Asterisk As Plumbing

One of the interesting thoughts that pal Ken Camp came up with last year was that of VoIP as plumbing. That is VoIP is merely a delivery system for applications (albeit an important piece of the puzzle). As a transport mechanism, VoIP is a commodity. It is the applications that it delivers that truly hold the greatest value.

Much of the same can be said about Asterisk, the open source telephony platform. Ask any VAR trying to make a go at selling their “Asterisk-based” IP PBX and they will tell you that unless they come up with some sort of unique use, twist, add-on or application, their system really is just a commodity. Hence why we see prices for IP PBX systems dropping like faster than the value of the US dollar.

But here is why I think Asterisk is plumbing. I have seen Asterisk used to power phone systems, gateways, services that let you call your plants and most recently as a way to create a surveillance system. It is a platform, a delivery mechanism for a whole host of different IP based applications. As a standalone it does not hold a tremendous amount of unique value, but in the hands of the creative mind, it can deliver valuable applications.

While many tout Asterisk as being revolutionary for what it did to change the dynamics of the phone system marketplace, it is now 2008. Asterisk has been around for almost 10 years. There is very little that is new about it. It, like VoIP, is just plumbing. The sooner those phone system vendors using it realize this and starting utilizing it as a platform to deliver more than just phone system 1.0, the better.