"Some of the most compelling data that we collected was simply around the wide variety of applications that Asterisk is now being used to address," said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA. "Of course, the early adopters are still there, but from a purpose and density standpoint there is now a much broader range of applications being built on Asterisk, ranging from individual companies seeking to provide their own telecoms services, to application development firms that are using Asterisk as a platform to develop systems for sale to the business and government markets throughout the world."

Common applications being built on Asterisk included normal office telephone systems, IVR/self-service systems, systems for use in inbound and outbound call centers, and hosted telephone and VoIP long distance systems. Other unique applications included distance-learning systems, fax blasting platforms, video platforms and gateways. The study also showed that educational institutions around the world are using Asterisk in their laboratory environments, allowing students to get hands-on development experience in a real-world scenario.

Results also show that the main Linux distributions being used by Asterisk developers in the study are CentOS (34%), Debian 4 (20%) and Fedora (16%). Ubuntu and Slackware are both being used by about 6% of developers surveyed, with a host of other platforms being used by less than 1% each.

The version of Asterisk being used was split between 1.2 (49%) and 1.4 (46%), with the final 5% still using 1.0. Additionally, Asterisk was observed to have spread beyond the confines of North America, with a third of those in the study hailing from Europe.

The analysis was conducted as a result of a free board giveaway program, run by PIKA during July and August 2007. The program allowed Asterisk developers to order one of PIKA’s analog or digital Asterisk boards free of charge. Signing up for a board required imparting some detailed information about the user’s/developer’s Asterisk environment. Based on this information, PIKA was able to present its conclusions about current Asterisk usage. The full data from the program can be viewed at http://www.pikatechnologies.com/products/PIKAforAsterisk-market_study.htm.

PIKA is exhibiting and presenting at Digium/Asterisk World as part of Fall VON, October 29 through November 1 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, MA, and will be holding a draw for 2 FREE appliances. Interested parties can visit and learn more about the company's new Appliance and Gateway products at Booth D1325, part of the Asterisk World Pavilion.

At Fall VON, PIKA business development manager David Clarke will participate in the panel discussion, "Echo Cancellation: Even Packets get Voice Quality Issues" taking place from 3:45pm to 5:00pm on Thursday, November 1. The panel will discuss why packet-based networks are plagued with problems like echo cancellation, phase and jitter and the various approaches to rectifying these issues.

Source: Danny Sullivan w/ inMedia