OSS (Open Source Software) is developed in a manner, which is public collaborative and the source code will be made available to the user. It comes with a free license so that anybody can freely change and distribute the same to anybody for any purpose.
The state of OSS has advanced to a great extent, enabling even an individual to set up his own IPPBX at his home very casually and easily, following certain explicit step by step instructions. The asterisk open source may be equated to a pack of Legos, since the people interested to create communication applications for their use can create an asterisk PBX setup or IVR system or VoIP gateways or a conference bridge or anything of their imagination. Its simplicity can be seen by the leverage with which an ordinary computer can be converted into a feature packed voice communication server.
In the communications industry, Asterisk plays a highly enviable vital role. It is a free OSS framework and hence this platform has been widely adopted by many organizations internationally. Free does not mean casual or uncared or restricted features. This open source IP PBX has been time tested and relied on by many users as is evidenced by the following statistics. It has been downloaded more than 2,000,000 times through deployment in 170 countries and the registered community members are crossing the 86,000 mark. Its dependability is further testified by its usage by most of the Fortune 500 companies. Its servers worldwide crosses a million mark. The new endpoints are about 1.3 million.
It is very much helpful to the vendors who resell open source Asterisk enterprise VoIP systems. Deployments in open source IP PBX will cover the entire range of products involved in building scalable, interoperable and flexible business phone systems/ VoIP environments, inclusive of application hosting, SIP/ TDM based connectivity.
Many advanced features like voicemail, call queuing, intercom dialing, conference bridging, automated attendant, etc., are inbuilt in the asterisk PBX setup. Normally, in the propietary phone systems, these features will certainly mean considerable extra costs to the user. The protocol agnostic and future proof Asterisk technology enable the user to use any traditional or VoIP telephony technologies or any standard IP phone of his choice. Using Asterisk, you can build the customized communication solution from scratch..
Other than these two DIY options, you may plan for a turnkey solution offered by Asterisk. The advantages here are usage of unified communication features, intuitive user interface, fixed and mobile convergence and universal inbox. Though the facilities are innumerable, the pricing will be at an astonishingly low level, as compared to the cost of traditional telephone system.
