What is Asterisk? for TADSummit Asia 2020

© 2020 Sangoma Technologies
SANGOMA
TECHNOLOGIES
What is Asterisk?

33© 2020 Sangoma Technologies
What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is an open-source framework for
building multi-protocol, real-time
communications applications and solutions.
A simpler definition:
Asterisk is an open-source software
package that converts an ordinary
computer into a communication server

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk abstracts the complexities of communications
protocols and technologies, allowing you to concentrate
on creating innovative products and solutions.

What is Asterisk?
You can use Asterisk to
build:
voice
video and
text communications
applications

What is Asterisk?
Examples:
Business phone systems (also known as IP PBXs)
Call distributors
VoIP gateways
Conference bridges
Voicemail servers
and all kinds of other applications that involve real-time communications.

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is to real-time voice and video applications as Apache is to web
applications o MariaDB to Databases applications: the underlying platform.
Asterisk includes both low and high-level components that significantly
simplify the process of building these complex applications

What is Asterisk?

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is used by small businesses, large businesses, call centers, carriers
and government agencies worldwide and all type of industry’s sectors
Asterisk is free and Open-source and is sponsored by

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is Open-source software
It means that Asterisk is free to
use and that you are free to
modify Asterisk to fit your needs
Both freedoms are guaranteed by
the GPL: The license under which
Asterisk is distributed

What is Asterisk?
Open-source is a dynamic model for building great
software rather than depending on the ideas and
efforts of a single company
Open-source projects tap the talents of an entire
global community of software developers
Open-source software has many advantages over the
traditional proprietary approach, because the source
code for the software is tested and reviewed by
thousands of developers

What is Asterisk?
Bugs are frequently caught before they can
make their way into production systems
The few bugs that make it into released
versions of the software are quickly uncovered
and patched by the community
Asterisk is the product of almost two decades of
development by a community of developers
from all over the world

What is Asterisk?
One of the benefits of open-source projects is
that allows full control of the software
releases.
With Security flaws from Proprietary Software
you must place your trust in the manufacturer
since nobody outside of the manufacturer has
a chance to review the code
Open-source code undergoes constant review
by the international community which helps to
identify and eliminate vulnerabilities

What is Asterisk?
Many people say that since Asterisk is Open-Source, anybody can modify
or inject malicious code in the source code
This is not true since the Asterisk community had implemented a lot of
processes are in place to review and accept code to the project
Hashes and checksums are constantly used to make sure that
what you install is what you think it is

What is Asterisk?
Open-source is also extraordinarily
flexible with proprietary solutions
With Close-source solutions only
the manufacturer can make changes
to the software
With Open-source you are free to
adapt the code to meet your
requirements

What is Asterisk?
Open-source software is
much less expensive than
proprietary software
You do not need to pay any
license to download it, install
it, compile it and use it

What is Asterisk?
In some cases the cost is literally nothing, no license fees, no
maintenance charges and no support fees
Of course commercial support is available for most top-tier Open-
source projects and Sangoma offers several support options for
Asterisk

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is the product of almost two decades of
development by a community of developers from all
over the world
The Asterisk project got started back in when an
innovative Open-source developer named Mark
Spencer released the initial source code to the public
Asterisk was originally developed to serve as the
phone system for Mark’s Linux Support Business

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk’s pragmatic mix of features and
functions quickly captured the imaginations of
developers worldwide
What started out as a basic office phone system
grew into a mature powerful platform for
handling virtually any communications function
Code contributions from hundreds of open-
source developers allowed Asterisk to mature
at a remarkable pace

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk has gone on to power over a million
communication systems in over 170 countries
worldwide
Today Asterisk is the world's premier open-
source communications platform
Products and solutions based on Asterisk
represent as much as 18% of the overall
business communications market each day
Many millions of minutes of phone calls are
connected over Asterisk systems worldwide

Sangoma, as the sponsor of Asterisk sells a suite of
products that help users make the most of Asterisk
What is Asterisk?

Merged the two largest open-source
communications suppliers into one
Industry leading value-based unified
communications supplier
Broader Product Offering
Leverages Complementary Businesses and
Channel
Improved Global Channel Coverage
What is Asterisk?

