05 February 2007

Solution providers searching "Mark Spencer" on YouTube will find not only a bizarre clip about a homemade cake and humorous downloads regarding British department store Marks & Spencer, but a sure-fire way to increase sales in the lucrative IP PBX and VoIP market courtesy of Asterisk open-source PBX creator Mark Spencer.

Spencer, founder, chairman and CTO of Asterisk provider Digium, Huntsville, Ala., is a onetime Linux service provider who has taken to YouTube to promote AsteriskNow, a new GUI-powered version of the popular open-source PBX aimed at attracting a new wave of solution providers. In the 4-minute, 13-second clip, Spencer takes viewers through the quick and easy AsteriskNow install. That's no small matter. What the new single-disk GUI install does is dramatically lower the cost of entry for solution providers looking to get into the open-source telecom game.