John McElhenny
Schwartz Communications
781.684.0770
digium@schwartz-pr.com
Julie Webb
Digium, Inc.
256.428.6203
jwebb@digium.com
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 11, 2007 — Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® company, today announced it has acquired Sokol & Associates, the premier provider of training for Asterisk users and producer of the AstriCon open source conference. Digium has long enjoyed a close relationship with Steve Sokol and his colleagues, all of whom have joined Digium's team. By acquiring the company, Digium gains an additional channel through which it can communicate Asterisk enhancements to the IT, telephony, software development, reseller and call center professionals who use the software every day.
Digium created, maintains, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the open source telephony communications software in use by more than two million servers today. Asterisk powers Digium's family of software and hardware appliances and enables other companies, which often use older versions of the software in their own voice over IP (VoIP) products.
Sokol & Associates has more than 10 years of experience working in the VoIP industry. The firm is staffed with network and systems engineers and software developers whose deep knowledge of Asterisk's many features allow them to run intensive training sessions across North America and Europe. Steve Sokol, a prominent member of the Asterisk community, will take responsibility for planning future software offerings from Digium, which offers, in addition to Asterisk, AsteriskNOW™, Asterisk Business Edition™ and the AsteriskGUI ™.
"We've been such an active part of the Asterisk community for years that joining Digium seemed like the logical next step for our group," said Steve Sokol. "We look forward to continuing to work with Asterisk users around the world and to taking our knowledge of how people are using Asterisk every day and using it to impact future product development."
Sokol & Associates created and has managed AstriCon, the conference dedicated to expanding the knowledge of Asterisk, since 2004. Digium has been the Diamond sponsor of the conference, which will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., this year from September 24 through 28.
"Asterisk is one of the most commonly used open source projects today, and as the community of users and contributors grows, we want to deepen our relationship with them," said Mark Spencer, founder and chief technology officer of Digium. "Sokol & Associates has run Asterisk training classes around the world and has long been a central part of this community. By bringing Steve and his group on, Digium gains another conduit to new and advanced Asterisk users around the world."
About Asterisk
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, is the original creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the industry's first open source telephony platform. Digium provides hardware and software products, including AsteriskNOW™, the complete open source software appliance; Asterisk Business Edition™, the professional-grade version of Asterisk; and Asterisk Appliance™ hardware-based telephony solution, to enterprises and telecommunications providers worldwide. Digium also offers a full range of professional services, including consulting, technical support and custom software development.
Used in combination with Digium's telephony interface cards, Asterisk offers a strategic, highly cost-effective approach to voice and data transport over IP, TDM, switched and Ethernet architectures. Digium's offerings include VoIP, conferencing, voicemail, legacy PBX, IVR, auto attendant, media servers and gateways, and application servers and gateways. Additional information can be found at www.digium.com.
The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Asterisk SCF, 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.
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