Over the past couple of months, we’ve become heavily involved in developing alternative IP Phone user interfaces and experiences. Initially, when most people think about IP Phone experiences, they think about the following:

• Plastics
• Graphic UI
• Number of colors on the screen
• SIP compatibility
• SIP feature set
• Native phone telephony features
• etc.

However, while the above are fairly important (who am I kidding, these are very important – these make for 80% of the experience), another aspect of the experience is usually totally neglected – and that 20% sometimes makes for 25% of your services customer calls.

So, what am I talking about exactly? in order to explain, let us examine a certain scenario. Imagine that your office PBX system is based on Asterisk and that your entire office is based upon SNOM 370 IP terminals. Now, a feature such as DND is available both at the phone level and the PBX level. If you activate one, the other isn’t notified (in most cases) and thus, a situation where the phone user may not receive calls can be related to 2 distinct issues: DND at the phone side or DND at the PBX side.

Now, if you talk to most IP Centrex application companies (eg: BroadSoft), they would indicate that they are fully integrated with specific vendor handsets – however, what happens with all the rest? – they are simply left out with the problem. That means that if my company decides to utilize some low cost, unfamiliar, Chinese IP phone vendor – there is high chance that I’ll run into the above mentioned problem.

Question remains: How can we streamline and unify the two experienced? Can we replace the existing phone menus and functionality, without modifying the firmware – while allowing to various vendors to inter-op with the same solution? – the general answer would be YES – however, this needs to balanced by a simple fact – not all IP phone terminals can support enriched user interfaces. Specifically talking, low-cost IP Phone terminals can not support this, simply because the low cost manufacturers neglect the requirement for this.

At this point, a new question arises: what IP Phone terminals do support this ability? – in general, the answer would be – the costly ones. The following will now include a few of the available IP Phone handsets, that can be enriched with customized user interfaces.

CISCO IP Phone Handsets

CISCO IP Phone teminals (mainly the 79XX series) can utilize a built-in minibrowser, capable of rendering displays and interactions based upon a proprietary XML based interface. The interface allows for the creation of both textual and graphical user interfaces, thus, allowing for the creation of highly interactive experiences.

Here’s a short examples of how we would create a textual menu on a Cisco 79XX series phone, utilizing the XML format:

<CiscoIPPhoneMenu> 
 <Title>Title of Menu</Title> 
 <Prompt>Prompt text.</Prompt> 
 <MenuItem> 
 <Name>Name of Menu Item.</Name> 
 <URL>http://remote.site/your.commnad</URL> 
 </MenuItem> 
 <MenuItem> 
 <Name>Name of Menu Item.</Name> 
 <URL>http://remote.site/your.commnad</URL> 
 </MenuItem> 
</CiscoIPPhoneMenu>

As you may surely notice, the above format is fairly simplistic. Our menu is built from items indicated by remote URLs. Each URL will activate a remote function, which may be a new minibrowser XML page, an operational functions or even a command sent back to the phone itself.

Additional functionality includes the displaying of graphical menus, display of images, interaction with the user and displaying of remote information services (stocks, weather, etc). The XML pages are served directly from a simple web server, thus, any web scripting language can be utilized to create new experiences and interfaces. Here’s a small example how to utilize PHP with the Cisco minibrowser:

<? 
 header("Content-type: text/xml"); 
 header("Connection: close"); 
 header("Expires: -1"); 

 $mysql_conn = mysql_connect("localhost", "asteriskuser", ""); 
 mysql_select_db("directory", $mysql_conn); 
 $result = mysql_query("SELECT name,tel FROM lunchdir", $mysql_conn); 
 
 print("<CiscoIPPhoneDirectory>\n"); 
 print("\t<Title>Lunch Time Essentials</Title>\n"); 
 print("\t<Prompt>Who will deliver food today?</Prompt>\n"); 
 
 while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) 
 { 
 print("\t<DirectoryEntry>\n"); 

 print("\t\t<Name>"); 
 print($row[0]); 
 print("</Name>\n"); 

 print("\t\t<Telephone>"); 
 print($row[1]); 
 print("</Telephone>\n"); 

 print("\t</DirectoryEntry>\n"); 
 } 
print("</CiscoIPPhoneDirectory>\n"); 

?>

Above code was taken from http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Cisco+79XX+XML+Services

The above example shows how to create a mySQL based Directory service, utilizing the Cisco minibrowser.

