Early today, I started the build process of compiling SipXecs on Amazon EC2. SipXecs, like Asterisk, is another open source PBX for the telephony geek at heart. The process of installing SipXecs is a bit involved and I’m still wrangling with a few issues. It’s certainly a matter of “trail and error” at this point.

I’ll keep you updated about my progress. I’m pretty anxious to try out this platform. Once I’ve succeeded in making SipXecs work, I’ll move on to conquer YATE and FreeSWITCH. We already know that Asterisk is a cakewalk — I’ve been using it for months now on EC2.

Follow CloudCrunch on Twitter for the latest updates to this guide, cloud computing tidbits and the upcoming launch!

UPDATE (11/13/08): Thank you to everyone for expressing such a great interest in my upcoming Asterisk guide. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get this guide out into the world and as it’s my first ever ‘how-to’ guide, I’ve been tracking statistics, gathering feedback and planning for the next step for the official release of the guide.

I am currently working to finally wrap up this guide. I’m a perfectionist, so I want things to be right. It will include many of your suggestions and answers to common questions such as cost, etc. (As a hint, I hardly ever cross the $75/month mark, which falls right in line with running a small-instance server 24 hours a day). I will not be charging for this guide, so I expect the adoption to be huge (there’s been a surprising interest from companies like Nokia, Lucent and others). I’m excited to provide a resource that will teach fellow technologists and enthusiasts the background details to run Asterisk in the cloud on Amazon EC2. This is the future of telephony, folks!

Thanks again for your support!

More than three years ago, I began my experimentation with Asterisk and IP telephony on Linux. I had previously ditched my reliance on POTS (“Plain Old Telephone Service”) in favor of a new player in the VoIP space: Vonage.

Amazed and equally blown away by the feature set and possibilities of VoIP, I began to wonder how anyone could implement this technology for their own use. That’s when I discovered Asterisk.

Today, my implementations of Asterisk no longer reside on a physical server shoved in a closet somewhere. Instead, they now live “in the cloud” within Amazon’s vast IT enterprise environment in Seattle, Washington. I can remotely manage and administer my Asterisk installation from anywhere in the world, including the addition of extensions, troubleshooting the dial plan and much more.

To date, there’s been no downtime in almost 200 days of running Asterisk on Amazon’s EC2 platform. No downtime! What’s even better about implementing Asterisk in the cloud is that it’s painless and hassle free. Servers can be launched almost instantly — and in real-time — without unboxing and installing necessary hardware to “turn up” new installations for service expansion, etc.

As someone with a near 20 year history with technology, the combination of IP telephony with cloud computing is an amazing development in the telecom world. The possibilities are endless and only limited by one’s imagination. Welcome to a new world of telephony — Reinvented in the cloud.

If you’d like to experience Asterisk and IP telephony in the cloud for yourself, I’d be more than happy to welcome your SIP or IAX-based phone into my dial plan for a real-time conversation to test the quality and reliability of VoIP on Amazon EC2. For everyone else, please take advantage of my consulting offer for a 10% discount on Amazon AWS (EC2 and S3) services as mentioned on Amazon’s blog.