[asterisk-biz] Nortel Buys PingTel and Other Good Insights on Asterisk and the State of OS Telephony by Doug Mohney

[Steve Totaro]

http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/opening-source/2008-08-13

Makes me wish I were speaking at Astricon again this year.

Nortel purchasing PingTel is very out of the blue and significant if
you ask me.  It is a srategic power move and I am sure PingTel was a
pretty cheap acquisition.

I have been to the PingTel offices for training just outside of Boston
when they were still closed source, flush with VC, and making those
really cool, funky pastel color phones.  That was my first Asterisk
system, PingTel phones and the Digium developer's kit about seven
years ago.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

Quoting Doug Mohney from the link above:
"Now that Security Season is winding down, my thoughts have turned to
open source telephony.

I'll be at AstriCon 2008 in Phoenix (Wednesday, September 24 and
Thursday, September 25) and look forward to getting a pulse on where
Digium finds itself relative to the rest of the world.

There are a number of areas to keep CEO Danny Windham and company
awake at night.  FreeSWITCH seems to be picking up traction and lining
up supporters.  On the hardware side, Sangoma has launched its own
developer's program for the open source community and will be
supporting FreeSWITCH.

Nortel has bought Pingtel, lock, stock, and codebase; who knew Nortel
and Pingtel had such a deep relationship? Nortel can waive the open
source flag and simultaneously work the interoperability angle to
Microsoft's UC products.  Digium CTO Mark Spencer has spent time and
energy publicly demonizing Microsoft, but he may have been worrying
about the wrong company.

If that's not enough, Fonality has worked the PR high ground with a
series of releases highlighting its continued growth and key
relationships with Dell Computer and BroadSoft. I wouldn't be
surprised if Chris Lyman had a hand grenade or two primed and ready to
lob out during AstriCon (PIKA Technologies did so at last year's
AstriCon, announcing its appliance, but it got muffled by the
SwitchVox acquisition).

Digium likely has a trick or two up its sleeve for AstriCon. If I may
speculate freely, a relationship with open-source lover IBM wouldn't
be a bad idea. If Adhearsion is as good as O'Reilly says it is, some
tighter wrapping with Asterisk would be a nice idea.

What else should Digium be working on? Want to meet with me at AstriCon?

- Doug"