Aastra IP Phone Handsets

The Aastra 5xi includes support for an XML minibrowser, fairly similar to the one Cisco introduces. The main difference between Aastra and Cisco, is that Aastra introduces a somewhat bi-directional interface. Where Cisco introduces an interface where the phone only browses and re-acts, Aastra introduces a POST based interface back into the phone, allowing for even richer user interfaces and experiences to be developed.

Additional information about the Aastra XML API can be found at:

http://www.aastra.co.uk/cps/rde/xbcr/SID-3D8CCB6A-7B886D10/16/XML_API_PA-001008-00-03_2.2.1_0805.zip

Why is this important?

As IP telephony networks become feature rich, a high level of chance exists for non-conformity of user interfaces and user experience. In other words, while one phone will present a certain UI, the next vendor phone will present a completely new UI. Imagine the amount of support and customer care resources, devoted to learning and supporting each of the models… Imagine the level of complexity, sometimes required to support or configure a certain model… In other words, try to estimate the costs of maintaining multiple UIs on your ITSP network – you by now surely understand that UI uniformity not only looks good – it makes business sense.

Over the course of the past 30 months, my company had completed over 26 different large scale Asterisk based projects and over 40 small scale projects. Whenever we encounter a new project, we are always faced with the same issues: “What makes a project big or small? how do you quantify the price/charge for a specific project? – and most importantly, what is the nominal value a project may carry – in order for the customer to do the project on one hand and with my company on the other hand”.

At GreenfieldTech, we take high pride at the “no hidden costs” methodology. This means that when you get a price quote, you’ll get a complete price quote for everything, ranging from consulting, through development up to install and support – nothing is left out, nothing is left for chance. Initially, it makes for a slightly higher price, however, when compared to other price quotes – it is simpler to read and to the point. However, most companies don’t work in such a methodology, thus, the price quote will usually be based upon “The umbrella concept”.

The manual opening umbrella

The manual opening umbrella is one of the oldest methodologies in the world, and is taken from the world of construction. The idea is very simple: the customer receives a highly enticing low entry price and pays an arm and a leg for each change or addition.

Many solution providers who utilize this methodology do so by simply creating an overly complicated price quote, a highly detailed specification document that doesn’t say much – usually followed by the ever annoying sales person indicating that: “oh, that’s not covered in the original quote, that will be an extra”. Solution providers utilizing this methodology usually do so due to a simple fact: “They have no clear solution track or a clear view of the end goal”. The project would usually lengthen beyond the projected time scale, usually by a factor of more than 30%, ending up in losses or law suits.

The customer will usually try to protect itself by contractually obliging the solution provider to a specific end of project date, with specific penalties. However, my experience shows that while the penalties are fairly often utilized, these are not utilized to the fullest – mainly due to the fact that the customer wants the project completed, while the solution provider may halt the project pending a proper ruling on the the matter – in other words, the customer is in a lose-lose scenario.

The spring opening umbrella

This methodology is slightly faster than the previous one, where the solution provider will provide a slightly less complicated price quote – however, will include many disclaimers into the price quote – indicating various changes of pricing and high margins of price change at will. The most common practice for this methodology is to indicate that: “Actual price will be calculated according to the actual work performed”. This methodology is very much common in the “Work-Only” or “Consulting” business, where there is no set time frame. What happens many times is that the consultant would linger the initial contracted work, then, as the contracted time reaches its end – it will “spring” out a new indication that a new purchase order is required. Now, working according to the above methodology seams like a good way for the customer to protect itself, however, in many cases – it is exactly the opposite.

So, what are we supposed to do?

