Fonality (News - Alert), a pioneer in open source and Asterisk-based IP telephony systems, recently launched a new enterprise telephony appliance. Targeted for businesses with five to 500 employees, this appliance finds use with VoIP, E1/T1, or up to 48 analog lines. Other users include trixbox and Asterisk (News - Alert) resellers and IT professionals.


The new appliance, based on trixbox - a leading Asterisk-based IP-PBX - includes a variety of complementary professional support options. Loaded with the trixbox software platform, the appliance is an industrial grade rack-mountable server containing dual hard disk and options for dual power supply redundancy.

This release includes trixbox 2.2, a new release of the popular distribution, integrating Asterisk with Apache, MySQL, SugarCRM, and PHP. It also contains the new open source Asterisk GUI (graphical user interface), which is a component of the AsteriskNow(TM) distribution, providing customers an additional trixbox GUI option. Powered by Intel, the trixbox appliance contains pre-configured Sangoma line cards with industry-leading Octasic (News - Alert) echo-cancellation hardware inside.

Sunil Bhalla, senior vice president and general manager of voice communications at Polycom, said in a statement, “We are excited about the new Intel-based trixbox Appliance, which combines an innovative SME offering with Polycom’s (News - Alert) line of standards-based high quality IP phones.”

Bhalla added, “The open source telephony market is proving to be very viable and Fonality’s appliance should be a great addition because of its feature set and flexibility.”

In addition to bringing out this appliance, Fonality also offers professional support options, wherein a reliable trixbox engineer will always remain available over a telephone. The customers can buy a new suite of comprehensive technical support packages on an annual basis for a complete deployment, or in hourly increments for ad hoc support.

According to Lisa Lambert, managing director, Software and Solutions Group, Intel Capital, “The trixbox Appliance, built on Intel-based servers, is another proof point that open source telephony solutions can deliver full-featured yet very affordable solutions to the global mid-market.”

“Fonality’s investment in trixbox should provide the opportunity for the company to grow their market position and leadership,” she continued.

Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO, explained about the pricing and positioning: “While Fonality has long offered its own PBXtra appliance, we felt the trixbox community also needed a reliable hardware appliance to run their trixbox software. Price pressure is forcing do-it-yourselfers to put together systems based on mediocre hardware not meant for the rigors of a busy phone system.”

Lyman continued, “Our goal was to create a box that had enterprise performance, but still came in at under $1,000 bucks.”

A lot of phone manufacturers such as Polycom, Aastra and Grandstream - and VoIP service providers such as VoicePulse and Teliax Broad - have extended their support for the appliance. Priced at a reasonable $999, the trixbox appliance delivers the best value for money and performance for any PBX (News - Alert) available across the industry.

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Rahul Prabhakar is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.