Digium announces the general availability of support subscriptions for open source Asterisk. The software, which Digium’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Mark Spencer, created and released under the open source GNU General Public License 10 years ago, is now the world’s most pervasive open source telephony platform. The new Asterisk support services allow organizations of any size to leverage the power of open source Asterisk with the confidence that their system is supported by a world-class support organization. The support subscriptions provide technical support, hardware replacements and substantial discounts on training programs to enable users to take full advantage of the power of the Asterisk platform.

Asterisk is a telephony communications engine and toolkit that developers, VARs and systems integrators use to create custom voice applications and sophisticated VoIP communications solutions tailored to meet specific corporate requirements. Asterisk has long been the software of choice for companies that need highly customized or tightly integrated phone systems as well as those who simply wish to take advantage of the many benefits associated with open source software.

Asterisk support subscriptions are bundles of services sold on an annual basis. They include technical and engineering support, consultative services, advance hardware replacement and discounts on Asterisk training and conference passes.

Asterisk support subscriptions are available immediately from the Digium webstore at http://store.digium.com and will be available through Digium channel partners in Q2. SMB pricing begins at U.S. $595 per year for support during the subscriber’s business hours (8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday); 24x7 support for an SMB begins at U.S. $1,995 per year. Enterprise subscriptions, including 24x7 support, begin at U.S. $3,995 per year. Pricing includes a defined number of servers supported and cases opened per year.