OStatic

In June, Cisco announced the ten finalists in its Think Inside the Box developer competition. The global contest centered on the network as a platform philosophy, and asked applicants to develop applications using Cisco's Linux-based AXP (Application Extension Platform), a module on its ISR (Integrated Services Routers).

The contest drew nearly 900 hopeful development teams from 75 countries. After many long hours of deliberation, the 110 qualifying teams were whittled down to 10 finalists.

OStatic has been fortunate enough to talk to a few of these finalist teams -- including Toshiyuki Sakata, from Team CampUser. CampUser, based in Brazil, developed its Locker for IP Telephony application to help network administrators maximize their organization's operational efficiency and billing policy administration through call authorization profiles and call management processing.

The phrase all-in-one always puts me on edge. Perhaps that shouldn't be the case any more -- there are ever increasing numbers of software and hardware products offered in group packages, and most, if not wonderful, deliver what's claimed on the box. But instead, the first association that comes are the old school printer, copier, and fax combinations. They generally did one task well (depending on the manufacturer) and the other features didn't quite live up to even lowered expectations. The manufacturer was a huge factor in which functions worked well. Even with apparently sound off-label fax modems and drivers, printer manufacturers couldn't quite make it all work together. They deal mostly with printers, after all.

Open-Xchange's collaboration with Rack-Soft brings an all-in-one solution that's an actual solution. The partnership combines Open-Xchange's open source groupware with Rack-Soft's telephony products.

When it comes to open source telephony software, Asterisk has one of the longest, most illustrious backgrounds in the market. There's been a nagging issue that's been holding Asterisk back, however, especially in larger enterprises -- a lack of professional support. Digium, the corporate entity that sponsors Asterisk, began offering tiered subscription support services through its storefront this week.

Just as it has been for the previous ten years, the Asterisk telephony engine and toolkit is available for download (free of charge, licensed under the GPL) with support, advice, and discussion offered through the community forums. The subscription support plans are designed to complement the community-driven efforts while giving enterprises the option to call upon dedicated experts to help with deployment, maintenance and training.

Open source telephony and communications company Fonality announced today it has received $12 million in an additional round of financing. That's good news in light of recent suggestions that investors are beginning to slowly close their wallets on open source companies.

Many people have attempted to quantify the problems faced with adoption of open source software. There are many issues, but one which is almost universal: Project members and companies almost always think their adoption is more broad-based than it really is. We take a look at this issue as it pertains to one such project and the company attached to it.

There have been several recent examples of convergence between the telecom industry and the open source world, as we documented in a recent post. Today, Volantis Systems, which provides mobile content delivery software, is out with an interesting development: an open source version of its Mobility Server application, released under the GNU Public License, version three. The code being opened was under development for seven years according to company officials, and is available now. It reaches out to thousands of mobile device types.

Chris Lyman, the founder of the VoIP startup, Fonality, blogs under the moniker Janitorﾗ which he prefers to his other title: CEO.