One Year for .e4 in Sangoma and will Star2Star Impact our Open Source focus?
It’s been a little over a year that Sangoma purchased .e4. At the time of purchase, we said, “This deal significantly strengthens Sangoma’s sales and support for both FreePBX and Asterisk, as well as further demonstrates Sangoma’s deep commitment to the open source market.” So I think it’s fair to ask if we have accomplished that goal.
From my perspective, yes, we have. Mike White and the team have focused on the open source customer base like we wanted them to. We have more dialogue going with the community. The business we derive from the open source projects FreePBX and Asterisk, such as selling phones, SIP trunking and FreePBX modules, remains strong. We wanted Mike and his team to spearhead this. That was our plan, and that’s what’s happened.
Coincident with the acquisition of .e4 was also putting dedicated open source marketing plans in place. You may have seen we refreshed the logo for FreePBX and created an Asterisk mascot. These are small examples of an increased marketing focus, but nonetheless important. We also ran a multi-day virtual AstriCon conference since we couldn’t do an in-person one. Frankly, this was more work than running an actual conference.
We’ve also had a few questions about whether the pending acquisition of Star2Star will impact our focus on open source. It’s a natural question to ask – “As you grow, the percent of revenue coming in from the adjunct businesses that support open source changes.” Yes, it changes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about it. There are no plans to decrease the engineering, marketing or sales spend on open source. We’ve actually grown this total spend in 2020. We have a focus on it now, and that will continue. The teams will remain the same. And it’s important to remember open source to us is also about innovation and supporting innovation, and that commitment remains strong.
I recently did a podcast with Mike, so if you want to listen to that, please go here.
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