As some of you know, over the past 9 months, I’ve been heavily involved in the establishment of Humbug. For those who may not know, Humbug is a Call Analytics and Fraud Analysis SAAS. Now, differing from many of the current telephony SAAS projects, we are not based on Amazon EC2 or some other public cloud infrastructure, we build our own cloud environment. Why do we build our own cloud? simple, we need to keep your data secured and confidential. At Humbug, we see ourselves as a cross between Google Analytics – in our ability to analyze and handle data and Verisign – in our security and confidentiality requirements and methodologies.

Question be asked, why do people trust Verisign to provide SSL certificates around the world. What makes Verisign’s CA better than a privately owned CA – the answer is simple, it’s a third party 2 entities can entrust at the same time. Humbug aims to provide the same lever of trust, simply because we regard your data as sacred and valuable.

Since about 2 months ago, we’ve been contacting various Asterisk integrators around the world, inviting them to evaluate Humbug services. Now, while some integrators and vendors were somewhat reluctant, others were more than happy to join. We now have over 250 monitored systems around the world, with system being monitored and analyzed in Israel, USA, UK, Brazil and more.

The thing that amazed me in regards to some of the integrators who decided not to participate was that they claimed: “we provide our customers our own brew of fraud analysis service, we don’t require your SAAS”. Now, while I can accept the fact that an integrator would offer such a SAAS as an in-house service, I can’t see why a customer would rely on these services. In my view, relying on your integrator to provide fraud analysis services is like relying on the integrator of your alarm system to provide hired guard services – it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why doesn’t it make sense? in Hebrew we say: “Go prove that you have a sister”. Imagine that your PBX integrator offer you such a service, then, in some obscure manner, your PBX gets hijacked and you get slammed with 50K$ worth of phone calls to Somalia. Now, your integrator would say: “Hmmmmm… that’s odd, we didn’t even get those CDR events to our system… you really got hacked bad…” – sure, if you only rely on CDR records to do your analysis (which is what 99.9% of integrators do). There is much much much much more to fraud analysis than just CDR analysis – if it all began and finished with CDR analysis, then by far Cvidya, Verint, NICE and many others would have been made redundant.

Allowing your integrator to provide you with fraud analysis SAAS is like putting the fox to guard the hen house, when things louse up (and they may), he’s the first one to bail out saying: “It’s not my fault”.

Humbug takes a totally different approach to fraud analysis, specifically, in the way we regards the various PBX systems and integrators. We are vendor agnostic and integrator agnostic – we will provide you with the clear and concise information you require in order to make an educated decision as to how you were de-frauded (if de-frauded) and provide you a faster alerting and response time. Our recent adventures had lowered our fraud alert response time from 60 minutes, down to 14 minutes in some cases. Most fraud analysis system carry a 24-36 hour turn around time, by that time, you can be out of 50K$ – our aim is to lower that number to no more than a 100$ in the worst case. Ambitious? yes, down right crazy? probably so, but we always say: “Aim for the moon, you’ll land on a star!” – so we know we’ll get there.

The following post doesn’t really fit in line with the normal spirit of the blog, simply because it’s not funny nor directly related to technology. It’s called Business 2.0, as it relates to the ever problematic question any business owner has: “When should I grow and how?”.

As you may know, I’ve been a freelance Asterisk Platform developer since early 2003, turned to freelance development (Penguin for hire) around April 2007. Since that time, I’ve built systems and platforms for some of the better known brands around the world. Be it working directly with the customer or through a 3rd party (as a sub contractor) – I can easily say that I’ve completed over 120 different large scale projects within 3 years time. Now, when I refer to projects, I’m not referring to installing PBX systems, I don’t do that at all – I’m referring to highly complex application level development, creating some of the most innovative Asterisk based systems I’ve ever seen.

Image via CrunchBase

Image via Wikipedia

Putting aside everything, finalizing a rough estimate of 40 development projects on a yearly base, most of these performed solely by myself is a fairly challenging task. Sure, at times I’ll outsource some work to other freelancers like myself, specifically in fields where I’m not all that fluent (Database, Web Development, UI) – but yet, doing that means that I’m conducting 3 – 5 projects on a monthly basis.

After doing so for 3 years now, I can’t help but start thinking about expanding my business, taking it to the next level by hiring more people and building it up to a new level. Question remains for this: “How? What is the natural track of expanding your business?” – of course the simple answer would be: “Just hire another developer or two, and start doing more sales” – it’s not as simple as it sounds. After thinking about it for some time, I’ve concluded there are a few models of expansion:

Model 1: Organic Growth

Organic growth can be described as the simplest way of growth: “Hire a new guy and get more work in”. The problem with this model that it is fully reliant on your ability to sell more. However, as you concentrate on sales more, you take time from the development and delivery process – thus, the addition of the new developer is not a 100% addition, it’s actually 100% (developer) minus 40% (you) – so you are not at 200% capacity, you are 160% capacity. Surely 160 is 100, however, for the initial 6 months, till the guy learns the ropes, you are not at 160, you are actually at 80 – can you and your business sustain that?

