Digium Introduces Asterisk 13

By David Delony
Contributing Writer

Digium has announced the latest release of its popular open source VoIP PBX software, Asterisk (News - Alert) 13.

The company announced the latest version at its annual event, AstriCon.

"Asterisk 13 represents the most ambitious release of Asterisk yet," said Matt Jordan, project lead for Asterisk. "This release is the culmination of the efforts of thousands of developers and users worldwide. All of them played an integral role in making Asterisk 13 a reality. We are very proud of what's been accomplished in this next, great release of Asterisk."

The latest version is what the company calls a Long Term Support (LTS) intended for production use. Digium (News - Alert) will support LTS releases for four years with an additional year of support for bug fixes, in contrast with its standard releases that are supported for one year with another year of bug fixes.

The last LTS release of Asterisk was Asterisk 11 in 2012. The company has taken the opportunity to introduce some new features. Digium has introduced a new Asterisk REST Interface (ARI), which makes all resources look like URLs. With the new API, developers can customize a number of PBX (News - Alert) features, including call queues, voicemail and conferencing, among others.

Other new features include an improved bridging and media core that makes the Channel Event Logging (CEL) and Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) more useful to developers. Digium has also improved the call transfer capability to better handle attended transfers to multiple parties.

Of course, any developer wanting to really customize the system can dig into the source code. Those who don’t need such a high level of customization can opt for more turnkey solutions like its Switchvox (News - Alert) and hosted solutions.

Digium shows how open source and business can work together. While the company gives away Asterisk for free to customers ranging from IT administrators to hobbyists, it also sells hardware, training services and hosted services.

Edited by Maurice Nagle