Never in the history of telecommunications has a system so suited to the needs of business been available, at any price. Asterisk is an enabling technology and, as with Linux, it will become increasingly rare to find an enterprise that is not running some version of Asterisk, in some capacity, somewhere in the network, solving a problem as only Asterisk can.
This acceptance is likely to happen much faster than it did with Linux, though, for several reasons:
Linux has already blazed the trail that led to open source acceptance. Asterisk is following that lead.
The telecom industry is crippled, with no leadership being provided by the giant industry players. Asterisk has a compelling, realistic, and exciting vision.
End users are fed up with incompatible, limited functionality, and horrible support. Asterisk solves the first two problems; entepreneurs and the community are addressing the latter.