In a news release, Intuitive Voice Technology is calling out other Asterisk-based solutions. First, Intuitive Voice Technology (IVT) espouses their 3,500 deployments as well they should. They then follow this back-slapping good news with a claim that "competitors clamor to keep pace with industry's most innovating, easy-to-use Asterisk-based PBX". Them's fightin' words! They then stoke the fires some more when CEO Chris Jones states they he believes IVT's offering is blazing new trails in the industry, as evidenced by industry competitors who are mimicking the company's Evolution PBX 3.0 - released in September 2007. Specifically, Mr. Jones commented on the similarities to Evolution PBX 3.0 in Fonality's recent announcement of their latest release. “Many of the features introduced in their new release are similar to Intuitive Voice Technology’s Evolution PBX 3.0 which was introduced September of 2007 and released publicly in October of 2007.”

IVT then points to these similar "copycat" features which include follow-me/find me, cell phone integration, presence detection, and simultaneous ring.

There's one feature Intuitive Voice Technology neglected to mention that most other Asterisk solutions don't have but IVT does- and that's call screening. In my Cool Stuff at ITEXPO post I espoused IVT's Evolution PBX 3.0 product and how it's one of the few Asterisk-based solutions that supports call screening.

Just yesterday in my Voiceroute article, Voiceroute was claiming their Asterisk front-end GUI was better than anything on the market, including FreePBX and now today Intuitive Voice Technology is claiming they are the "best of the best" in the Asterisk universe.

The Asterisk (Asteroids?) Wars have begun...


Or even better - to quote Yoda - "The Asterisk Clone Wars have begun..."

Of course, the Asterisk Clone Wars been going on behind the scene for awhile. If you're in the Asterisk community you already knew this. It's getting almost as bad as the VoIP Clone Wars.

Well, soon we shall have a battle royale between all the Asterisk players... Digium's Asterisk vs. Trixbox vs CentPBX vs. Elastix vs. Fonality vs. Intuitive Voice Technology vs. Voiceroute vs. PBX-in-a-Flash vs. PBXact, etc. etc. It'll be Clash of the Titans! Fun times ahead for the Asterisk community.  Competition is a good thing and will help drive Asterisk to only get better & better.

Actual IVT news release after the jump...

Continue reading Intuitive Voice Technology Calls Out other Asterisk Competitors - Asterisk Clone Wars Have Begun......

Tags: Asterisk, CentPBX, Elastix, Fonality, Intuitive Voice Technology, IP-PBX, PBXact, PBX-in-a-Flash, Trixbox, VoIP

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• PBX Prompts for Asterisk and other open source PBXs launches tomorrow - Apr 03, 2007
• Fonality's trixbox appliance Part 2 - Mar 19, 2007
• Fonality launches Asterisk-based trixbox Appliance - Mar 18, 2007
• Asterisk 1.6.0 beta5 - Mar 06, 2008
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Comments on this Entry:

(p_lindheimer on Mar 13, 2008 11:25 AM) The wonderful thing about Asterisk is the vast range of solutions that can be developed on such an amazingly flexible foundation which has risen to the level of LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP (or python, perl)) in the Open Source Telecommunications world. We refer to it as LAMPA, you can guess what the last "A" stands for. The telecommunications needs of users is full of diversity and it is a wonderful thing to see a range of solutions available all with their different strengths. It is sad to see such a limited view from so many of these companies who are creating all these great solutions. There is a market potential that is bigger than most people could ever dream of in the traditional telco space. That is where the focus should be and where the competition is. Not "each other." The range of solutions that "we" are creating should be seen as a collective strength that legitimizes this space for us to go after the real giants. Lets start to all focus on "the market" and not the insignificant "each other." It is also wonderful to see some of the offerings with their installed bases of 3500 for one, 2500 for another, etc. We, at FreePBX, often shoot for such numbers during our Beta programs just to assure the stability of a new release. We are thrilled with our estimated installed base of around 200,000! So let's all start singing the same tune and get focused on the Avayas, Ciscos, Nortels, Microsofts and other true competitors in this space and work together to all of our benefits! Philippe FreePBX Project Leader

(Cory on Mar 13, 2008 1:23 PM) The Asterisk Wars will be fought and won by sales and marketing professionals, not by developers. Having an awesome product is not enough....and it is not always the superior product that succeeds over the competition. The challenge for Intuitive Voice, Digium/Switchvox, Fonality and others is simple....build a successful channel program for your product. I do not think the direct sales model for IP PBX scales well at all....and the marketplace is extremely fragmented....you need the VARs out there evangelizing your product. At this very moment, I believe Switchvox is doing the best job. They have a great product, they have marketing people who "get it"....they have folks in the front office who understand the needs of the VAR and how to build the channel, and they are having tremendous success as a result. This is not an accident. Beyond arguing semantics, they are doing a handful of fundamental things correctly. Fonality also has talented folks and seems to understand sales and marketing. Freepbx, Elastix, Intuitive Voice, Druid and dozens of others also have great products, but at the moment are struggling for mindshare. I root for them all, but caution them to remember the fundamentals of sales and channel marketing, and not to skimp in these areas.