the Polycom IP670 phone is available for order. I had a few things to say about this phone in a previous blog here, but now that it’s available I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get one to play with at which point you’ll see a full review.

I’m quite surprised that the release of this phone has gone by almost entirely unnoticed. The fact that I’ve heard very little about this phone leads me to believe that there isn’t whole lot to this phone other than a color display. It seems like Polycom is really pushing theirApplications for their SoundPoint IP line which I haven’t found to be all that groundbreaking other than providing a more intuitive phone based interface for things like conferencing… nothing groundbreaking.

This is what I call groundbreaking interface>

not this>

You’ll probably see me write a blog reviewing these new Applications as there’s a lot more to talk about here than the IP670. Has anyone been working much with the Polycom SoundPoint Applications? Would love to hear your thoughts.

I hope Polycom comes out with many more pictures of this IP 670 because the only picture I could find on their website is EXTREMELY lackluster. I don’t get why they released their first SoundPoint color phone with a picture of a color screen that looks more like a DOS prompt. I’ve seen the color screen on the Polycom Microsoft Communicator phones which is quite sexy and assuming Polycom is using the same LCD screen, it should look pretty nice on the IP670. I honestly think Polycom is overdue for a re-design of the SoundPoint IP line.

I really hope the Polycom CX700 Microsoft Optimized Device will ultimately adopt the same open’ness of the SoundPoint phones once Microsoft releases their exclusive rights stranglehold on Polycom. I certainly hope that’s the case cause these phones are HOT!

Regardless of the IP670 not hitting the news hard, it should still be a great piece of hardware. The SoundPoint IP phones are rock solid and work swell with Asterisk. Polycom still has a few things to sort out with Asterisk (call barge anyone?) but overall these phones have proven more stable than other SIP phones we’ve tested like Grandstream, Snom and Aastra.

The color expansion module is a nice touch too. But seriously!!.. who took these pictures?? Polycom almost has me convinced that these color displays are only green. Something tells me they haven’t even photographed the new phones yet and just had someone photoshop some color.. aka green.. onto the IP650.

Where is Asterisk going in 2008?

Aaron Rosenthal — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:33:36 +0000

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.