Over the past month, we have been working on implementing Asterisk in our office.  Asterisk (http://www.asterisk.org/ ) is a complete software PBX (Private Branch Exchange) that runs on top of Linux.  Asterisk supports a number of features commonly found in a PBX including voicemail, hosted conferencing, call queuing, and many other features.  Having a real PBX provides many benefits for a business and has the potential to improve our service and lower our costs.  Over the next couple months we will be writing about our experiences implementing Asterisk, tips for setting it up etc.

One of the most amazing things about Asterisk is its flexibility.  You can mix and match IP phones, traditional analog phones, soft phones, traditional PSTN lines, and VOIP services in about any way you want.  Our setup is fairly simple -- IP phones and connections to the outside world using our PSTN land line.  We are also evaluating several VOIP providers and trying to determine if VOIP is viable.  Stay tuned ...