A good consultant should be able to distinguish between a “project base” job and a “hours basis” job. When choosing a consultant, verify that his history of projects is versatile, which means, that he’s able to acustom himself to your requirments – both technical and financial. Flexability is a virtue, however, if a consultant is too flexible, it is usually an indication of poor experience or complete lack of it. Most consultant who are taking a certain job “type” for the first time would lower their cost, mainly to get the job – however, they would utilize their customer to “learn the ropes”. There is nothing wrong with learning the ropes on your customer’s expense, as long as the customer is aware of it.

Remember, as consultant we have duty to our customers first then to our business. Sure, we are all in this for the money, after all, that’s what puts food on the table and pays the bills, however, the needs of your customer come first. If you are unable to price a project on your own, consult with other freelancers and reach out to them. Tell them your story and your dilemma, usually, someone had already encountered such an issue in the past – and will be able to render a solid and useful advice.

Ok, now that it’s official I can release a small spoiler regarding AstriCon 2009, to be held at Glendale Arizona – this coming October.

On the 13th of October, during the pre-conference events I’ll be teaching a full day class of Amazon EC2 and Asterisk integration. The purpose of the day class (a 6 hour class to be more exact) is to enable the participants to get up and running with Amazon EC2 and Asterisk in an easy manner.

As you may have read my previous post, called asterisk-and-amazon-ec2-video-presentation, the Cloud Computing market had been increasingly evolving in the past 12 months. While many companies tend to throw the cloud computing buzz word around, the implementaion of Asterisk and telecom applications in a clouded environment, especially one as Amazone EC2, requires a new set of skills to be learned – technical on one hand and financial/economical on the other hand.

Currently, the actual schedule of the class is still being formed, however this is currently what I’m working on:

• An introduction to Amazon EC2 – What it is, what it is not and why is it good for Asterisk?
• An introduction to Amazon EC2 Economics – Dispersing some of the myths about EC2 economics
• Utilizing Elasticfox and the AWS Console
• Using the voxilla Asterisk AMI image
• Building your own customized Asterisk AMI image

My intention is to bring printed booklets to the presentation, so if you intend on attending the day class – just leave me a message here so I can bring you a copy.

I’ve grown fairly accustomed to the fact that most Open Source projects tend to have a poor documentation. Sure, if you look at the code itself, you’ll find a plethora of code documentation, explaining how certain pieces of the code work, however, when it comes to operational documentation – that portion lacks tremendously.

In this case, I’d like to examine two of the Open Source projects I’ve lately been utilizing more and more, mainly Kamalio (AKA: OpenSER) and AdHearsion. These two project represet two edge cases in the Open Source world. While OpenSER is strictly a SIP Proxy and Registrar, controlled entirely by a configuration file and database, AdHearsion is a programmatic API based on Ruby, built to provide developers an easy traversal into the Asterisk and Open Source telephony application development world.

Kamalio (AKA: OpenSER)

While Kamalio (AKA: OpenSER) is one the more popular SIP proxies of the world, it’s documentation lacks proper configuration examples. If you visit the Kamalio project website, you’ll find a mixture of documents, describing the various features and how to activate these. You will find some simple to following guides on how to integrate Kamalio with other projects, such as Asterisk – however – there are no easy to follow, beginner level tutorials.

This reminded me much of the Asterisk early days, where the dialplan language seemed like this horrific mixture of INI type directives and formats and the logic behind it illuded most people. As time progressed, many people started donating documentation and configurations examples to these, many companies started rendering Asterisk support and consulting services and slowly Asterisk became more and

more widely adopted.

For some strange reason, the community surrounding the Kamalio project doesn’t provide documentation that is usable by newbie users. Think about it, if I’m a newbie user, what kind of documentation am I looking for:

• Compile, install and execute Kamalio correctly – documentation for this is available.
• Setup a basic system for routing calls between registered users – documentation is available.
• Setup a basic system to route calls outbound to the PSTN – documentation missing.
• Setup a basic system to support Radius based AAA functions – documentation missing.
• Setup a basic system to support internal and external call routing – documentation missing.

