New Texas Asterisk Group Starts with a Bang!
TXAAP.org (Texas Association of Asterisk Professionals) had their first meeting last night (October 9th, 2007) and it was a great success. Damien Monk from Unite Tech chaired the meeting, ABP provided the location, and Digium was the guest vendor! You know you have something or someone good in a User Group when Digium is present. We discussed topics like the Digium Appliance, Asterisk 1.4.x, features to add to Asterisk, Thirdlane PBX Manager, and Mobotix IP Smart Camera. I will touch lightly on each topic and explain the outcome.
Digium News:
Digium defiantly impressed me with their new Management changes and focus on the community. While all of the suggestions were taking place, both Randy Bell and Erin Huskey were taking notes and really paying attention to the concerns of the room. Randy did a great job informing everyone about the different Digium people that are great contacts to get changes made to the open source code, feature suggestions, and even a contact for the User Groups to register on the Digium website. I am very happy that Digium was able to come to our meeting and represent Asterisk directly.
Digium Appliance:
Digium presented the AA50 to the group and talked about the benefits that the product brings for example, it can handle 50 registered extensions and 25 bridged G.711 calls. The appliance does give you ability to have a stable, tested, version of Asterisk for the 2-50 user market. The AA50 is programmed with the Embedded Business Edition that includes a Digium GUI. The GUI is very similar to the Digium Now product from Digium; however, it is a little different since the Appliance is completely flash based and space is limited.
The group expressed an interest in the Auto Tuning tool that is included so that implementation and configuration of the analog cards is much easier than in server versions of the Asterisk Platform.
Asterisk 1.4.x:
The group had several questions about the stability of Asterisk 1.4.x and Digium told us that they are looking to release a stable version of both the Open Source Asterisk and Asterisk Business Edition that will include some cool new features. Specifically, the Asterisk Business Edition is rumored to have T.38 termination and several enhancements to the operating environment.
Mr. Monk mentioned that he has been testing a vanilla implementation of CentOS 5.0, Asterisk 1.4.x, and FreePBX 2.3. At this time, everything is going well and he will keep us posted on the status of his efforts. He will also implement the same solution only using the Asterisk 1.2.x version that is currently tried and true.
Customer Driven Feature Request:
The main feature requirement that I pulled away from the meeting was Shared Line Appearance or Key-system emulation. We know that the SIP protocol can send Hints to give you BLF capability; however, you cannot BLF a physical port in order to give Key-system like operation. Digium was very receptive to this idea and took down notes in order to get it back to their development team and work on this feature.
Damien suggested that they update or incorporate the Meter Maid patch into the 1.4.x version. The Meter Maid patch is out of date and is not current with Asterisk at this time. The patch will allow you to broadcast Hints from the Parked Extensions or Parking Lots so that you can BLF monitor the status of the Parked Extension. You can then label that BLF key Line 1 and give the customer the feel of a key system yet give them the PBX features as well.
Thirdlane PBX Manager:
We announced some news about the Thirdlane PBX Manager product. Thirdlane is working on releasing an ISO version of their product that is using the 1.2.x Asterisk to help resolve some of the issues with the current distribution that is based on Asterisk 1.4.x. We also announced that Thirdlane is also working on incorporating a T.38 Fax to E-mail server into the ISO distribution as well. The group seemed to react very well to this news along with general knowledge of a Multi-Tenant version of the Product. Multi-Tenant gives you ability to maintain one server and create several Tenants or companies within that server. This gives the VAR the ability to create a Hosted Platform and create a recurring revenue stream.
Mobotix IP Smart Camera:
ABP Technology also introduced the Mobotix IP Smart Camera to the group since most of the people there did not know too much about it. We discussed the different applications that you can perform and the different features that you can use to really set yourself apart from the rest of the security guys out there. You can find out more about the different application by going to my Mobotix blog at http://www.abptech.com/blog/mobotix-training-equals-neuron-stimilating-monitoring-applications/. The Mobotix camera is a great way to add value to your services and offer a complete IP Communications solution including surveillance! I know that if I was a business owner and I could go to one person that is already supporting my network and they offered me a new phone system at a great price and a Camera that has the intelligence to be a proactive and not reactive solution, then I would be ecstatic.
As you can see, there were many things that occurred in the first TXAAP.org meeting and I consider is a great success. TXAAP.org is planning on having meetings every 2nd Tuesday of each month at a location to be disclosed closer the time of said event. Please visit www.txaap.org to register for this user group and get on the e-mail distribution list. If you have any questions about the products that I discussed, give your local ABP Technology sales representative a call.
Your Friendly Spikey Haired Sales Rep,
Jeff Ogden
