Raphaël Libois interview

From what activity does this interview take time?

I am Solution Engineer for Genesys, I provide support to Genesys sales team and to the existing customer, for the Belgian and Luxemburg markets.

You work for Genesys, a company not active in Open Source. How does your employer see and consider Free and Open Source Software?

Genesys is not an open source product. But Genesys is an open solution, offering the ability to interface numerous telephony switches from different vendors, to run on different operating systems and databases, and to connect with third party products. Our customers use open source software like Asterisk softswitch but also Linux for example. Genesys integrates to products also using open source. I am also please to announce that Genesys is in the process of submitting an open source addition to the Asterisk softswitch.

Genesys recently announced formal support for Asterisk. What does it mean concretely?

In the VoIP area, SIP protocol is now becoming an industry standard, adopted by market leaders. Genesys supports SIP among other protocols and the interface with Asterisk is performed through SIP. Formal support of Asterisk means that Genesys has successfully tested our SIP Server application with the Asterisk softswitch, and that we consider this a supported solution for Genesys customers. If a customer deploys this contact center solution, it means that customers who use Asterisk have a 'supported' environment. They have access to our Technical Support Group when it comes to questions and support on the combination of Genesys and Asterisk.

How did the company come to that decision, and was it an easy decision?

Genesys has a long tradition of integrating our contact center application with multiple switch vendors, both TDM and IP. Asterisk is just another switch with which we will interoperate. And I think this was also mainly driven by customer request.

What's in your opinion the reason of this growing number of Asterisk customers?

The fact that it is free and open source can give a larger degree of freedom when it comes to developing additional features. Also the low cost of Asterisk solution.

As you also interface with proprietary systems, you're in a unique position to compare both. Tell us how you see Asterisk and its proprietary competitors compare!

Because we maintain relationships with all of the major switch vendors, Genesys cannot provide this type of comparison information. The only things I can say is that Genesys features are PBX agnostic, so able to work properly on all the supported switches. Of course, the switch features themselves are different from one vendor to another one.

Can you reassure the event's participants that your talk won't be a commercial show for your company?

But I am a sales man ... I am joking. Information sharing will be the main aim of my intervention!