Digium acquires training partner

Missouri-based Sokol will plan future products

Huntsville-based Digium Inc. said Wednesday that it has acquired Sokol & Associates, one of its training partners for Digium's Asterisk software.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sokol, based in Kansas City, Mo., has four employees who will stay in their current location for now, said Timo Sandritter, spokesman for Digium.

Digium is the creator of Asterisk, an open-source software for the telecommunications industry. Sokol has worked with Digium for several years to provide training for the software in North America and Europe. Sokol created and has managed AstriCon, the conference dedicated to expanding the knowledge of Asterisk, since 2004. Digium has been the Diamond sponsor of the conference, which will be held in Phoenix Sept. 24-28.

"Asterisk is one of the most commonly used open-source projects today, and as the community of users and contributors grows, we want to deepen our relationship with them," said Mark Spencer, founder and chief technology officer of Digium. "Sokol & Associates has run Asterisk training classes around the world and has long been a central part of this community."

Sokol founder Steve Sokol will plan future software offerings from Digium, which offers, in addition to Asterisk, AsteriskNOW, the company's hardware appliance; Asterisk Business Edition; and AsteriskGUI (graphical user interface).

"We've been such an active part of the Asterisk community for years that joining Digium seemed like the logical next step for our group," Sokol said. "We look forward to continuing to work with Asterisk users around the world and to taking our knowledge of how people are using Asterisk every day and using it to impact future product development."

Founded in 1999, Digium has about 100 employees. Asterisk software has more than 2 million users worldwide.

"By bringing Steve and his group on, Digium gains another conduit to new and advanced Asterisk users around the world," Spencer said.