Digium and Zimbra Bring Asterisk VoIP to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 13, 2006 — Digium®, Inc., the original creator of Asterisk and pioneer of open source telephony, and Zimbra, a leader in open source next-generation collaboration and messaging, today announced the integration of Voice-over-IP calling capabilities into the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), by leveraging Asterisk. With this partnership, Digium and Zimbra are leading the way to the first open source Unified Messaging platform.
"We're really pumped that Zimbra and Digium are able to provide Unified Messaging this quickly by leveraging open platforms. Now, I can initiate a conference call with my engineering team, quickly access my voicemail or call home from the road – all through my e-mail," said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and CEO. "What's beautiful about this is that it's all based on open standards. We've implemented a SIP integration with ZCS that has been tested and proven on Digium's open source Asterisk VoIP system."
"Our partnership with Zimbra is a great example of the flexibility and innovation open source provides," said Mark Spencer president of Digium and creator of Asterisk. "Zimbra's integration of Asterisk clearly illustrates the potential of Asterisk's role in building unified messaging platforms."
VoIP feature highlights
Zimbra's new VoIP capabilities include: Click-to-call: click on a phone number in an e-mail, calendar appointment, or address book contact and automatically place a call from the phone of your choice, including landlines, mobile phones, and softphones. Instantaneous conference calling: select any group of contacts, or any e-mail or calendar appointment and automatically initiate a conference call to all the recipients Voicemail: quickly access voicemail from office, home, or mobile phones via e-mail, without placing a phone call.
VoIP benefits
TCO – reduced domestic and international call costs through click-to-call feature User convenience to make a call or generate a conference bridge directly from email or calendar Integrated email access to voicemail.
Digium and Zimbra will be giving live demos of the ZCS VoIP features at the Spring 2006 VON Conference & Expo, March 14-17 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA, booth 809.
Pricing and Availability
The ZCS 3.0 Open Source Edition is free, and the commercially-supported Network Edition is available for $28/mailbox/year, which includes full product support as well as software subscriptions to new releases, updates and patches. Both editions can be downloaded at www.zimbra.com. Users can discuss topics related to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite and provide feedback at www.zimbra.com/forums.
About Zimbra
Zimbra dramatically improves the messaging and collaboration experience for administrators and users. Zimbra's goal is to achieve this by investing in innovation, open source, and compatibility with existing applications and systems. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite supports Windows, Apple, and Linux platforms and works with Microsoft Outlook as well as other PC and mobile clients. Additionally, Zimbra provides an AJAX browser based client that delivers rich, secure, anytime access for anyone within the enterprise. More information and software downloads are available at www.zimbra.com.
About Asterisk
Code for Asterisk, originally written by Mark Spencer of Digium Inc., has been contributed to from open source software engineers around the world. It supports a wide range of TDM protocols for the handling and transmission of voice over traditional telephony interfaces, and VoIP packet protocols such as IAX, SIP and H.323. It supports US and European standard signaling types used in business phone systems, allowing it to bridge between next-generation voice-data integrated networks and existing infrastructure. More information is available at www.Asterisk.org.