

Skype cancels Asterisk integration - e1ven
http://now.eloqua.com/es.asp?s=491&e=162556

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kurtsiegfried
Skype are probably just dropping support for the Asterisk specific plugin.
They still have the standards based Skype for SIP
(<http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/business/skype-connect/>), which Asterisk
should also be able to support via its own SIP support.

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zdw
Other VoIP endpoint vendors have hacked around Skype quite a bit:

[http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Mod_skypopen_Skype_Endpoint_...](http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Mod_skypopen_Skype_Endpoint_and_Trunk)

... which is good until Skype starts trying to detect this kind of stuff.

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mindstab
Anyone else wonder if this has anything to do with Skype's recent acquisition
by Microsoft?

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e1ven
The title on Slashdot was "Microsoft Kills Skype For Asterisk", but I thought
that was too speculative for HN.

[http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/24/2010222/Microsoft-
Ki...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/24/2010222/Microsoft-Kills-Skype-
For-Asterisk)

~~~
mickt
It's the first thing I thought of, and it could be a clue as to where MS may
lead Skype. Are they going to come out with some killer VOIP app for Windows 7
mobiles phones that will cause us all to drop our iPhones & 'droids?

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Derbasti
I hope they realize that the 'killer app' part of Skype is the amount of
people using it. If they kill platforms, they lose people. If they lose
people, they kill Skype.

Case in point: If they kill either the Mac client or the iOS client, they will
lose _me_ , and thus all my family. I hope they realize that.

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rdl
I wonder if they will see a huge spike in orders over the next 2 months... I
am certainly more likely to buy it now, just in case I need it in the next 2
years.

~~~
wizard_2
Except you'll probably loose support sometime in the next few years and as
soon as they consider it a burden or a threat they'll pull the plug on it. For
hobby use it would be really cool for any business I'd stay far away from it.

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smhinsey
This seems like as good a place as any to ask: I work at a company that's
distributed all across the US and East Asia. We don't really have a coherent
phone system. This isn't my area per se, but I'm curious to see what options
are out there. What should I look at? Is Skype the way to go or are there
better "corporate" options?

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brown
Our small company linked free open source Asterisk servers in US, Philippines,
and India (10-100 people per location). It's doable, but has a significant
learning curve. I'd recommend hiring a professional to help you set it up and
train your IT staff.

If you want to pay for a higher end option, Avaya is a common choice. They
power many companies (including huge call centers) all over the world.

~~~
hahainternet
If you have moderate experience with Linux and can read manpages then you
should have no real problem linking Asterisk servers between locations and
setting up all common phone functions.

Asterisk (and its derivatives) are really quite powerful and easy to use. We
use it everywhere that the commercial systems fail (like having working SIP
without paying tens of thousands in licenses)

~~~
nico
I have worked with Asterisk and would recommend using FreeSWITCH instead.

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jamesgeck0
I would not. Not yet, anyway. Configuration of Asterisk is significantly
easier with the FreePBX GUI. The FreeSWITCH equivalent is 2600hz which,
although prettier, is missing a number of features* and is more difficult to
use in some ways.

It's very promising, though.

* I don't remember which features specifically, but I do remember being unable to completely replicate a moderately complex Asterisk setup in the 2600hz GUI. It might have been related to the AVR system.

~~~
dschreiber_
Hi - founder of blue.box, the product from 2600hz you are referring to.

I'd be curious to know which features, but more importantly, have you seen
Whistle? It's an API-driven control system for clustered FreeSWITCH. You can
probably do whatever you need to in there.

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xbryanx
I posted something on this a little bit ago. Seems to correlate with
Microsoft's decision to revoke free access to their VXML studio product (and
thus Skype purchase) - <https://studio.tellme.com/>

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braindead_in
Uh-oh. What's next? The API?