Thus, the main issue with Organic growth is cash flow, can your business sustain the elevated expenses with less income for the period of transition? If the answer is NO, then you need a different method. If the answer is YES, then you are in the best place in the world, however, bear in mind that taking someone to work for you is a responsibility – people are not resources, they are human beings, with families and children – taking someone to work for you is like taking responsibility for their lives.

Model 2: The Partner

A partnership with a person who is equally matched to you is always a good option. Technically speaking, it means that you are teaming with someone who generates as much work as you do and is capable of finalizing the work as fast and as good as you can. Yet, taking a partner doesn’t negate the requirement for a new employee or two. In this case, you may end up with too much sales with too little staff to deliver – that is a big problem.

Another issue with partners is the issue of trust. While most partners tend to rely on each other and trust each other, that trust can easily be broken (in most cases by stupid things). It’s enough for one partner to now carry its weight in sales/development to initiate a chain reaction, shortly ending in the partnership dissolving.

So, the partner is a good option, however, may prove to be problematic if the wrong partner is chosen – in addition, dissolving a partnership solely on these issues isn’t all that simple – and usually ends up in litigation and other judicial issues – YUCK!

Model 3: Un-intrusive Angel

Some people ragard Un-intrusive Angels as “Stupid Money” – an Angel investor that doesn’t interfere in your company business model and operations. In many cases, this is how start-up companies start – someone gives them a lump sum of money to start their business, signing off to own a portion of the new company.

An un-intrusive investor usually gives you the money and pays you a visit once every few months to see how his money is spent. Don’t expect to raise a whole lot from these people, usually you will get anything from 25K$ to around 250K$ – tops. If you are getting an investment from an Angel, make sure you plan your business carefully – and make sure your investor knows what he is getting into. The Angel is not a found piggy bank, he is a business man looking for profit – if you make sure his expectations of profits (time frame, amount, percentage, etc) are kept within the reason of your business – he will make an educated decision and invest accordingly. Promises like: “you’ll double your money in 3 years” are stupid – make sure it’s realistic and to the point. If you promise the moon, and reach a star – that’s a problem, if you promise the skies and hit a start – that’s wonderful.

Model 4: The Strategic-Intrusive Angel

Image by TheFemGeek via Flickr

A strategic angel is similar to the previous one in terms of funds, however, he is more capable in assisting your business meet its goals. Usually, it would be someone who is already a well established figure in your business sector, had made his money from previous companies and is now looking for new ideas and businesses. I call him an intrusive Angel, as sometimes he may have ideas as to where your business should go – and he will make sure you hear his ideas. You may regard it as annoying, but you should still listen to your Angel and pay him the respect he deserves.

Sometimes this Angel may invest in your business due to the fact that he has a hidden agenda. An agenda can be: The angel looks at your business and see a certain potential you are not planning, he’ll invest and try to re-direct your company to the agenda he sees. This is usually the case when your angel is invested into several endeavours that is either parallel to each other or may have orthogonal intersection points. These angels can be the builders of your business or the destroyers, it is up to you to make sure the latter doesn’t happen.

Prolog:

So, which model did I choose? – I didn’t choose yet, I’m still figuring it out myself. What ever the model may be, the choice isn’t simple nor straight forward. At best, whatever choice I’ll take will have a profound impact on my business and me – so I’ll need to weigh my options carefully. If you can think of an additional model, I’d love to hear about it – so just comment on this post.

When I last reviewed the PIKA WARP Asterisk appliance, I  named the post “Pokemon Asterisk” – today I’ve decided to review the PIKA WARP Asterisk appliance again, only this time, with the newly released Asterisk GUI 2.0 release – our cuddly Pikachu is now a Raichu (relax, it took me about 30 minutes to find out what a Picachu evolves into).

The new PIKA appliance now boasts the new star fangled Digium Asterisk GUI 2.0, which takes the old Asterisk GUI (which was OK, but still had some miles to go) and more or less throws it into the waste bin. The new GUI is far more useful, far more usable and most importantly – makes life way easier for the integrator. While the previous version of the PIKA Warp appliance was targeted for developers, the new version of the WARP is aimed directly into the heart of the integration scene.

Asterisk GUI 2.0 on PIKA WARP

Now, I have to admit that after upgrading the system to the new PIKA WARP cuImage I had some issues logging into the system. So, what I did is more or less hack myself in via ‘single user mode’. Here’s a small guide on how to do that. Before we being, you will require a serial cable connection to the WARP appliance in order to do this, which means, this is more or less a hardcore procedure.

