[Discuss] PBX Standards? (was: Cloud thread)

[dcrookston at gmail.com (Daniel C.)]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 7:13 AM, Tom Metro <tmetro-blu at vl.com> wrote:
> I've been hoping that we'd see more open source apps in hosted form, and
> we have seen some, but not really wide spread. Take for example virtual
> PBXs. It's entirely feasible that we could have seen an "Asterisk
> hosting" market develop much like web hosting, but it didn't happen.
> There is maybe one vendor that I know of that provides Asterisk hosting.
> The rest stick a proprietary GUI on top, or use an entirely proprietary
> solution. If things don't work out with your PBX provider, there is no
> way to download your config and prompts and upload them to another
> provider.

Web servers are almost a commodity at this point.  Most server-side
technologies can be hosted on any platform with only minor
modifications.  Client-side parts (obviously) don't care where they're
hosted.  Why isn't there some similar standard for PBX's?  It can't be
that hard to slap together an XML standard that defines your phone
network, options, etc. and that all vendors agree on.

Incidentally, this reminds me of an idea I had while working my way
through a phone tree one day.  Why hasn't anyone put together a web
app that works in tandem with a phone tree, allowing the caller to
view the options on screen while simultaneously hearing them read over
the phone?  I am much better at visualizing information than I am at
"audiolizing" it.  (Which is probably why we have a word for thinking
about things with our visual centers, while I had to make up a word
for the auditory equivalent.)  It would be a hell of a lot easier to
see the options in front of me and be able to click them than to have
to fiddle with my phone the entire time.  It doesn't seem like
plugging this into Asterisk would be tremendously difficult.

-Dan