Fonality has recently announced the launch of the Asterisk-based trixbox Appliance. The Appliance is meant to be an enterprise-grade solution, based on the open-source Asterisk, which is also the basis of Trixbox, one of the more popular flavors of Asterisk. The Trixbox Appliance is also similar to the competing Asterisk Appliance by Digium.

The trixbox Appliance is essentially an industrial grade rack-mountable server that comes pre-installed with the Asterisk-based trixbox software. The appliance is powered by Intel processors and comes with dual hard disk and dual power supply redundancy options. The trixbox Appliance ships with pre-configured Sangoma line cards with built-in Octastic echo-cancellation hardware.

The trixbox appliance ships with trixbox version 2.2, the latest release of the distribution that integrates Asterisk with Apache, MySQL, SugarCRM and PHP. One notable addition to this release is AsteriskNow, which is a GUI for Asterisk, and an automatic update service for keeping all trixbox components up-to-date with the latest security patches and features.

Priced at $999, the trixbox Appliance is aimed at small to medium businesses (with 5 to 500 employees). The Appliance can be purchased for use with VoIP, E1/T1, or up to 48 analog lines. Fonality also offers professional support options to clients. Technical support packages can be purchased in five, ten and 15 hour ad hoc blocks, or in annual packages, which gives customers 24/7 access to Fonality support engineers.

In terms of industry support, the appliance handset manufacturers like Aastra, and VoIP service providers like Teliax, GrandStream and VoicePlus have announced support for the appliance.

Fonality, creator of the Asterisk-bsed trixbox telephony system and the business-oriented PBXtra, has recently secured $7 million in funding from Intel’s investment arm, Intel Capital.

Fonality®, the leader in open source IP telephony for the small-to-medium size business (SMB) market, has secured $7 million in a Series C round led by Intel Capital with participation from existing investor, Azure Capital Partners. Fonality was founded in 2004 to fill a vital need for enterprise-class telephony at price points within reach of SMBs.

According to intel, there is a synergistic relationship between the chip-making industry and providers of IP-based telephony applications. More particularly, Intel Capital feels there is a “powerful combination” between Intel-based servers, IP-based telephony hardware, and open-source telephony systems. Intel also hopes that the increased popularity of IP-based telephony solutions for business will also lead to increased uptake of Intel-based hardware (particularly servers).

The proceeds of this capital infusion will be used by Fonality to finance innovation for both the smaller-scale trixbox system and the commercial PBXtra. This investment will also enable Fonality to have a wider reach in the telephony market. Fonality plans to include international marketing and support efforts in the near future.

Fonality, creator of the popular trixbox Asterisk-based telephony system, has announced that it will run Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification workshops for professionals involved in the use and integration of trixbox.

According to the press release, the workshops will cover topics ranging from VoIP in general, PBX deployment, network assessment, troubleshooting, T1/PR1 training, and VoIP handsets. The goal of the certification program (caled “FtOCC” for short) is to ensure that system integrators and telephony professionals are knowledgeable in deploying and managing PBX systems for organizations with 1 to 1,000 employees.

“FtOCC is the next logical step for the trixbox community,” said Andrew Gillis, founder of trixbox and director of community development at Fonality. “We are building on the explosive adoption of the trixbox application and providing formal training and certification so businesses can be built upon its customization and deployment.”

The certification course will be hosted by trixbox project founder Andrew Gillis, and senior product manager Kerry Garrison. Garrison is also the author of the book trixbox Made Easy. The trixbox engineering team is also expected to serve as added resource persons to the training program. Several Fonality partners in the VoIP industry are also expected to provide added resources to aid in the certification course, which may include VoIP equipment and the like.

Those interested are encouraged to visit the FtOCC website at www.learntrixbox.com.

A few weeks back, Fonality released version 2.0 of its popular Trixbox 2.0 telephony system. One main highlight of this release is a new GUI manager that adds ease to the setting up the system.

trixbox 2.0 comes with a new point-and-click package manager which lets installers, via simple clicks of their mouse, decide which applications they want to install with trixbox. The advantage to the package manager is two-fold: first, it let’s you choose how lean or rich of a deployment you need. Secondly, it informs the installer, over time, of any new updates to any packages within their trixbox installation as vendors release them.

The installation includes the usual Apache, modified/enhanced Asterisk, FreePBX, Flash Operator, MySQL, phpMyAdmin and SugarCRM packaged with Trixbox. An enhancement in this new version includes detailed call reports, an endpoint manager, VoIP service provier wizards, better integration with SugarCRM, and drivers for Sangoma and Rhino voice cards. Aside from English, version 2.0 also has support for multiple languages such as German, Portugese and Spanish. Other language packs will be released in the future.

Fonality also said that this coming January 30th, Keith Garrison, Trixbox senior product manager, will be conducting the first trixbox.org Webinar, which is meant to deliver information to IT managers and integrators who intend to install Trixbox 2.0 on their systems. The session will give an overview of the new version, and shall discuss what’s included in the package, the system requirements, hardware required, and skills needed for successful deployment, installation and maintenance.

Source

Fonality, the leader in IP telephony systems for small and medium businesses and the world’s largest commercial Asterisk based deployment, today announced it has acquired trixbox, the world’s largest Asterisk based community. Trixbox founder Andrew Gillis will join Fonality and continue to lead the trixbox community. Fonality will commit engineering resources and broad financial support to continue fostering innovation in the trixbox open source community.

“Fonality shares my vision of making Asterisk free and easy for everyone,” said Gillis. “They have already proven to me how serious they are by committing a team of engineers to help create the next version of trixbox.”

Trixbox, formerly Asterisk@Home, is the world’s leading distributor of Asterisk based software, with an average of 1,500 downloads a day. It was designed to be the easiest to use version of free Asterisk, which has contributed to its huge following. The value of trixbox is that, in under an hour, a non-technical user can download and install, not only Asterisk, but Linux, SugarCRM, MySQL, FreePBX and other applications. Trixbox tightly integrates these open applications to work together on one physical server, providing companies with a PBX phone system and the surrounding applications they need to support their business. Trixbox is completely free.

The Trixbox community has the largest number of registered users and the most active forums for discussing and resolving open source telephony and Asterisk-specific issues. Trixbox will remain an open source project licensed under the general public license (GPL), which encourages innovative software development both within the Asterisk environment and the larger open source community.

“Trixbox is a thriving Asterisk community, unencumbered by licensing complexities. It was free, it is free and we are going to make sure it stays free.” said Chris Lyman, Fonality’s CEO and founder.

For more information on trixbox, visit http://www.trixbox.org