Welcome to the DIDX podcast media channel where we bring you the expertise and inspiration from IP communication leaders, early adopters, all kinds of people, from around the world. I am your host Suzanne Bowen. And today we have Yossi Ne’eman. He is a freeSWITCH open source telephony developer and IP communications entrepreneur. His company is Cartis Solutions.

Yossi Ne’eman: I’ve been with the freeSWITCH guys for quite a while, very good friends of mine. I have been to every single Cluecon convention that has occurred. Back when I first started doing business on my own, I start working with the Asterisk open source PBX. I went to the first Cluecon convention. I got to know guys like Tony, Brian, Mark Spencer and all sorts of people, active in the open source community.

I was gearing up to do some software development for Asterisk some custom nodules and interestingly enough, I found myself at the roundtable at a restaurant in the Milwaukee area after Cluecon sitting with Tony Minessale, Brian West and Mike Jerris. We were talking about things we have learned and experiences we have working with the existing solutions including Asterisk and how we would like to take things into a different direction.

Basically, it was this and the other conversation that Tony and Brian and Mike had with the other peoples that lead to the development of freeSWITCH project. As soon as Tony will released the freeSWITCH source tree to public… that’s when I got cranking away. I was the first non-core developer to release a module for freeSWITCH. That was the original mod CDR. It was written in C++ as part of an experiment on our behalf to see if we could incorporate C++ modules into the freeSWITCH environment. Once we incorporated C++, we were able to will able to incorporate a series of other languages as well, both scripted and compiled. Unfortunately, the mod CDR was deprecated and removed, as we shifted the functionality in the core and it is no longer necessary at this time.

Suzanne Bowen: You are talking about Cluecon. I believe the first one was in 2006?

Yossi Ne’eman: 2005. It was in hotel in Elkgrove Village, IL. It is certain we had some interesting experiences at the hotel itself. You might have heard about the police coming looking for someone who was not affiliated with our group.

Suzanne Bowen: I know I have been to a couple of Cluecons myself, 2007 and 2009. And I was able to get some of the most interesting content that people in IP communications, whether they are entrepreneurs or developers for our You tube or podcast channels and plenty of photos, too. I like the fact that even though a lot of it is freeSWITCH community-involved. Still you see some people from Asterisk, OpenSIPs, Kamailio, Opal, Woomera. How would you compare the first Cluecon to the upcoming Cluecon at the Trump Hotel in Chicago on August 3-5, 2010?.

Yossi Ne’eman: I would say that a lot of synergies, knowledge, and experience have been gained over the years. At the very first Cluecon, they chose Elkgrove Village to save money for the attendees and the producers. You save money initially on the hotel but you are in a much less convenient location. The facilities and amenities were not as nice and readily at hand as they would have been at a nicer hotel in downtown Chicago. So, that’s why we located afterward to the city. I am wondering how much better the Trump Hotel is. We had it at the Omni last year.

Suzanne Bowen: Absolutely there is a lot to do downtown. So, people can have fun after at the end of the day after the development, educational and entrepreneurial sessions are over.

Yossi Ne’eman: It’s as much a business and development convention as it’s a social event.

Suzanne Bowen: No doubt. I’ve made some of the best friends ever at Cluecon conferences, but also much new business for our DIDX, our IP-PABX, etc. and also for our customers’ businesses also. So speaking about some past Cluecons, do you have some funny stories of what has happened at any?

Yossi Ne’eman: In 2008 I started to take care of videography and both Mike Harris and Brian West were doing the actual video taping for that year. So, we caught a very interesting exchange. Doing one of James Body from Truphone’s presentation one year. Here was giving a demonstration of some software they were working for. And he warned everybody that the next cell phone that rings, he was going to be take it and passively destroy it. It was a pretty serious threat. A little bit later, Jame’s own cell phone rang unexpectedly.

Suzanne Bowen: And you know the guys carries about 12-14 different smar devices on him at one time at all times.

Yossi Ne’eman: However smart these devices are, they know when to shut themselves off. I just thought that was a very hilarious moment because we were all threatening to take his phone away from him, make him live up to his own threats.

If you have access to the videos 2008, put them online. Unfortunately, they are no longer on the files from the freeSWITCH.org site. In there, I did include the out-takes which includes an out-take file for James Body and get a few laughs.

