Digium announces that its Asterisk open source telephony software was downloaded 1.5 million times in 2008, more than any other year in company history and an impressive 50 percent higher than last year. The announcement caps a year of milestones and accolades for Digium and marks a promising start to 2009, when Digium celebrates the 10th anniversary of Asterisk, the open source software that has changed the telecommunications world.

Digium’s strong 2008 year highlights the attractiveness of less expensive, easily customizable open source software in the current recession. Asterisk is the world’s dominant open source telephony software. As the economic crisis worsened, Asterisk downloads rose by 32 percent from September through December, compared to a year ago.

Digium’s top 2008 accomplishments include the launch of the beta version of Skype for Asterisk, which enables customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within their Asterisk phone systems. Digium also completed the integration of Switchvox, provider of the world’s foremost open source-based IP PBX, which Digium acquired in 2007. After successfully integrating Switchvox’s channel partners, the Digium Authorized Reseller Program now includes nearly 400 resellers.

Additional accomplishments of 2008 include:

• Digium’s Switchvox AA300 – The award-winning AA300 appliance is a flexible, easy-to-use IP PBX that gives companies with up to 150 users a turnkey business telephone solution based on Asterisk software. Its release completed the initial planned build-out of the Switchvox appliance family, along with the AA60 appliance and the AA350 appliance. After reviewing the Switchvox AA300, Matthew Nickasch, a blogger from Network World, wrote, “In my opinion, if there’s an appliance or SMB IP-PBX to beat, this is the one.”
• Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program – A bold new guarantee program ensuring the quality of Digium’s hardware and software products and underscoring the reliability of open source technology. The Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program is the most comprehensive product guarantee program in open source telephony today.
• Four Millionth Port – Digium announced delivery of the four millionth port for connecting telephony systems based on Asterisk to communication networks. The number demonstrates the rapid rise in popularity of Asterisk for managing voice communications and integrating voice with corporate data.
• Sponsored Industry Events – 2008 marked the second Digium|Asterisk World, an event to advance open source IP telephony communications in business environments. Additionally, Digium hosted the fifth-annual AstriCon, the industry’s largest, most informative Asterisk community event, which boasted expanded track sessions and high-caliber industry keynote speakers. The event recognized the winners of the annual Digium “Innovation Awards,” which honor businesses using Asterisk in new and exciting ways.
• AsteriskNOW 1.5 – Digium released a new version of the award-winning AsteriskNOW software appliance that includes the popular FreePBX Web-based Asterisk management interface and simplifies the process of installing, operating and managing an Asterisk-based telephony system.
• Industry Awards – Digium’s Switchvox appliance family continued to collect honors for product excellence, including Unified Communications’ “Product of the Year” and “Best of Show” and “Best of Open Source” at TMC’s INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West 2008. Asterisk won a “2008 Technology of the Year” award from InfoWorld and a “Product Leadership Award” from SearchNetworking.com. eWEEK named Digium Founder and CTO Mark Spencer to its “100 Most Influential People in IT” list and FierceVoIP named Spencer one of 10 “VoIP Leaders.” As a company, Digium was recognized on Linux Magazine’s “2008 Top 20 Companies to Watch,” by VoIP-News as a “Top 20 VoIP Influencer,” and by FierceVoIP as one of the “Fierce 15” VoIP companies of 2008.