For the past decade, Asterisk has prospered as an open source VoIP PBX (define). Now it's poised for greater traction, courtesy of a new joint effort with IBM. "Asterisk for Smart Cube is a customized version of Asterisk Business Edition, which has administration capabilities built into the Smart Cube Smart Desk GUI," Engler said. Asterisk for Smart Cube includes the software for the Smart Cube x86 platform, and SuSE Linux Enterprise as the underlying OS. The companies are also providing the IBM ISS Proventia Server IPS v1.0 firewall with each system for security.