In other words, three of the most basic tutorials are simply missing. One may argue that Radius isn’t basic and that MySQL support is more basic and provided – true. However, if I’m trying to integrate Kamalio into an existing ISP/Carrier infrastructure, it is fairly basic that I already have a RADIUS server on the network – and I’d like to use that.

The only piece of valid documentation that I managed to gather was a book from Packt Publishing called: “Building telephony systems with OpenSER”, and even that talks way too much about MySerWeb, a WEB based frontend to OpenSER.

Adhearsion

I admit it, I’m an Adhearsion newbie – well, I’m also a Ruby newbie – but that’s something completely different. Before we start talking about Adhearsion’s documentation, let’s talk about something really annoying about the Adhearsion website – the URLs are confusing!

If you go about and browse to http://www.adhearsion.com, you are automatically redirected to http://jicksta.com/, which is Jay’s blog. Now, as much as I do respect Jay, this is a really weird way of getting people to visit your blog – isn’t it? Now, if you visit http://adhearsion.com, you reach your true destination – The Adhearsion project home page. Ok, I may be nitpicking here – but I’ll write this off as a configuration error somewhere (DNS, Apache, index file, etc).

Now, Adhearsion is a wonderful example of how to do documentation for a project: easy to follow tutorials, a full API documentation (slightly complicated to follow, however), an installation guide that even a newbie can follow in 5 minutes – in other words, all the makings of a really usefull tool, built by people who have usability and ease of development at their priority.

I really hope that as time progresses, we’ll see more documentation on the Adhearsion website, especially one that is pointed at real newbies. A tutorial that I feel is in order is “Adhearsion for PHPAGI developers”. The traversal from PHP to Ruby is hard enough, so traversing from PHPAGI to Adhearsion is a complete change of though patterns and skill sets.

You are probably wondering why I’m talking and learning Adhearsion, after all, I did write a book about PHPAGI. Well, after meeting Jason Goecke at Amoocon, I’ve been convinced by him to give Adhearsion a try – and I’ve decided to adopt it. I’ll be launching the www.adhearsion.org.il soon (well, at least the minute I fee comfortable with Adhearsion).

I recently gave a presentation at the Amoocon convention, held in Rostock, Germany – about Asterisk and Amazon EC2. Below is a medium quality video of that presentation:

or you may download it here:
Amazon EC2 and Asterisk video files

It would appear that my previous post had attracted some feedback from Anthony Minessale, the founder and prime maintainer of the FreeSWITCH project. As Anthony took the time to write some words and I found these of importance, I’ve decided to dedicate a full blog post for this.

Thanks for mentioning us in your blog.  I wanted to clear a few
things up for you.

You are very much welcome. I’ve known you for a few years now and I’ve been experimenting with FreeSWITCH, so I do admire your work and your abilities.

1) it’s FreeSWITCH not FreeSwitch.

Ok, I stand corrected

2) We indeed have a business track
http://www.freeswitchsolutions.com

Hmmm… I didn’t know that – well, I guess the fact that it is not on the FreeSWITCH website, at least not in a clear and direct location, made it invisible to me. However, the freeswitchsolutions.com website doesn’t really provide any clear business case nor a business track, thus, my comment regarding the lack of one still stands.

3) I disagree that FreeSWITCH isn’t a valid choice for most
carriers based on the several customers we have who are indeed
carriers including bandwidth.com iCall Teliax to name a few.
Most of these carriers are  also sponsors of the ClueCon
conference in Chicago this summer http://www.cluecon.com

Ok, I guess I need to rephrase what I wrote. My company works with some well established (who am I kidding, these are Tier-1) carriers around the world. While Asterisk is already considered a valid tool in the toolbox, FreeSWITCH is still considered to be a “thing to be looked at”, however, “not yet considered”. Carriers such as iCall and Teliax are good examples of carriers working in the Tier-2, Tier-3 environment, thus, they are more open to new and experimental solutions (such as FreeSWITCH, YATE, Asterisk-SVN, OpenSBC, etc).

