Digium, the company behind Asterisk, is in the final testing phase on a complete software VOIP solution called AsteriskNOW. In addition to the Asterisk software, it includes a simple GUI configuration tool and a custom distribution of Linux slimmed down to meet the needs of a dedicated Asterisk server. It’s a smart move by Digium: the already popular Asterisk stands to gain a significant audience when installation and configuration process is reduced to “drop in a CD, and click through a handful of dialog windows“. Like Asterisk, AsteriskNOW will be released under the GPL. The beta version is currently available for download.