In a prior post, I mentioned that CIOs in the small and medium business (SMB) markets need to check out Digium because they are claimed by many to be king of the hill and making VoIP very affordable. Slashdot also points me to SIPexchange and Pingtel. SIPxchange is another open source PBX, where a significant part of the code base was contributed by Pingtel.

What are the differences? Voxilla has a good article that sheds light on some of the differences between the Digium-Asterisk approach versus the Pingtel-SIPxchange approach as it pertains to CIOs and customers. My big takeaway was that the Digium-Asterisk approach seems positioned for organizations that want to support a heterogeneous network out of the box.

It should also be noted that yesterday, Pingtel announced its Solution Provider Program for the SMB market. Also good stuff because CEOs of technology-savvy organizations probably don't want their rocket scientist programmers diverted to supporting the phone system just because they saved tons of $$ on the core PBX fabric (hey it happens a lot!). From Pingtel's release:

Pingtel Corp., the leading provider of open source, commercial-grade enterprise communications solutions, today announced the company's Solution Provider Program to extend its range and reach into the small and medium business and enterprise markets in the U.S. and abroad. With more than 20 solution providers signed to date, Pingtel expects to quickly accelerate the adoption of the industry's only 100 percent open source, 100 percent native SIP enterprise communications platform. SIPxchange, the enterprise SIP PBX for Linux, enables Pingtel's solution providers to realize greater returns, higher margins and more cost-effective solutions over traditional, proprietary VoIP solutions. Additionally, Pingtel's solution providers are able to tap into Pingtel's professional services program for training, support and application-specific development.

More kewl stuff.

Steve Shu