The PIKA WARP Serial Connector Port

When the system boots up, and you are confronted with a message saying “Hit any key to stop autoboot:” simply hit any key on your keyboard, and you’ll be fronted with the “=>” prompt, indicating that the boot loader is now waiting for information. Now, we need to tell the PIKA WARP appliance to boot into single user mode.

To do so, we need to modify the ‘ramargs’ environment variable of UBOOT, to indicate that we want to start single user mode. Enter the following command:

setenv ramargs setenv bootargs root=/dev/ram rw ramdisk_size=130000 single

This will indicate to the UBOOT loader to initiate a single user mode bootup. Once in single user mode, you can use the ‘passwd’ command to change the root password of the PIKA WARP appliance. This procedure can be used by an other PIKA WARP based appliance.

Once of the nice additions in the new Asterisk GUI 2.0 is the support for Class of Service, which doesn’t really exist in FreePBX. In many offices, managers like to restrict various extensions from accessing different parts of the telephony system – that is performed utilizing the Class of Service screen.

Class of Service management

The “Class of Service” management enables you to create groups with access to specific trunks or PBX functions, thus, enabling you to seperate users and groups of users from specific PBX resources. For example, some users can be completely restricted from using outbound trunks, while others can be restricted to using a single FXO interface out of 4 connected FXO interfaces. In general, this is one of the best features in the GUI yet in my opinion.

I’m currently reviewing the new version, so once I have new information I’ll post my findings.

As I wrote a couple of days, I’m currently in the process of evaluating the PIKA WARP appliance. As I already said before, the PIKA WARP isn’t a real PBX, but actually a framework for building PBX type appliances.

For me, the entire evaluation process is more or less a process of trial and error, trying to figure out how the box is built, both from the software side and both from the build-tools provided with the appliance.

The process of flashing the new FreePBX based images wasn’t much of a hassle, actually, after more or less fucking up the box a couple of times, I became fairly handy with both the warploader and uboot tools, used to flash the onboard flash memory with a new boot image. After flashing the FreePBX about 3 times, I got it to come up right on my browser window, which produced the following screen:

PIKA FreePBX Screen

Now, it was fairly clear to me that MySQL (a mandatory component of FreePBX) isn’t a shoe in for the WARP appliance, after all, for an appliance it would be a blowtware. So, FreePBX here comes with SQLite, which on the surface should provide for similar functionality. Having worked with SQLite in the past, I knew for fact that some portions of FreePBX will not work – who am I kidding? if they would work it would be the most amazing thing I’ve seen a long time.

Mainly, this is caused by variations between the SQL code and various table management that FreePBX imposes on the FreePBX database structure, when installing or upgrading new or existing modules. For example, trying to go about and install the FreePBX IVR module yields the following error:

FreePBX error on WARP appliance

Well, that’s understandable – basically means that the unit isn’t yet fully useable with FreePBX – but we are getting there I guess, after all, rome wasn’t built in a single day.

So, over the past 2 years, we’ve seen many Asterisk appliances – ranging from the Digium AADK on one side of the spectrum to the RoweTel IP04 appliance, it is clear that appliances are the hottest thing in the Asterisk sector to-date.

While most appliances take on a similar form, usually one of the following: an ADI BlackFin reference design or a PC-Engines Geode based appliance, one company decided to go completely the other way around – namely PIKA technologies. Now, don’t let the name PIKA fool you, these guys are no pokemons, they know their stuff.

While at AstriCon 2008, I’ve been approached by the people at PIKA technologies, asking me to test and evaluate their WARP Appliance product – a Linux based appliance framework, for building Linux based appliances, with a focus on telephony. They awarded me with an appliance to test, equipped with 5 FXS ports and 4 FXO ports, I was on my way to start my telephony appliance.

First thing’s first, computing power – while most appliances rely on fairly low scale computing power, the PIKA appliances boasts a massive PowerPC CPU, with a uCkernel based Linux 2.6.X kernel – while many other appliances still rely on 2.4.X. The on-board LCD display makes finding your appliance IP number a breeze, which is very important in my book. Opening the box is very easy, exposing its inner workings:

One thing nice about the LCD display is the fact that once you plug something in, the LCD will show the applicable LCD icon as connected – making for quick diagnostics for the lame sysadmin a breeze.

Now we’re getting to the slightly annoying part, the WARP appliance is not your average PBX appliance – in fact, it’s not a PBX at all – it’s a framework for building telephony appliances. So, if you want to get Asterisk + FreePBX to run on it, you’ll need to spend some time getting it up and running correctly. If you want to start working with the appliance, I suggest that you get to know cross-compiling and build tools, in order to utilize the buildtools provided with the appliance.

Over all, the appliance comes with a fairly stock Linux and Asterisk pre-compiled, with all the required modules to get a fully functional PBX running. For my initial tests, I’ve used the AsteriskGUI, which worked just fine with the system, making the configuration a breeze.

I’m currently evaluating their FreePBX build-tool, provided by Philippe from FreePBX, and we’ll see how that goes.