[Asterisk-Users] Sangoma VS. Digium

[Chad Wicker]

Well this takes up to the core issues of many open source developments.

Basically, Digium makes money from selling hardware and support
services.
Competition on the hardware side should be fine as long as the
Competition is 
responsible to the open source community by re-investing a portion of
the 
proceeds to the further development of the software.

Digium benefits from this in that they are not the sole supply of
business 
development on the software and in this case Sangoma brings a history
of 
quality products and this should gather more potential users of the
software.  
This might drive  Digium out of the market for hardware, but what
Sangoma 
lacks is the support services for the software.

While this may seem like a bad thing for Digium to get out of the
business
of making and selling hardware, it would allow them to focus more on
the services
and development side.  As long as they gain an appropriate level of new
business
on the support side, they should do ok.  Plus add to the table that now
Sangoma
has a vested interest in seeing Digium do well as a company as if for
any reason 
they stop development of their software, people wouldn't be driven to
buy the 
Sangoma Hardware.  Following this trend, Card manufacturers could
actually set 
a level of product price to be paid to Digium for additional software
development
if they were unable/unwilling to do the work themselves. 

I doubt that Digium makes huge profits on their sales of hardware as
the numbers 
of manufacturing runs must drive up their cost.  Sangoma has the
contacts and
existing product lines to support quality manufacturing.  

What is more worrisome would be a Alternative card that cuts it sales
price at 
the sacrifice to the community.  It would be easy for a Board
Manufacturer to clone
the Digium or Sangoma design and flood the market with cards.  Not
funneling 
money back into the project would cripple or destroy the project.  As a

responsible participant of the project it is important to be aware of
the policies
of the companies of the products you buy.

Disclaimer:
This is my humble opinions only.  This is how I view the changing
market that
Digium has to face, from what I know of them they are capable of taking

these changes in stride and do quite well.

Chad C. Wicker
Systems Engineer
Petrocom

>>> mboehm at cytelcom.com 3/31/2005 9:30:27 AM >>>
Brian Capouch wrote:

> I'll be glad to stand corrected, but if that assertion is in fact
> true, we should be careful to do things that actually damage
Digium's
> ability to leverage their development of Asterisk with their
hardware
> sales.

It sucks that its such a fine line. On the one had, it is good to have
competition. Keeps prices in check, and gets new features out faster.

But on the other hand, yes, buying from someone else may say to Digium
"well, I guess we can stop now that they are buying someone elses
cards."

-Matthew

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