Marc Fribush, a former "Microsoft guy," is a telecommunications industry entrepreneur who discovered the benefits of open source when he launched a turnkey SAAS telephony business based on Asterisk. "It's really powerful stuff," Fribush says.

As IP telephony gains acceptance in the SMB market, it's not likely to be the products of mainstream IP PBX vendors that lead the change. Open source software, some say, may be the mechanism whereby IP telephony vendors bring affordable, reliable, and innovative products into the largely untapped—and highly cost-conscious—small-business arena.

TapRoot Systems is demonstrating its telephony middleware for Linux/Qtopia-based mobile phones at the Linux Mobile Communications Conference this week in Beijing. TapRoot's director of product management, stated, "Development of Linux mobile phones is on the rise and is changing the landscape of the mobile phone industry. Our LinuxTel telephony software is a critical piece."

Linux company DcData and telephony solutions providers BizCall have entered a strategic partnership in order to provide IP telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP) services to the Kwazulu Natal market, forming BizCall KZN.

Mark Spencer never expected to be where he is today, but the Auburn, Ala., native is making a name for himself in the world of technology.

Like many VoIP telephony companies, Junction Networks uses Asterisk and other open source software to provide its customers with highly customizable VoIP service. Junction has been able to migrate its business model from a conference bridge service provider to a full-fledged telephone services company largely because of the flexibility and lower capital requirements of open source. "We're a completely bootstrapped company," says Mike Oeth, founder and CEO. "We were never locked into a business plan that was sold to investors." He says Junction is successful because it has been able to follow its customers' desires with open source.

Building Telephony Systems with OpenSER is a new book from Packt, which acts as a step-by-step guide to building a high performance Telephony System. Written by Flavio E. Goncalves, this book teaches users how to develop a fast and flexible Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server using OpenSER.

What does Mozilla - arguably the most popular open source project in the world - use for its telephony solution?

It’s one small step for Dell, and another great leap for Asterisk — the open source VoIP phone system. Dell plans to promote Fonality (a major Asterisk proponent) to small business customers seeking IP telephony systems. It’s a landmark development, folks, that benefits Dell in multiple markets (open source, VoIP, unified communications, and managed services). Here’s why.