What is Asterisk?
Complete UC Solutions
Phone system / PBX
Key Unified Communication
Features
IP Phones & Mobile/Desktop
Softphone
Connectivity Hardware and Software
Network Connection (SIP Trunks)
All from a single vendor
Available as on-premise
equipment or as a cloud-based
service Leading Business / Unified Communications Solution Provider

What is Asterisk?
Sangoma has the broadest enterprise communications stack in the industry. Their stack
includes Open-source projects like Asterisk and FreePBX, communication APIs from
Apidaze, almost every type of enterprise communications platform and service (both
cloud and on-premise), through to carrier services.
With Sangoma, businesses of all sizes can find affordable cloud and on-premise
enterprise communications systems with advanced functionality.

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is modular
Includes hundreds of functions that can
be assembled to create custom solutions
or turnkey products
The blocks in the Asterisk tool kit
encapsulate some complex technologies
including communications protocols like
SIP, ISDN media, WebRTC, etc.

What is Asterisk?
Handling functions like recording and playback, and call
management and reporting functions
Other blocks are higher level and provide pre-built functionality
including voice mail, call queuing, and parking
Application developers combine these blocks using one of several
application programming interfaces

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk supports several standard Voice Over IP protocols, including the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Media Gateway Control Protocol
(MGCP), H.323 and WebRTC
Asterisk supports most SIP telephones, acting both as registrar and back-
to-back user agent
It can serve as a gateway between IP phones and the PSTN via T- or E-
carrier interfaces or analog FXO cards

What is Asterisk?
The Inter-Asterisk eXchange (IAX) protocol, RFC 5456, native to Asterisk,
provides efficient trunking of calls between Asterisk PBX systems, in
addition to distributing some configuration logic
Many VoIP service providers support it for call completion into the PSTN,
often because they themselves have deployed Asterisk or offer it as a
hosted application

What is Asterisk?
By supporting a variety of traditional and VoIP telephony services, Asterisk
allows deployers to build telephone systems, or migrate existing systems to
new technologies
Some sites are using Asterisk to replace proprietary PBXes, others provide
additional features, such as voice mail or voice response menus, or virtual
call shops, or to reduce cost by carrying both local and long-distance calls
over the Internet

What is Asterisk?
In addition to VoIP protocols, Asterisk supports traditional circuit-switching
protocols such as ISDN and SS7
This requires appropriate hardware interface cards
Each protocol requires the installation of software modules. In Asterisk
release 16 the Opus audio codec is supported

What is Asterisk?
A typical server class computer can handle hundreds of concurrent calls and thousands
of users
If you do outgrow an Asterisk system you can upgrade without losing your investment
just upgrade to replace the computer
If you have a truly massive system you can run various functions on separate computers
You can even run your phone system on virtual Hardware locally in your data center or
in a public cloud

What is Asterisk?
If you're not a developer don't
panic, you don't have to be a geek
to use Asterisk
There are several ways to take
advantage of the power of Asterisk
without building your own
solutions from scratch

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk powers many different
communications applications with the most
common being business phone systems
These range from embedded solutions built for
the SoHo market, all the way up to enterprise
unified communication systems that handle
thousands of simultaneous calls
PBXs, Call Centers, Predictive Dialers,
Conference Bridges are a few to name

What is Asterisk?
Features like automated attendant, voice
messaging, call queuing and interactive voice
response, were all expensive proprietary add-
ons
Most features things like voicemail required a
per-seat license as well as the add-on hardware
Integration with external applications was
either impossible or required yet another
expensive proprietary add-on

What is Asterisk?
Worst of all if you wanted to outgrow your system you generally had
to replace everything: the PBX, the phones, the add-on components,
and sometimes even the wiring
Anything that can run Linux can run Asterisk
Rather than paying an exorbitant price for a platform that only the
manufacturer can service, you can run Asterisk-based phone
systems on commodity equipment that anyone can repair or
upgrade
Even better, that flexibility extends to the phones you use with
Asterisk
Asterisk supports several open standards VoIP protocols including
the industry standard SIP protocol and WebRTC protocol

