Digium, the creator of Asterisk and Switchvox, has announced that it has signed a master agent agreement with Aligned Communications.

The agreement, part of Digium’s (News - Alert) Cloud Agent Program, allows Aligned agents to receive commissions while recommending Digium products.

"Aligned Communications brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and leadership in the cloud services industry by providing excellent analysis and delivery of solutions that fit each customer perfectly," Digium director of global channel sales Jim Butler said. "We are excited to have Aligned Communications offer Switchvox (News - Alert) Cloud and Digium SIP Trunking to its network of cloud agents. The addition of Aligned Communications demonstrates the growing popularity of Digium Cloud Services and the market expansion of cloud communications.”

The field of cloud PBX providers is crowded. A good chunk of companies are offering solutions based on Asterisk (News - Alert), since the software is open source.

Digium is trying to stand out against its competitors by offering the same feature sets for its Switchvox Cloud as it does for the on-premises Switchvox unified communications system.

This is what attracted Aligned Communications to Asterisk.

"Digium's Switchvox PBX (News - Alert) has been a leader in the premises-based SIP PBX market, dating back to the early 2000s when SIP first emerged. Aligned Communications and our agents view their push into the cloud space with Switchvox Cloud and Digium SIP Trunking as the next step in their continued market leadership," said Dave Wallace (News - Alert), president of Aligned Communications.

"We also see Digium's Switchvox Rescue product as the perfect bridging solution for those traditionally premises-based dealers to show their customers a path to the cloud.  Switchvox Cloud is easy to quote, with its all-inclusive feature set. This keeps the customer conversation focused on all the ways they can use Digium's innovative features and easy to understand UI. Digium will be a major player in our hosted PBX portfolio."