This past week I attended Digium’s Annual Switchvox Partner Advisory Council meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. It was directly followed by the annual International Astricon event – the world’s largest Asterisk conference.

This was my third invitation to the Council meeting.

Over the past three years, I’ve seen remarkable consistency in Digium management’s vision, but this year I got a sense of increased confidence and clarity of purpose. 

These guys have a very clear understanding of their position in the market and where they want to go. 

OK, so what did I learn…

1. Digium is Growing

I learned that Digium sales are up substantially for the company. Since I attended under a non-disclosure agreement, I cannot share exact numbers, but let’s say that they are certainly befitting a growth company. Switchvox PBX competitors could only wish for such strong growth in revenues.

The introduction of Digium’s first line of IP telephones was a smash hit with the company already exceeding their loftiest goals. Who says that a desk phone doesn’t create excitement anymore? Digium’s always been an open source software company. Well, now they also have proven they can deliver on quality hardware development too.

2. Digium is Growing Up

The Switchvox line of PBX servers is growing up and very quickly. Again, I can only speak in generalities but there are many projects within Digium that will expand the suitability of the product for larger companies, multiple location organization and those who need advanced disaster recovery capabilities.

What I can share, in detail, is that the Digium Switchvox resellers in attendance were clamoring for larger capacity Switchvox systems. This tells me that the market acceptance of the Switchvox is moving up the food chain, and that’s an exciting development.

3. Switchvox is No Longer “That Open Source Solution”

I got the distinct sense that Digium is focusing more on solutions that will certainly have much more broad business market appeal. In the past, Digium’s bias was towards the open source project known as Asterisk. I now see the organization moving to a new level of corporate maturity with a deepening interest in just developing the best small business communications system in the market. In other words, the Switchvox is taking off in a big way

4. Switchvox is Pushing the Boundaries

As the Switchvox now has broad market appeal, Digium has an important decision in front of them.

Do they want to try to make increment improvements across the whole range of features and applications or do they want to spend more time on break-out capabilities?

Every product developer faces this same dilemma – do everything well or do a few things exceptional? My gut tells me that Digium wants to innovate and push the boundary rather than emulate other’s feature sets. If that proves true, I look forward to some exciting new directions for the product.

5. Tech Support Now Provides World Class Service

Digium technical support has graduated. Frankly, in my opinion, I felt the company had outgrown its support structure awhile back. I’m relieved to see that Digium has directly and boldly addressed the issue of building the capacity and knowledge to handle a quickly growing population of Switchvox resellers and owners. They appear to be well on their way to establishing a world-class support structure.

Overall, I left Atlanta feeling better than ever being the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading Digium Switchvox dealer.

Digium is definitely going places…and TeleDynamic is going with’em!