Digium is proud to announce the winners of the 2008 Digium Innovation Awards. The company announced the winners today at AstriCon, the industry conference and exhibition dedicated to Asterisk. The Innovation Awards recognize innovation, enterprise-class solutions, measurable return on investment, and use of Asterisk in businesses outside of the communications industry.

Asterisk, more than any other open source project, inspires the entrepreneurial spirit. These innovators have used the power of Asterisk to create many new products, services and solutions that have improved business processes and conquered technology challenges. Digium presents the Innovation Awards to recognize and showcase the innovation, creativity and commercial success of the many Asterisk-based products and services.

The 2008 winners of the Digium Innovation Awards are:

• Pioneer Award :: GreenfieldTech (Udim, Israel) – Working on behalf of a customer, GreenfieldTech created a solution that allows people from all over the world to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The solution uses a pre-paid platform, ultra-sonic speakers and Asterisk as the main telephony and transmission layer for the platform. Approved by Israeli rabbis as an alternative to visiting the Western Wall for prayer, the service is marketed in the U.S. as Shema-Israel.
• Big Biz Asterisk Award :: Integrics Ltd. (Londonderry, U.K.) – Integrics uses Asterisk in combination with a range of other open source technologies to create Enswitch for telecommunications companies, multi-tenant hosted PBX providers, Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs) and Voice over IP (VoIP) providers. Enswitch forms the basis for highly scalable, redundant, cluster-aware commercial telephony services. The project scope consists of over 40 customers worldwide with nearly 500,000 end points.
• ROI Award :: Emdeon Business Services (Nashville, Tenn.) – Emdeon is the industry leader in healthcare EDI services. The company connects healthcare providers to payers across the United States. Working for the State of Maryland, Emdeon created an Asterisk-based telephone inquiry system that allows healthcare providers to quickly and efficiently verify a Medicaid recipient’s current eligibility status. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and used about 22,000 times a day by 60,000 physicians and hospitals. In addition to Asterisk and Digium hardware, Emdeon used Dell servers and storage, the Red Hat Linux operating system, MySQL database, Verizon T1s and Cepstral speech technology. The solution met every Maryland requirement in a cost-effective manner.
• Inside Out Award :: PhonePlay (Brooklyn, N.Y.) – PhonePlay designs, develops and deploys big-screen games that crowds of people can play simultaneously using mobile phones as controllers. The company uses Asterisk as the bridge between each player’s phone and the game software. Players call into a phone number that terminates into Asterisk, which then communicates keypresses to the Java-based PhonePlay server and game software. Big-screen games are used by advertisers and at conferences.
• Honorable Mention :: NTT Software Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) – NTT Software is the first major telecommunications company in Japan to use Asterisk in its network. The company is conducting a trial of Asterisk used in a gateway and terminal for VoIP with the goal of expanding the range of calling options NTT Software is able to provide business customers.

While only five awards are given each year, Digium would like to thank all the applicants. The creative and innovative Asterisk-based solutions were enjoyable to review. If you are an Asterisk innovator, you are invited to participate in the 2009 competition by submitting your application to www.digium.com/en/company/awards/innovation.php.