Local business Suretec teams up with world experts at Digium to bring ‘eccentric and entertaining’ professional trainer to north-east Scotland

Open Source software expert, Gavin Henry, who is managing director of Aberdeen-headquartered Suretec Group has teamed up with telecoms training provider, Telespeak and Asterisk open source software specialists, Digium, to organise Scotland’s first advanced training course for open source telecoms professionals.

Running for five days from April 27 at the Gordon House training facility in East Tullos Aberdeen, the advanced Asterisk training course has a limited number of places, and early booking is advised. Trainer David Duffett of Telespeak has a unique and effective training style, and is highly successful in his sessions at imparting technical knowledge in an informal and enjoyable way. The course is aimed at telecoms specialists, both in company IT departments and in specialist telecom companies.

Gavin Henry is an active member of the open source software community – software without expensive license fees - and is widely acknowledged worldwide for his specialist contributions to LDAP open source directory software, OpenLDAP and other open source projects. He was very keen to persuade international company Digium and its partners to run this advanced course in Scotland.

‘Asterisk is the world’s leading open source telephony engine’, he says, ‘and it offers flexibility unheard of in the proprietary telecoms sector, which is why it has empowered developers the world over to create advanced communications solutions, from power companies to call centres, from medium sized businesses to universities, and major international companies, too.

‘We are aware that a number of telecoms specialists and open source experts in Scotland would benefit from this advanced training, so we asked Digium-approved Asterisk training partner, Telespeak to come to Aberdeen, where we hope delegates from across Scotland will convene for this inaugural course in April. David Duffett is an extraordinary trainer and the five-day event will be quite special. We expect to see delegates on this course from many business sectors, including oil and gas, financial services, telecoms, public sector and education, among others. ’

One electric utility company in Alaska, with multiple sites, is typical of many of the businesses choosing open source for their telecoms systems. They wanted the capability to automatically archive all user voicemails on their telephone system for management auditing purposes. The company had a quote from a telephone provider for a voicemail auditing solution, priced at around $40,000 per server.

Open Source Asterisk was used to create a customised system for under $5000, saving the client at least $35,000 on their telephone system.

‘We are seeing major cost savings like this by organisations around the world,’ says Gavin Henry. ‘We at Suretec in Aberdeen have installed a similar system for an online holiday company, which saved more than £20,000 on their new international customer calling system. This is because there are no expensive software licence fees payable when you choose open source and because of the cost benefits of Voice Over IP (voice over the internet).’

The Asterisk Advanced course is a five day hands-on course which covers the knowledge and skills that an advanced Asterisk administrator should know to be effective at his or her job. It is a combination of both lectures and labs designed to give the students both the theory behind the concepts and the hands-on experience to be able to effectively deploy Asterisk-based solutions.

Students will learn to create advanced dial plans and create innovative telephony solutions by using the features of Asterisk. Along the way, students will also get important insight into Voice over IP, and how to design robust VoIP networks. Students will also explore connecting Asterisk to a variety of devices, including analogue phones and phone lines, digital phone lines, and VoIP providers.

‘The Asterisk Advanced course is designed for Linux/Unix consultants, interconnect vendors, enterprise IT personnel, and telecoms systems administrators to install, configure, manage and troubleshoot Asterisk-based VoIP systems,’ says Gavin Henry.

Open source software is freely available to everyone to use and to develop for their own applications, and also to pass on to others for their use. It is widely used by Google and eBay, amongst other important companies, and now many major companies in the northeast of Scotland are benefiting from its license fee free approach. ‘People use open source software everyday and do not even realise it,’ says Gavin Henry. ‘If you have an Xbox, BT Homehub, BlackBerry, send an e-mail, surf the internet at some point you will have touched an open source piece of software.’

The UK government has only recently recognised that local councils and other public bodies can see major savings by using open source instead of expensive, inflexible licence-based software.

‘Open source software is now saving companies millions of pounds each year not only in licence fees, but in running costs, maintenance costs and downtime,’ says Gavin Henry. ‘The Open Source community is actively developing systems and software for companies and organisations to use worldwide, and has been estimated so far to save customers about $60 billion per year.’

Suretec Group develops directory services, provides open source consultancy services, IT Support and telecoms solutions for companies in the northeast of Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, and it has clients in Japan, Ireland, the USA and South Africa. It works across the public, oil, voluntary, leisure, legal and a range of other business sectors.

Date: April 27th to 1st May
Time: 9am to 5pm
Place: Gordon House, East Tullos, Aberdeen
Cost: £ 1949 + VAT
To book: http://www.telespeak.co.uk/training/asterisk/

For information please contact
Gavin Henry 01224 279484
Shirley Muir 01224 325495

Training Facility
Gordon House, Greenbank Road, East Tullos Industrial Estate
Aberdeen, AB12 3BR http://www.gordonhouseaberdeen.co.uk/