What is Asterisk?
You are free to use any standards-based phone you
like with Asterisk
That said Sangoma offers a line of standards-based
phones that are specially built to work with Asterisk
and to take advantage of a number of its advanced
features
Speaking of which that's another great advantage of
Asterisk: all of those value-added features the
proprietary vendors charge extra for those are
included in Asterisk for free

What is Asterisk?
Voicemail
Automated Attendant
Call Queuing
Call Recording
Even things like Email integration
Multi-party conference bridging and CTI are all standard with Asterisk

What is Asterisk?
You can use your own servers
or even PC’s in order to grow
or add a new functionalities to
your current Telephony system
without the need for special
type of hardware

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk makes a great ACD (Automated Call
Distributor)
The native Queue application makes it simple to
distribute calls across a large pool of agents
The integrated attendant and IVR features allow
callers to route themselves to the appropriate
queue or to handle the request without ever
talking to an agent

What is Asterisk?
Call recording makes it easy to monitor agents
for quality and training purposes or to capture
calls for regulatory compliance
Truly advanced call center functionality things
like skills-based routing can be built onto
Asterisk systems using the open programming
interfaces

What is Asterisk?
Call centers rely on real-time and historical reports
to properly manage their operations
Asterisk includes several levels of reporting
including a detailed queue log, traditional call
detail records, fine-grained call event logs and real
time event ,tracked by the manager interface
Even better, Asterisk’s native support for VoIP
makes it trivial to set up remote agents or to flow
traffic between multiple call centers
Two features that generally add significantly to the
cost of a legacy solution

What is Asterisk?
You can also scale Asterisk-based call centers by
simply installing additional Asterisk servers to
handle the load
This becomes even more powerful when you
mash it up with elastic resources from a private
or public cloud
There are several approaches to rolling out an
Asterisk-based call center

What is Asterisk?
You can build from scratch, you can install an open-
source package, or you can purchase a prebuilt call
center solution based on Asterisk
Building from scratch gives you absolute flexibility but
takes the most effort and technical skill
Starting with an Open-source or commercial package
based on Asterisk will significantly reduce the amount of
time and effort that's required but tends to be
somewhat less flexible
Regardless of your approach an Asterisk-based solution
will be significantly less expensive and infinitely more
adaptable than a proprietary legacy system

What is Asterisk?
You would probably be surprised at the
number of carriers and communications
service providers that use Asterisk
Asterisk is a critical part of their network
It's frequently used to build value-added
services. Things like hosted PBX systems,
Network IVR solutions, prepaid calling
card services or voicemail
Paired with open source SIP proxy
software, Asterisk clusters are even used
to replace core switching systems

What is Asterisk?
The communications business has
become extremely competitive in recent
years in no small part due to
advancements pioneered by Asterisk
Carriers were once at the mercy of
network equipment vendors for both
core switching gear and adjuncts
Today they can build their own using
free software and commodity hardware
and saving millions
And just as with business phone systems
and call center solutions, carrier
solutions can either be built from scratch
or installed as a package

What is Asterisk?
Because of the complexity of
carrier networks, most carrier
deployments of Asterisk tend
to be custom
Business phone systems, call
centers and carrier networks
are the three largest
applications for Asterisk but
they're certainly not the only
ones

What is Asterisk?
One of the best features of Asterisk is its
flexibility
It can be configured to perform virtually
any communications tasks you can envision
This makes it ideal for crafting custom
communication solutions or for
communications enabling business
processes

What is Asterisk?
With over a million production
deployments it would be impossible to
mention all of the use cases, but some of
the more interesting ones to date include:
A video sign language translation service
A peer-to-peer phone system used to
provide communications in disaster zones

What is Asterisk?
Radio telephony gateways for law enforcement
Low-cost global calling solutions for workers on offshore
drilling rigs
Simple reliable SIP integration for public safety access
points
Support for enhanced video conferencing and screen-
sharing using WebRTC technologies
Integration with Internet of Things devices connected
with SIP video endpoints
These are all solutions that would have been either
expensive or impossible without Asterisk

What is Asterisk?

