Interview with Brian K West

Added : ( Wed Nov 03 2004 )

An Interview with Brian K West, and his role on the development of asterisk which earned him a coveted spot to speak at the recent AstriCon in Atlanta, Georgia

Carlo Caparras: Hi! Brian, tell me about your background and what is your role here in asterlink (www.asterlink.com) that made AstriCon choose you are a speaker?


Brian K West: I'm 27 year old self taught computer enthusiast, I have a background in ISP Management, VoIP and QoS, Perl, C and PHP. Working with you to help build top quality PSTN/IAX/SIP/h323 product offerings. I have in the past contributed cdr_odbc.c CDR backend module for asterisk and many other minor patches and a few major ones I am also an IRC Op on #asterisk on freenode.net, I help new users from time to time with problems. I'm also a bugmarshal on the asterisk project and founder of #asterisk-bugs on freenode.net I'm also an avid bug hunter.

Carlo Caparras: Ok, more about yourself....

Brian K West: not much more about me I can think of… I didn't go to college.. hell I didn't even get to finish high school.. I had to take my GED 3 months early because I couldn’t stand school any longer. I love a challenge and school wasn't that I think VoIP is the next big thing and I am glad to be in the middle of the ocean before it fills up with sharks. I'm pretty much self taught on anything and everything I know at this point... I'm a quick learner... my mind is like a sponge it can soak up this stuff like this

Carlo Caparras: That’s interesting Brian considering I graduated twice and don’t know half of that, anyway what is your opinion on open source PBX?

Brian K West: I think its causing the big guys to do a double take, an Open source PBX platform is great... the best part about Asterisk is that is VoIP aware and most legacy PBX's have no VoIP natively. Open source allows you to extend and add features and functions, that’s something you can't do with proprietary PBX platforms without paying extra for an SDK with Asterisk the question isn't "what can it do?" The question is "What can't it do?” Asterisk is like a puppy… you can teach it anything, it may pee on the carpet from time to time… but when Asterisk grows up its going to be the little dog whipping up on the big dogs. All of us developers are the puppy chow!

Carlo Caparras: How about the money on open source PBX, and it's application, and VoIP?

Brian K West: I think that open source PBX's are going to be a HUGE cash magnet and the market has nowhere to go but up.

Carlo Caparras: in what way?

Brian K West: Compare asterisk to something like Cisco call manager. Cisco solutions will run you in the 25-50k range for an office in the 24-48 range and you don’t get to peek under the hood. Asterisk can cost 50% or less a 24 extension phone system with asterisk using top quality phones (Cisco 7940 or 7960's running SIP) can run about 13-15kthats cost and it just allows a lot more flexibility vs. a closed source PBX or even a hardware PBX like a Lucent ACS which is just a dumb system when compared to asterisk

Carlo Caparras: Interesting... why did you choose to be a telephony programmer and then join "asterlink" (www.asterlink.com)

Brian K West: I got started in asterisk at my previous employer, we had a kludge of VoIP with Cisco gear that wasn't working out so I searched for a better solution to route and manage calls one weekend I tried asterisk, had it setup in a few hours and then I was able to recycle all our existing Cisco gear into the asterisk setup saving us even more money. That’s how I got started in it... after that our call management was 99% perfect. NO customer complaints as we had before and I was able to monitor it better I have always been interested in communications and phone systems. VoIP just brings the best of what I love together into one...

Carlo Caparras: That’s wonderful, what made you join our team?

Brian K West: The Internet + voice = FUN lets see... what’s a good reason for this... besides the pay is great. Just kidding.
Asterlink gives me the opportunity to work with what I love and in the process I get to help build an asterisk termination service from the ground up that kicks ass. It really does give me a chance to play on stuff I could never afford on my own such as a DS3, PRI and T1's :-) which is FUN

Carlo Caparras: Glad to have you aboard Brian, I am sure you will be a great asset to our already very talented development team.
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