Page 363 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

Hosted solutions of similar complexity to corporate web sites
The design of a PBX was always a kind of art form, but before Asterisk, the art lay in
finding creative ways to overcome the limitations of the technology. With limitless
technology, those same creative skills can now be properly applied to the task of com-
pletely answering the needs of the customer. Open source telephony engines such as
Asterisk will enable this. Telecom designers will dance for joy, as their considerable
creative skills will now actually serve the needs of their customers, rather than be fo-
cused on managing kludge.

Proper integration of communications technologies
Ultimately, the promise of open source comes to nothing if it cannot fulfill the need
people have to solve problems. The closed industries lost sight of the customer and
tried to fit the customer to the product.

Open source telephony brings voice communications in line with other information
technologies. It is finally possible to properly begin the task of integrating email, voice,
video, and anything else we might conceive of over flexible transport networks (whether
wired or wireless), in response to the needs of the user, not the whims of monopolies.
Welcome to the future of telecom!

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