Having grown well beyond its humble beginnings as a personal project, the Asterisk open source PBX turns 10 this month and currently has more than 400 contributors.
Asterisk was first released in October 1999 and now claims some two million downloads for this year alone -- up from
1.5 million last year.In its early years Asterisk attracted contributors out of interest, but nowadays large companies are getting behind the project with specific needs. And the place where Asterisk is making most in-roads is with replacement of incumbent systems and businesses getting started with IP telephony.
According to research by the Eastern Management Group, in the US open source as a whole was the number one supplier of VoIP lines for 2008 and Asterisk was number two behind Nortel. And Asterisk claims just under 90 per cent open source PBX market.
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