It seems as though you are turned off by the fact that YATE was
trying to hard to promote itself but then you commented that we
don’t try hard enough to do the same. One would expect from your
comments about YATE that you would like the fact that we tend
not to blow our own horn. We are an Open Source project, take it
or leave it, Like you said, “right tool for the job” use one, use
all. If you make up your mind to use FreeSWITCH and you want to
get commercial support we provide it but we as a policy do not
try to “sell” FreeSWITCH to anyone. But we do offer a
triple-your-money-back Guarantee on the software itself.

I guess I need to rephrase again (damn my Hebrew speaking manner). The way YATE was trying to promote itself was what turned me off, not the fact that it is. Going about and dissing other projects or other people’s work is just rude. One thing that I noticed that the YATE team was simply walking about, whenever someone would talk about a large scale Asterisk project or other project that they’ve done, automatically the YATE team would immediate cut in saying: “Ah, that is no good, you should use YATE – it is much better than Asterisk” (not directly quoted). Now, I think that while FreeSWITCH’s exposure in the US is really good, it is fairly minimal in EMEA. A conference like Amoocon is the perfect place in Europe to show off FreeSWITCH and the fact that there was literraly no presence – well, it sucked, as I really hoped to learn some things about FreeSWITCH. Just to give you an example, till Amoocon I had my reserves about Adhearsion, however, after Amoocon I found it to be a highly useful tool for my work – and I’ve strated working on getting to know it better. The fact that FreeSWITCH isn’t doing the “push-by-nature” promotion is great, however, I would like to see a more EMEA presence.

I really love the open source world, it always keeps us on our toes and always peeking around the closest corner, trying to understand what is the next step around. As I’m attending the last day of the Amoocon conference, located in Rostock, Germany – I came to the realization that while each project tries to present itself as the best choice – that isn’t always true. The multitude of projects and solution proves just one thing – there is no perfect solution.

While Asterisk is my personal passion, and I won’t go about debating the various pros and cons of using it, I would like to talk about the other 2 contenders. So let’s begin:

YATE – Yet Another Telephony Engine

YATE was spun by of the Asterisk community developers, a woman called Diana from Romania. Diana had established an entire company, called Null Team (*0) – currently the main supporter and developer of YATE. During the conference, I got to talk to Diana briefly (after knowing her about 7 years and always talking on the IRC). While Diana preaches for the adoptation of YATE, she keeps on playing the card of: “YATE can do everything”. Now, while that approach may work for Diana and her customers and supporters, that concept doesn’t work for my company. I strongly believe that utilizing and all encompasing tool to do telephony is wrong. As I won’t use Asterisk to do SIP registrations, I don’t want to do that with YATE – I prefect OpenSER or an SBC in B2BUA mode. Carriers, the prospective customers of Asterisk, YATE, FreeSwitch, WhatEverSwitch, will never use an all encompasing tool. If they use YATE as a single software for their service, they’re now locking themselves to a solution that can’t be replaced in the future – VERY BAD PRACTICE.

Another thing that Open Source promoters need is a certain finesse, the understanding that preaching in favour of a project doens’t mean dissing the other projects. The first Diana did when meeting me, was to do her best to convince me that Asterisk isn’t a good product and that I should use YATE. If there is one thing I hate is sales people, sell me what I want and need, not what you think I need. Diana truely believes that all non-YATE users are wrong, thus her preaching are automatically negative – bad move. Acknowledging other peoples work and accomplishments will go along way when promoting open source products.

FreeSwitch

FreeSwitch was spun out, following a fairly loud argument in the Asterisk community between Anthony Minessale and the Asterisk Core team. Anthony believes that the way the Asterisk development road map is going is wrong, thus, he decided to branch off and build his own telephony engine. FreeSwitch, in general, is a combination of a highly modular Soft Switching environment, while keeping in mind that initially people will want to use it as a PBX system.

While FreeSwitch appears to be highly scalable and doesn’t suffer much of the things that Asterisk regards as issues, its adoptation is still problematic. With a fairly lively development community and no real sense of business track, it isn’t a valid choice for most telco and carrier based customers. However, people currently in the Open Source telephony arena are speculating that FreeSwitch is a valid contender, thus, are investing time in learning it and understanding its pros and cons.

