FOSDEM 2026 Replay: Integrating Open Source Telephony into a Digital Workplace

Today, organizations need digital workplace environments where collaborative tools, content, and communications can be easily integrated.

However, several challenges remain: reliance on proprietary solutions, limited interoperability between tools, difficulties integrating telephony into collaborative environments, and the need for greater control over data.

To address these challenges, open source telephony emerges as a credible alternative, offering greater flexibility, transparency, and control.

In this context, Jehan Monnier, co-founder of Belledonne Communications, and Alexandre Jörgensen, Full Stack Engineer at Belledonne Communications, hosted a conference on this key topic: “How to Integrate Open Source Telephony at the Heart of a Digital Workplace.”

This conference provided an opportunity to explore:

• the challenges of integrating real-time communications
• the possible architectures based on the SIP protocol
• the benefits of an open source approach in collaborative environments

The objective is to demonstrate how telephony can become a modular component of collaboration, rather than an isolated tool, and why this approach is essential for open source Digital Workplaces such as Nextcloud, OpenDesk, or eXo Platform to deliver a unified solution.

Only by combining the expertise and software building blocks of different open source software vendors will it be possible to effectively compete with major proprietary players in the collaborative platform market, such as Microsoft 365.