OSDL and GNU Bayonne Project Make Large-Scale Development and Testing Facility Available; Facility Will Enable GNU Bayonne to Reach Carrier-Class User Base.

Business Editors

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 2001

The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), the premier facility for developing data center and telco-class enhancements for the GNU/Linux system, today announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.

The availability of these resources coincides with the 7th major release of GNU Bayonne. The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne's digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project's clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network.

"We're very pleased with the progress that we've been able to make with the GNU Bayonne project to date," said David Sugar, package maintainer of the GNU Bayonne project. "The hardware and infrastructure provided by OSDL will help tremendously to make Bayonne an attractive option for telco deployments."

The 7th major release of GNU Bayonne provides improved support for building digital telephony services and applications as open source software by adding support for CAPI based BRI cards. A number of volunteer developers have contributed to the project, most notably, Kai Germaschewski, who is better known for his work related to ISDN4Linux and CAPI4Linux.

"OSDL is committed to enabling open source projects like GNU Bayonne," Timothy Witham, OSDL lab director said. "Users of telco software and carrier-grade deployments will benefit from the choices offered by the GNU Bayonne Project, which include the cost-effectiveness, ease of customization and robustness that open source software is well-known for."

Using a standard server running GNU/Linux and multi-line telephony hardware available from numerous vendors, GNU Bayonne has already been used successfully to create and deploy commercial voice applications that interface with the public telephone network. Such applications can include basic services like Voice Mail, as well as web integrated voice commerce (v-commerce) and customer relationship management. With the help of OSDL, GNU Bayonne will soon demonstrate scalability to support deployment of carrier grade enhanced services.

About the Open Source Development Lab

Supported by a global consortium of industry leaders, the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) is an independent, vendor-neutral, non-profit organization dedicated to enabling Linux and Linux-based programming for enterprise and carrier-class functionality worldwide. Headquartered near Portland, Oregon, OSDL fulfills a critical need in the open source development community to have access to the high-end hardware for programming and testing. More information on OSDL is available at www.osdl.org.

About GNU Bayonne

GNU Bayonne is an open source telephony application server that can be used to create and deploy a variety of voice and telco applications. GNU Bayonne applications are scalable, ranging from individual user installations to carrier-class deployments. GNU Bayonne is an attractive option, providing all of the advantages of a free software project, including support from talented developers worldwide, customizability and cost effectiveness. Additional information on GNU Bayonne can be found at www.gnu.org/software/bayonne.