In 2003, Asterisk was emerging as a powerful open source PBX with VoIP capability. The availability of Zapata telephony TDM boards were critical to its deployment. Back then, high density CTI boards with on-board DSP were the norm. Linux had earned grudgingly acceptance in the server world but CTI was still dominated by Windows based board manufacturers. The boards were good but the overall cost of managing a development team to keep up with the PBX feature-set was getting prohibitive. VoIP was being mentioned and there was anxiety. Imagine having to maintain a software team to manage and enhance a PBX feature-set using the board manufacturer’s API and survive a paradigm shift. Having benefited from Linux greatly, when we heard of Asterisk, we were very eager to try it and adapt it for call center use.
Looking back at the last 7 years, the adaptation of IP telephony has been faster than expected. Today Asterisk has become main stream thanks to Mark Spencer, Jim Dixon and hundreds of volunteer software developers over the years. What is more fascinating is the way peer review of the open source model has considerably reduced the time for maturity of the software.
There is a clear sense that Asterisk has lead the way for the adaptation of IP telephony in the CTI world. I would not venture to count the number of Asterisk installations around the world but it is clearly overwhelming. The total number of call center using Asterisk is equally daunting and to a large part, the adaptation of VoIP has been driven the ability of Asterisk based call centers wanting to move to VoIP to reduce cost and long term contracts with the TDM circuit providers. As the availability of good call center software for Asterisk increases, the pace of migration is going to get faster.