What Can Asterisk Do For You?

Asterisk is more than just a phone system, it's the world's leading open source telephony engine and tool kit. Most people know it as just an open source phone system. There are many uses past the obvious of creating a home or small office phone system.

Using Asterisk, you can create virtual hunt groups, implement on hold entertainment/messages, integrate with monitoring systems to generate alerts for service outages, create a calling card system, integrate with SMS to generate specific actions, create your own "phone company", create help desk tiered routing, provide "out of market" DID numbers, manage outbound callerID, provide reminder calls and play current information or pre-recorded messages, transfer calls, provide extended services far away from the server, integrate with CRM to recognize and display caller information, better handle NAT, create dial in conference bridge, create telephone surveys. You get the point, there are a lot of creative ways to integrate Asterisk into your specific business needs while benefiting from its open architecture and price (free).

Combined with the right ideas and Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP), Asterisk can and has helped many developers create businesses which previously required large investment in infrastructure and licensed software.

Quick Links
Asterisk Calling Card Gateway
Asterisk/Trixbox with VarPhonex Trunk
101 Things You Can Do with Asterisk