What is Asterisk?
If you are now convinced and ready to replace
your legacy system with an Asterisk-based
solution, there are essentially three options for
doing it:
you can build a solution from scratch
you can start out with a pre-built software
package and extend it or,
you can buy a turnkey solution

What is Asterisk?
If you're a developer or a Systems Administrator
you can build your own phone system from
scratch
To do this you’ll need a pretty good knowledge
of Linux, networking and script programming
Telephony experience isn't strictly necessary but
will certainly reduce the learning curve

What is Asterisk?
If you're good at learning on your own from a book, I would
recommend that you find a copy of O'Reilly Asterisk: The
Definitive Guide, written by a team of leading Asterisk
experts
The Definitive Guide is the Bible on all things about Asterisk
It walks through the process of installing Asterisk step-by-
step, then takes you through every feature and function in
great detail
Even if you choose a different way to get started, we highly
recommend this book: You won't find a better reference
anywhere

What is Asterisk?
If you prefer to learn by example you should
look at Asterisk Essentials, a 6-hour online video
tutorial produced by the training team from
Sangoma Technologies
It walks you through the process of installing
and configuring an Asterisk system step by step
At the end of the course you'll have a basic
working system

What is Asterisk?
If you prefer live hands-on training, take a look at
the instructor-led classes
These include an introductory course that covers
the basics and Asterisk advanced: an in-depth
course that covers advanced topics like database
integration, deployment strategies and application
development using external interfaces
You can find out more about both online and live
training at Sangoma’s Training Portal

What is Asterisk?
Asterisk is for everyone
You do not need to pay any license to download it,
install it, compile it and use it
If you're not a developer and you don't want to build
your own system from scratch that's not a problem
There are a number of pre-built packages and even
turnkey systems that let you take advantage of the
power of Asterisk
Some of these are open source and some are
commercial

What is Asterisk?
If you need a business phone system and prefer a complete pre-installed factory supported product that
offers all of the features of Asterisk plus a long list of advanced unified communications capabilities take a
look at Switchvox or PBXact

What is Asterisk?
Switchvox and PBXact wrap the power of Asterisk in an extremely intuitive user
interface with integrated instant messaging, powerful mobility features and an
unparalleled web-based unified communications client, all standard
Both solutions come pre-installed on server class Hardware
You can deploy it yourself or if you prefer you can work with one of Sangoma's
certified resellers
For more information about Switchvox or PBXact checkout Sangoma.com

What is Asterisk?
If you're comfortable installing your own
system you can get started quickly and easily
using FreePBX
FreePBX is a special distribution of Linux that
includes Asterisk and a Web-based admin
interface and installs a working PBX system
with all the key features of Asterisk

What is Asterisk?
Just download the ISO DVD image
Burn it to a DVD or an USB key
Pop it in a computer and boot
The Installer will walk you through a few basic questions
Then install everything:
The Operating System
Asterisk and
The Administrative Interface
Once the install is done you can configure FreePBX using
your web browser

What is Asterisk?
FreePBX can run on just about any modern computer
The requirements are rather modest. It can also run as a virtual machine
Many users get started by testing out Asterisk on a desktop version of
VirtualBox or VMware
Once they have the system configuration to fit their needs, they migrate it
to a production VM or to bare-metal server
Asterisk systems built from scratch or from FreePBX are FREE. There are no
license fees, no maintenance charges, and no per-user fees
Your total cost for an Asterisk-based communication system will include the
server, possibly interface hardware for connecting it to the PSTN, phones,
and of course your time

What is Asterisk?
If you are a systems integrator or reseller
and are interested in selling Asterisk-
based communication solutions, please
contact us.

What is Asterisk?
More Asterisk resources are available at:
https://www.asterisk.org
https://community.asterisk.org
https://wiki.asterisk.org
Astricon: is the annual trade show and conference for developers,
integrators, resellers, and business users where they gather for all things
about Asterisk

What is Asterisk?
You can register to attend
Astricon at Asterisk.org and
get engaged with the rest of
the Asterisk Community

+1 905-474-1990
Thank you for watching
https://sangoma.com - https://asterisk.org

What is Asterisk? for TADSummit Asia 2020

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