Digium (News - Alert) Inc., maker of Asterisk open source telephony solutions and originator of the Asterisk code, has re-launched its partner program – a revised program which includes four distinct partner programs under one umbrella. Led by a dedicated team offering specialized services and product certification, the program’s purpose is to give small businesses, enterprises and developers direct access to leading technology vendors and service providers so they can quickly and easily deploy an end-to-end open source VoIP solution.

Through this expanded program, partners will be able to submit eligible products for interoperability testing, and subsequent certification, with Digium products, such as Asterisk Business Edition. They will also have increased access to Digium engineering and sales support to better market and distribute their products to the Asterisk community.

Through Digium’s Interoperability Partner program, partners can gain access to products that are complementary to, and interface with, Asterisk. These products interact with Asterisk through a SIP-based interface and are certified for interoperability. Current Digium Interoperability Partners include Polycom (News - Alert), AudioCodes and Grandstream.

Through Digium’s Software Partner program, partners can offer applications that are used in conjunction with Asterisk to provide enhanced functionality (e.g. a billing platform). Partner software products include those that interface with Asterisk using an Asterisk-specific interface.

Through the Solutions Partner program, partners can offer a “whole product” (or “turnkey”) solution based on Asterisk and incorporating Digium hardware and/or software. These offerings may be targeted at specific vertical industries or other niche markets. Current Digium Solutions Partners include Critical Links and Aspect (News - Alert) Software.

Through the Service Provider Partner program, partners can offer telephony services that can be used with Asterisk. This service may include traditional circuit-switched (PSTN) or packet-switched (VoIP) offerings. Current Service Provider Partners include VoicePulse (News - Alert), Bandwidth.com, Simple Signal and Transnexus.

Digium is also going to be introducing a new online portal where visitors can search by keyword to find Asterisk-compatible products such as phones, VoIP services and application software. Through this new portal, which is expected to be up by the end of the year, Digium partners can communicate directly with customers.

“We continue to experience growing demand from technology partners looking to work with Digium to develop and distribute Asterisk-based VoIP solutions,” said Jim Webster, director of technology partnerships for Digium, in a press release. “The Digium Partner Program will provide new and exciting options for partners and showcase the products and services that best complement Asterisk, so businesses can deploy open source VoIP solutions with confidence and ease.”

Digium made news on TMCnet this past Friday when it announced availability of the AEX800, “the industry’s first” eight port PCI Express-based telephony card. This new telephony card for service providers and enterprises operating VoIP networks features eight two-wire RJ-11 interfaces in a single server slot, eliminating the need for multiple slots, dongles, splitters or any other additional points of possible failure. To provide maximum flexibility in deployments, it is configurable in single-port increments between station and trunk interfaces.

Digium claims that when this new card is used in tandem with its G.168-compliant hardware echo cancellation solutions it delivers unrivaled echo cancellation for multi-port open source VoIP systems. Digium's hardware echo cancellation solution provides 128ms of echo cancellation for each of the eight channels and is said to eliminate the need for the tuning and training sometimes required to control echo conditions in Asterisk-based voice systems. As such the solution delivers "toll quality," as per AT&T's (News - Alert) Voice Quality Assessment Labs. In fact, Digium claims the QoS solution outperforms AT&T's benchmark lab echo cancellers in all testing categories.

For more information about the Digium Partner Program, email partners@digium.com or visit www.digium.com/en/ecosystem/partners/.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.