Asterisk Turns 10; Celebrates a Decade of Powering Telephony

Leading open source PBX, telephony engine and telephony applications toolkit now
deployed in hundreds of enterprises globally
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(Business Wire)--
Digium, Inc., the Asterisk Company, today announced the 10th anniversary of the
creation of Asterisk, the world`s leading open source telephony engine and
toolkit. Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer who is the founder and CTO of
Digium, the company that created, leads and coordinates Asterisk. Digium will be
celebrating Asterisk`s 10 year anniversary at the AstriCon conference taking
place from October 13-15, 2009, at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel and Spa near
Phoenix, Arizona. More about this annual event is available at
http://www.astricon.net.

When created by Mr. Spencer in his dorm room in 1999, Asterisk provided an
opportunity for open source enthusiasts and developers to create and customize a
private branch exchange (PBX) system, which until then was not possible.
Asterisk grew in popularity and is now downloaded more than 1.5 million times
per year for use by individuals and organizations interested in an alternative
to expensive and cumbersome proprietary phone systems.

Over the years, thousands of individuals and organization have contributed to
the development and growth of the Asterisk open source project with new codes
(more than 2,000 new code commits in 2009), configurations and applications.
Today, Asterisk is downloaded nearly 5,500 times a day and boasts a community of
63,000 active participants on Asterisk forums, covering 28,500 topics with
92,000 forum posts.

"When I put the Asterisk platform out there 10 years ago -- using the Linux
operating system and my own PBX code -- I never imagined the profound impact
that it would have. I just believed that Asterisk could serve as an affordable
and flexible telephony solution," said Spencer. "The strength of Asterisk is a
reflection of the creativity and ingenuity of the community along with the value
that Asterisk provides its users. It`s been gratifying to be part of its
impressive growth so far and we are excited to help it evolve in the future."

Found throughout the world and in businesses of all sizes, Asterisk is 40-80
percent less expensive than traditional telephony systems and is more flexible,
allowing users to integrate their phone systems with existing business-critical
applications or easily write custom programs that extend the value of their
phone systems. Asterisk can be found across many industries including retail,
financial services, insurance, real estate, government and healthcare. In
addition, Asterisk has spawned countless new business models, from service
providers (more than 200 worldwide today) and traditional telephony companies,
to technology integrators and application developers.

About Asterisk

Asterisk is the world's most popular open source telephony project. Under
development since 1999, Asterisk is free, open source software that turns an
ordinary computer into a feature-rich voice communications server. Asterisk
makes it simple to create and deploy a wide range of telephony applications and
services.

Code for Asterisk, originally written by Mark Spencer of Digium, Inc., has been
contributed from open source software engineers around the world. Currently
boasting over two million users, Asterisk supports a wide range of TDM protocols
for the handling and transmission of voice over traditional telephony
interfaces, featuring VoIP packet protocols such as SIP and IAX among others. It
supports U.S. and European standard signaling types used in business phone
systems, allowing it to bridge between next-generation voice-data integrated
networks and existing infrastructure.

About Digium

Digium, Inc., the Asterisk Company, created, owns and is the innovative force
behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its
founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary
communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less.
Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers
Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad family
of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company`s product line
includes a wide range of hardware and software to enable resellers and customers
to implement turnkey VoIP systems or to design their own custom telephony
solutions. More information is available at http://www.digium.com.

The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Switchvox, Asterisk Business Edition,
AsteriskNOW, Asterisk Appliance and the Asterisk logo are trademarks of Digium,
Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Schwartz Communications
Laura Kempke, 781-684-0770
digium@schwartz-pr.com
or
Digium
Julie Webb, 256-428-6203
jwebb@digium.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009