When the Brazilian government recently declared that its governmental IT systems would favor open-source software, it was not as earth-shaking as it might have been five years ago. Open-source software is now well-established in many IT applications.
Today, servers based on the open-source Linux operating system are widely deployed in computing applications, and now are used in some VoIP systems by major manufacturers in products, such as Alcatel’s OmniPCX IP PBX, which offers an implementation using IBM Linux servers.
Now open-source software is making inroads in VoIP software. Open-Source and VoIP Two open-source VoIP software systems have been making news of late: Asterisk and SIPfoundry. Both offer open-source IP PBXs, plus other software for VoIP systems, such as softphones and software loads for phones.
SIPfoundry, which has been operating its Web site since March 2004, had a kind of coming out party in January, formally announcing its IP PBX software, sipX and other products. The software is based on Linux and the SIP protocol, which is starting to dominate VoIP. The SIPfoundry community grew out of IP PBX software developed by Pingtel Corp., formerly a maker of SIP phones. As competition heated up from low-cost phone makers in Asia, Pingtel made a strategic change of direction. It had already developed an IP PBX software suite, and decided to take the product open-source, launching the SIPfoundry open-source community.
Pingtel will provide stable versions of the software, as it is developed, as well as consulting and installation services for service providers. Asterisk, started by software firm Digium Inc., launched in 1999, is more established than SIPfoundry, and its software is the basis of several VoIP services including VoicePulse Inc., a service for consumers and small business that is differentiated by a broad selection of features and applications.
Asterisk has an enthusiastic support community that will have its own pavilion at the upcoming Spring Voice on the Net (VON) conference. Scheduled participants include many vendors, such as VoIP service provider The NuFone Network, VoIP settlement company TransNexus Inc., VoIP contact-center software provider Aspect Communications Corp., another contact-center provider Aheeva Technology Inc., IT management firm Somix Technologies Inc. and high-performance computing firm Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI).
Sifting Out the Hype
Open-source communities have the image of a populist movement and tend to be evangelistic, sometimes minimizing the challenges and risks of using an open-source product. “Enthusiasm may be overtaking good sense, or at least the same rigor that normally would be applied to normal software purchases is not being applied to open-source,” says Julie Giera, vice president, IT management and services, Forrester Research Inc.
Giera’s studies of open-source software in IT generally, such as Linux or MySQL, show that, contrary to image, open-source software appears to cost more to operate. Than commercial software “Between 10 percent and 20 percent of the cost of software is the license. The rest is maintenance and support.
If that cost is more than commercial platforms, you don’t have to run cost models very long to see that open-source is more expensive than commercial software.” Giera is launching a study with 60 companies to track precisely the impacts of open-source on costs, and expects results by mid-2005.
There are benefits to open-source says Giera, such as, “the flexibility, not having to follow the vendor’s schedule for updates, increased control, or altruism and sharing code. And these are all valid business reasons. But saving money was not found to be true, even with Linux.” The chief benefit of open-source at this point may be the pricing pressure it has put on commercial providers of software.
Service providers, such as VoicePulse, do operate on Asterisk, but company principals had extensive experience with VoIP before launching and spent more than a year developing and refining the system. Risks would be greater, however, for an enterprise attempting to migrate its PBX to in-house Asterisk.
VoIP Open-Source Software
Asterisk, www.asterisk.org
SIPfoundry, www.sipfoundry.org
