Digium plans large capacity Asterisk PBX

VoIP hardware supplier Digium is planning to launch an IP PBX which will have the capacity to handle hundreds or even thousands of users.

While its soon-to-be-released products tend to only have support for around 50 employees to use it at once, the Asterisk developer is looking to create a much more powerful system.

Using an Intel processor and flash memory to allow rapid access, the new Asterisk Appliance program will be able to manage 240 simultaneous conversations, according to Digium.

With call centres or offices of less than a thousand employees, Digium believes they could get by with just one appliance to cover all the calls being made at once.

The new product has its roots in the developer platform released by Digium last year which has seen more than 100 different products under development by third parties which are trying to improve or adapt the current version of the Asterisk Appliance program.

Digium's vice president of product management and marketing, Bill Miller, said that the program has attracted a large amount of attention as it removes the need for VoIP resellers or end-point customers to buy hardware on which it can run the Asterisk Business Edition software.