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Across a wide range of businesses and universities, Asterisk is being embraced as a viable open source PBX replacement to traditional phone systems.

Digium, one of Asterisk's strongest backers, recently won a global distribution deal that should allow the IP PBX to accelerate its worldwide acceptance.

And just like Red Hat's early business dominance of the Linux market, Digium is looking like the company to beat in the Asterisk industry.

Dell in the US has partnered with Fonality ? an Asterisk backer ? to promote IP telephone gear earlier this year. And now Worxbox has attached the unified communications label to its Asterisk efforts.

The same scenario happened when Linux sneaked up on Windows servers. And it's going to happen again as Asterisk-centric companies sneak up on traditional VoIP providers.