O'Reilly reports on the demise of the PBX and the rise of Asterisk in this well written article.
The private branch exchange (PBX) has been the reference standard for business telephone systems for decades, but of late, its age has been showing. While the computer industry has changed vastly, telephone systems until relatively recently have changed only superficially. They are expensive, proprietary, and often so arcane that only factory-authorized dealers have the remotest clue how to manage them. This, coupled with the emergence of open source Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, leaves PBX on the verge of obsolescence. In this article I'll look at Asterisk, a Linux-based open source softswitch, and why it heralds the end of PBX.
Introduction
In the mid-1990s, vendors began to introduce PC-based telephone systems, mostly based on Windows NT, although one vendor, NexPath, made a Unix-based small-business phone system. These systems were a great improvement over completely closed systems, offering more features for a more reasonable price, but fundamentally they were based on the same circuit-switched architecture as their predecessors. These vendors, AltiGen and Artisoft--two leaders in this space--have since reengineered their systems around VoIP, but they still depend heavily on proprietary switching hardware to handle basic telephony functions.
Enter Asterisk. It threatens to turn the business telephone system industry on its head, and in my mind, that is a very good thing. For years, I've been listening to clients complain about how overpriced telephone equipment is compared with other networking hardware, how difficult their systems are to manage, and how once they select a vendor they are locked in for life. Some systems are more open than others, but for the most part telephone equipment vendors really don't want customers to have the freedom to mix and match equipment from different vendors.
