Digium Introduces New Open Source Project, Asterisk SCF, to Simplify the Creation of Complex Communications Systems

Developers invited to participate in the next chapter of the open source communications revolution

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, along with the Asterisk open source community, today launched the Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework. Asterisk SCF is a framework that allows developers to create real-time communications applications that include voice, video and text and that meet the demands of a full range of uses, from embedded applications to enterprise and carrier solutions. Asterisk SCF is architected to provide the highest levels of availability, scalability, extensibility, fault-tolerance and performance.

“The world of communications is changing rapidly”

Asterisk SCF will be delivered as a system of distributed components that can be deployed in clusters on a single system or on many systems, transparently. The Asterisk SCF platform will support, as a part of its basic architecture, the full range of real-time IP communications, including video, multi-channel wideband and ultra-wideband audio, chat, desktop sharing and other media types that may arise in the future.

“The Asterisk community asked for easier ways to use Asterisk in larger and more complex applications,” said Mark Spencer, creator of Asterisk and Digium’s founder and chief technology officer. “They want to make massive scalability and fault tolerance simple, they want rich APIs for developing applications, and they want performance that effectively utilizes modern systems and architectures. Rather than trying to ‘grow’ Asterisk to address these areas, Digium and a committee of Asterisk developers decided that a companion product would be the most effective approach, since it allowed us to consider the widest range of tools, platforms and architectures.”

“The world of communications is changing rapidly,” stated Ed Guy, co-founder, CTO of CleverSpoke and Asterisk SCF steering committee member. “The Asterisk community was compelled to develop a solution to meet the greater scalability, reliability and functionality requirements that have emerged during the past 10 years of Asterisk’s evolution. Asterisk SCF is the product of this vision—a communications platform that will address today’s requirements and will allow for future enhancements and growth.”

Asterisk SCF is not a replacement for Asterisk, the world’s most widely used open source voice communications platform. Digium and the Asterisk community are committed to the continued development and support of Asterisk, the telecommunications software. This commitment is emphasized by the recent announcement of the release of the next long-term support version of Asterisk, Asterisk 1.8.

A version of Asterisk SCF for early adopters is now available at the Asterisk website (http://www.asterisk.org). The project will evolve aggressively during the next 12 months. Digium invites developers interested in contributing or wanting to learn more about Asterisk SCF to visit http://www.asterisk.org today.

About Digium

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source communications software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company’s product line includes a wide range of hardware and software to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey VoIP systems or to design their own custom telephony solutions. More information is available at http://www.digium.com.

The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Asterisk SCF, Switchvox, Asterisk Business Edition, AsteriskNOW, Asterisk Appliance and the Asterisk logo are trademarks of Digium, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.