Suzanne Bowen: Absolutely! Ok, so now, I am looking for a pat on the back. From what you know about DIDX, the kind of service we provide. I would love to hear your thoughts how it may enable and help a new company, any Voip company, and also love to hear if you have any advice or any thing that you wish DIDX would do?

Yossi Ne’eman: I know how it would be beneficial to me, and I am having a small company. A site like DIDX would help me. I don’t have a lot of negotiating power and DIDX levels the field for me. Let’s say I have a bunch of clients who are in different geographical regions where they need telephone numbers. It takes the incumbent LECs out of the picture. I find that the incumbent LECS are most inflexible to the needs of modern, small companies.

So if I need a pool of numbers then I will go and purchase them from DIDX and get them from just about anywhere. It looks like you guys serve the greater part of the world. If I have a company and I want to have local numbers in these different countries. I actually received bids on projects that would need phone numbers in different regions.

Something like your service would be perfect because we could order numbers we need in different locations and just have all the inbound calls routed over SIP or 323 and keep the old PSTN out of the loop. It makes us able to re-locate our systems, load balance differently than on the PSTN. It is much more flexible than having to deal many individual large telecom companies.

Suzanne Bowen: In a company like yours can better meet the needs of small businesses because you are there for them. Let me give you an example. I met a lady who is with the technical staff for the Los Angeles police department at ITEXPO West last year. I noticed that LA police department was using something called BrightComms for video conferencing. I found that it was very expensive. I know about things like Skype or TokBox, have video and some other free video conferencing softwares online. So I realize that couple of reasons that a police department would not want to use Skype like the security issue and the privacy issue. Those are important for the law.

But I asked her, “Are there any other reasons that you choose you choose to use BrightComms as supposed to something free or very inexpensive?

She said that a lot of people involved with police department may not have the knowledge of technology and they need to take service such as video conference from someone who they can call. Like can you help us this way or can you help us in that way, something we don’t understand. Like your company will offer that kind of personalized support, but Skype is not able to do that. Whereas, Skype, yeah, they are cool, but they would laugh … don’t have time to do that. It’s a point about the difference between small companies and big companies. On DIDX, we have large companies like incumbents and CLECs to sell DID to others on wholesale, but many, many smaller, lithe, entrepreneurial companies who are face to face with the customers. You are able to serve their needs. DIDX basically saves its members time.

Yossi Ne’eman: We have to be nimble. You need to be able to change with your clients’ needs. Small clients have different needs than larger companies. Their needs can change very drastically over the course of the business relationship even, so services like DIDX to companies like mine and then from companies like ours to our SMB users … we make it much easier for business users to get what they need.

Suzanne Bowen: That’s an interesting way to express this. So what’s your website address?

Yossi Ne’eman: I am just hosting some dial tone services for some very small companies I have business relationship in the past seven years that I’ve been incorporated. I do some software proprietary development. I am not really focusing on dial tone services on a large scale. When I do hosted applications, I have tried to advertise to small companies. Say they need something like a “Call In Time Clock.” I would provide the DID phone number and I would develop the script or program tapping into freeSWITCH!

Suzanne Bowen: So do I have this right? What people can contact you for, keep business with you, get your consulting service, you can provide customized solutions like what you mentioned. So people hearing this pod cast who are looking for this kind of thing, so how can theycontact you?

Yossi Ne’eman: I can be contacted at Mishehu@freeswitch.org or freeswitch@cartissolutions.comspan. I do the following services: deployments of freeSWITCH-based solutions, Linux and Windows, I do custom development in C and C++ and I can do some script development in languages such as PHP5.

Suzanne Bowen: So we have been talking with Yossi Ne’eman of Cartis Solutions. Now you know how to get in touch with him to collaborate with him or to business with him. We were focusing on the coming Cluecon conference which is scheduled August 3-5 2010 at the Trump Hotel in Chicago. You can go to www.cluecon.com and signup. Hurry and sign up. It’s right around the corner. They have a great list of sponsors on board. Connect with people like Yossi and me Suzanne Bowen, open source telephony-oriented.

Yossi Ne’eman: I suppose that if we have large groups registering and we hit a certain goal, maybe Brian West will shave his head. Chuckles.