I’m somewhat disappointed that non of the FreeSwitch team had attended Amoocon. It was obvious that it has a following. Out of about 35 talks, only 3 or 4 were dedicated to FreeSwitch. In my book, the FreeSwitch team is failing promoting their product. Their software has a good name within the community and the following is growing, however, without proper outbound communications from their team into the community, via events outside of the US – it’s evolution in Europe will remain dorment.

Which one is for you?

That is a very good question – and the answer is: just check it out and learn. Each product has its own pros, cons, road-map (or lack of one) and a following. Read and learn the various aspects of each, then decide. In your analisys, make sure you take the following aspects into account:

• Project maturity
• Project road-map
• Project support and community
• Project financials (if any)
• Project commercial viability

If you are happy with your answers to the following, regarding a specific project – then take that road and start walking the path – good luck and god’s speed.

I’d like to take the time right now to introduce a new member to the Greenfield Technologies family – Mr. Barak Yitzhaki. Barak will be heading the new SEO/SEM division of the company, focusing on providing SEO/SEM services for Asterisk and VoIP/Telecom oriented companies.

You’re probably wondering to yourself: “That’s odd, GreenfieldTech is an Asterisk/Open Source oriented – what does SEO/SEM has to do with Asterisk and Open Source?” – the answer is simple, EVERYTHING!

We’ve recently realized that most of GreenfieldTech’s customers have a unique form of web presence, however, as most of these are focused on their technology and less on marketing, they reach a point in their life cycle, where they are required to start marketing their services or products. At that point, as a means to yield fast results, they would introduce a high level of paid advertisements, a Media blitz attack or any other tactic, yielding short term results and long term disasters. As a means to provide a better service, we’ve decided to introduce SEO/SEM services to GreenfieldTech, thus, creating a mixture of SEO/SEM that truly understands our customers, their niche markets, their in-house and outsourced requirements – thus, providing a truly unique SEO/SEM service – one that understands their technology and service, not only the inner workings of SEO/SEM methodologies.

After evaluating multiple candidates and methodologies, we’ve decided to have Barak join our team. Barak had been working in New York for one of the leading WiMax resellers, as an Internet Marketing Consultant – focused on providing SEO/SEM marketing optimizations and SEO/SEM methodology implementation.Over the course of the next few months, Barak will be working closely with GreenfieldTech’s customers, optimizing their SEO/SEM marketing strategies and operations – we’ll update on these actions later, as time allows us and our customer allow us to release this information. Additional information will be available on the GreenfieldTech website.

Doing business in Israel is always interesting, you’re always amazed at how people are completely ignorant of what Intellectual Property and Licensing really means – especially when related to Open Source licensing and rights issues.

So, let’s start from the beginning and establish a base ground: Open Source software, especially that distributed under the GPL, doesn’t imply that it is FREE for re-distribution in any form. The GPL had indicated specific guidelines about how GPL software can be re-distributed in commercial forms. However, putting aside GPL restrictions and various legal mambo-jumbo, we can summarize the GPL distribution limitations according to the following:

1. If you use a GPL licensed product and change it to your own needs, you are not required to make your changes available to the public.
2. If you use a GPL licensed product and change it, then you want to distribute it, you are confronted with one of the following:
   • Provide your customer with a complete source code of the changes.
   • Provide your changes to general public, via an upstream code contribution of a public patch.
   • Obtain a valid license permit from the original GPL holder.

Again, the above is very much generic and doesn’t cover all grounds, however, gives a very good idea of the various aspects. Some GPL software packages, Asterisk for example, are distributed under a dual-license, enabling a developer/vendor/distributor to go about and provide binary packaged versions of Asterisk – pending a proper license to be obtained from Digium.

Israel is most probably the worst place in the world (following China and Africa, of course) when it comes to software license violations. In Israel, people regard Open Source as “Free – do what you want software”, thus, living in complete ignorance of the various implications of violating GPL coded software projects, especially those backed by commercial companies.

