Entrepreneurial
Advantages with New
Open-Source
Technologies
Jay Phillips
Thursday, October 29, 2009

THE
ECONOMY
L
creative commons photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/maywong_photos/
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Open-Source Software
Development Will
Never Be L Shaped
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

communism
Thursday, October 29, 2009
☭

Thursday, October 29, 2009

proletariat?
Thursday, October 29, 2009

proletariat?
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Open-Source is the First
Post-Scarcity
Economy
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Open-Source is the
Final Stage of
Technological Evolution
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Where are we going?
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Where are we going?
• Cost of minutes are approaching zero
• Software development is getting easier
• Backend telephony moving to the handset
• Less investment capital to go around
• Business models based on cloud computing
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Innovation is all about
the applications
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

“Voice is a Spice” - Thomas Howe
• Applications are about connecting people
• “Web 2.0” is about the social web
• Voice isn’t the application
• Innovating here is hard
• Innovators should build lots of little voice
experimental apps
• Master doing experiments quickly
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Integrate with...
VOICE
TECH
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Integrate with...
Wacky inventions
en
Lead-G
les and
Sa ???
VOICE Social Graphs
TECH Support interfaces
CMSs
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Fast App Development
Non-Voice Technology Voice Technology
• Ruby on Rails
• Cloud telephony
• jQuery / YUI (e.g. Tropo.com)
• Dynamic languages • Java: JSR 309 and JSR 289
• MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sqlite • FreeSWITCH
• Cassandra, CouchDB, Redis • Asterisk
• ORMs for relational DBs • Yate
• Linux • Adhearsion
• Reuse open-source code! • OpenSIPs / Kamailio
• UniMRCP
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Cloud Telephony
Once you build your
application, how do you scale
and operationalize it?
PROS CONS
• Usually cheapest solution • Can be a proprietary trap
• Easiest to setup • Some companies are fly-by-night
• Handles traffic spikes well • Some things may be impossible
• Support staff available • Asset ownership
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Voxeo.com Tropo.com
Very Affordable
Enterprise Telephony
Scripting Language
Application Hosting
Telephony Hosting
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Java Powered Telephony
Java’s back and it’s here to stay.
New open-source standards-based
Java frameworks rock
PROS CONS
• Very robust and powerful • JSR 309 and JSR 289 are very
boilerplate-heavy
• Standards-based
• Usually depend on a separate
• Many Java programmers media server
• Java tools are top-notch • Simple apps overly complicated
SIPMethod, Mobicents, SailFin
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Voxeo is open-sourcing
SIPMethod!
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Asterisk
The grandpa of
open-source telephony.
10 years old!
PROS CONS
• Most popular open-source
• Very expensive to scale
telephony solution
• APIs are super yucky
• Large community
• Hard to reuse stuff
• Does what it was
designed for pretty well • Very limited features
• Supported by Digium • Lots of legacy code
Thursday, October 29, 2009

FreeSWITCH
Basically “Asterisk 2.0”
PROS CONS
• Very scalable
• Modular architecture • Some features never been used
• Lots of features • Integration options could be
improved
• Good single-process
scalability • Clustering will still be expensive
• Supported by Barracuda
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Adhearsion
Very modern open-source
telephony development framework
PROS CONS
• Very fast development
• Ruby (and Java) only
• Intuitive environment
• Limited by Asterisk
• Virtually no boilerplate
• FreeSWITCH and Tropo
• Super easy integration bindings are immature
Thursday, October 29, 2009

OpenSIPS / Kamailio
These sibling projects let you build
very scalable SIP-only “applications.”
PROS CONS
• Very fast
• Community now split
• Reliable
• Few exciting uses of pure-SIP
• Great for building clusters applications
Thursday, October 29, 2009

UniMRCP
General-purpose, modular,
standards-based media server
PROS CONS
• MRCP is very powerful
• MRCP 2.0 very new
• Very modular
• Few good open-source MRCP
• Removes lock-in with clients
proprietary telephony
technology vendors • MRCP is very complex
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thanks!
Jay Phillips
Voxeo Labs
Email: jay@voxeo.com
Skype: Jicksta
Twitter: @jicksta
Blog: Jicksta.com
Thursday, October 29, 2009