Small businesses and enterprises, (SMEs), using Asterisk based technologies for their IP telephony requirements are in good company, with many national governments amongst their customers. However, even at the highest echelons, few know just how powerful their tools are.
Asterisk is known predominantly for providing business VoIP systems of course and, it gives this provision extremely well. Capabilities extend far beyond this though, most notably with regards to Next Generation communications, such as text-to-speak and speech recognition functionalities.
Another area that Asterisk leads the provision of is in voicemail to email integration. As unified communications become ever more important to doing business, particularly with remote workers that SMEs are increasingly relying on, the free service which also allows voicemail to be stored in IMAP has clear benefits.
Further still users are also able to tap into Google Voice and GTalk, to make and receive free calls. Their servers also support a calendaring API, which is able to be integrated with Exchange, CaIDEV, and iCalendar.
A particular benefit to business users comes with the ability for servers to integrate with internal systems and databases, which allows for easy user management. Making it possible to automatically log and authenticate users, it severely restricts misuse and misappropriation of company tools.
In a similar vein, users can also be connected to directories, and authenticated, through the use of Apple OpenDirectory, Microsoft ActiveDirectory, Lotus Domino Directory or an LDAP server.
All very serious of course but, it is also possible to make business phone systems a little more user friendly.
Asterisk tech also allows call queues to be made far more bearable for the client, through trivia games, in the place of the usual frustrating ‘supermarket’ music. With options that allow call backs to be easily requested, the system makes perfect sense on many levels.