This morning, I’ve received a call from one of the larger telco equipment manufacturers in Israel. Actually, this company is so well know, that their CPE equipment is available all over the world – and is even considered one of the best around. In any case, one of their development managers calls me up saying: “We’d like to integrate the Asterisk SIP stack into an embedded environment and resell it – can we get this technical service from your company”. After listening a little more to the man, I’ve indicated that this kind of work will most probably require some licensing from Digium and that we need to approach Digium for that. After explaining the reason, the immediate question followed: “What may happen if we don’t do it and simply modify and integrate the GPL version?” – my answer was: “Well, it will either make your entire product GPL, so you’ll have to release it. Or your product will violate the Digium intellectual property, exposing your company to a lawsuit”.

The man then asked me: “Well, can you help us with that? can you assist in this matter?” – which I replied: “well, let’s meet, I want to understand deeper – but I’m sure that I can help your company in going through this track successfully”.

People tend to forget that licensing of software is very important, not only because of support, licensing enables software companies to extend the life cycle of a product, ensuring its viability and existance in the market for a long time. There are many companies around the world, violating the Asterisk GPL code and proprietary licensing scheme – by doing so, they are cutting the branch they are sitting on. The more violations happen, the weaker the project becomes, thus, at some point in time will break the entire existance model of the project. If you are looking into embedding Asterisk into a commercial product, talk to a consultant, go to an Asterisk class and learn the various aspects, both technical and legal, of its integration and usage in a commercial product.

Many people ask me: “Is Asterisk certification really important? does it actually mean anything? isn’t the knowledge of Asterisk in itself enough for customers and employers?” – to sum it up in one word: NO !

My initial Linux days started back in 1996, when certification was mainly reserved from companies like Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle. I remember my first certification course, I got sent to a Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 certification course (fully paid by the Israeli army) – that was around 1995. I remember coming into the class room for almost 2 weeks, studying every day from 8am till around 6pm, at the end of the course to take a test – which I at first deemed as completely redundant. However, as the course progressed, I was amazed at how little did I really know. Sure, I knew quite a lot about how to manage and build a server from scratch, but I had no in-depth knowledge of how the Operating System is structured, nor the various constraints that Windows NT 3.51 had at the time. In other words, where I deemed the entire thing as redundant and at most boring, I ended up learning things that I didn’t even realize I needed to know.

Coming the year 2000, Linux certification became more and more common. I can still remember the Linux certification wars: RHCE vs. LPI vs. SAIR vs. GNU vs. all the other world. There was no authoritative answer to the million dollar question: “What is the best certification for Linux?” – however, the world realized that certification for Linux is a must. Why was it a must? simple – it was a differentiating factor for employers and HR agents. Employers and HR agents have no idea if the person sitting across the table is knowledgeable, experienced or at worst – has a slight clue about the job at hand. The certification is their easiest, most measurable tool to evaluate their candidate. Sure, when someone has 10 years of experience, you can take all the certs and simply put these in the trash bin, actually, if a candidate has too many certifications it means one thing – the guy knows nothing and only knows how to study for tests. With a lack of a better measure for competence, a certification is the most common tool to use.

Asterisk certification, the Digium Certified Asterisk Professional (dCAP) certification is a proof that you are knowledgable with Asterisk, you have a valid clue of what you are doing and you were able to pass a practical exam. You may argue that Asterisk certification is very new and holding a cert for Asterisk may prove to be futile, however, I don’t believe so. I started working with Asterisk in 2002, showing it to various people in Israel and around the world. Back then, people regarded me as a crazy man, trying to promote a product that would surely disappear from the market in less than 2 years. It’s 2009 now, 7 years later, Asterisk is stronger than ever and only growing stronger. At this time, getting yourself certified for Asterisk is best course of action you can take. You’re probably saying to yourself: “of course he’s saying that, he’s a training partner and he wants people to pay him money to take the test!” – well, you are partially correct – I do want you to take the cert, but not because you’ll need to pay $300, simply because the more certified engineers out there, the job of installing Asterisk in tier-1 and enterprise scenarios becomes easier.