Curds and the Digium Way

After a week on the road at ITEXPO in Miami, I needed to take a break from restaurant food and cook. I was pleasantly surprised when asked on Friday to fix crab cakes which I partnered with a mustard cream sauce. Saturday I made calf’s liver and caramelized onions for dinner. I also made a vegetable beef stew for Super Bowl Sunday. I served the stew for breakfast topped with a sunny-side-up egg. Just before the game began, I fired up the fryers to make Buffalo wings, chicken livers, French fries and fried cheese curds (remember we had mostly vegetables for breakfast). I’d never made fried cheese curds and they were awesome. Lightly coated with panko breadcrumbs, they were deliciously crunchy and chewy. A quite simple dish that delivers way beyond the effort, Fried Cheese Curds is the recipe of the week. Enjoy!

The Digium Way

Last week Digium announced Digium Phone Module for Asterisk (DPMA), which will enable advanced application and provisioning features. DPMA is a proprietary protocol that will allow it to deliver certain features available on other platforms. While it is too soon to know how DPMA will be accepted by the Asterisk ecosystem and IP industry in general, the phones accompanying the announcement seem a bit dated and plain.

Although all of the phones support HD voice, it seems odd that the phones require DESI labels (paper strips to label button functionality). There are no versions of the phone to support wireless or video. Furthermore, I am puzzled by the selection of a proprietary protocol to support these less-than-advanced-looking phones. Given Digium’s success with an open-source application like Asterisk, it would seem that they could have continued with that philosophy and developed an open-source-based endpoint. However, Digium has indicated that it will license DPMA, although no details were given.

This product announcement is very important to Broadvox Partners as Digium/Asterisk-based systems are at top of our list for most SIP Trunk activations. It will be good for our partners if DPMA successfully positions Asterisk-based IP PBXs to be more competitive with other proprietary offerings and improves the margins for them and the phones. Better features and more revenue are good in a nice whey.

David Byrd is vice president of marketing and sales for Broadvox , and is responsible for marketing and channel sales programs to SMBs, enterprises and carriers as well as defining the product offering. Prior to joining Broadvox, David was the vice president of Channels and Alliances for Eftia and Telcordia. As director of eBusiness Development with i2 Technologies, he developed major partnerships with many of the leaders in Internet eCommerce and supply chain management. As CEO of Planet Hollywood Online he was a pioneer in using early Internet technologies to build a branded entertainment and eCommerce website company partnered with Planet Hollywood. Having over 20 years of telecom sales and marketing experience, he has held executive positions with Hewlett-Packard, Sprint and Ericsson.