trixbox Invades the Enterprise With New Appliance

trixbox Appliance Built For 5 to 500 Users

The race to an enterprise appliance between trixbox and Digium, has been well documented here at Smith On VoIP. First it was the Asterisk Developers Kit, and now trixbox has it’s own enterprise grade open source communications appliance. With Digium rumored to all be releasing a new appliance targeted at the do-it-yourself enterprise this week and already building a worldwide reseller channel, the timing of the trixbox appliance could not be any better.

Given the impact the trixbox community has on the VoIP industry and the distruptive potential the trixbox appliance holds, I sat down with Fonality (the sponsor of trixbox) CEO Chris Lyman to get the inside scoop on this awesome new appliance.

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Exclusive Interview With Vocalocity’s David Politis

Hosted IP PBX Solutions Are Growing In Popularity With Small Medium Businesses

In-stat, a market research firm, projects that by 2010, there will be more then 3 Million hosted seats in the US alone, up from 373,000 in 2006. Fueled by cost savings, the small business market continues to be the hot zone for hosted providers with most deployments in the 20-to-50 seat range. “As business managers assess their resident ability to deploy and manage enterprise-like VoIP services, many are finding themselves lacking the capital and expertise required,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst. “As a result, hosted VoIP solutions are becoming more attractive.”

One such hosted IP PBX provider blazing a trail is Vocalocity. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down last week and chat with Vocalocity’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, David Politis, about Vocalocity, their offerings, and the future of the hosted IP PBX industry.

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Exclusive Interview With Kerry Garrison of trixbox

Kerry Garrison is the Senior Product Manager at trixbox

I had the opportunity yesterday to sit down with pal Kerry Garrison, author of trixbox made easy, blogger, and Senior Product Manager at trixbox about the up-coming Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification (FtOCC) workshop. After numerous email inquires from Smith On VoIP readers after posting about the workshop almost two weeks ago, I decide it would be best to get the answers to your most commonly asked questions straight from the source.

Here is What Kerry Had to Say

GS: Why did Fonality decide to do a trixbox training course?

KG: We are getting over 85,000 downloads a month and this is creating a market for skilled people tomanage and maintain these systems as well as use best-practices for doing deployments. Since trixbox is our product, who better to help train people on getting up to speed on the platform and how to be successful in deploying it.

GS: Who is the training aimed at?

KG: We feel there are three distinct groups of people using trixbox today, the first being people who are experimenting with it and possibly doing small deployments at home or in their own business. The second group are the in-house IT guys who are tasked with setting up a new phone system and are looking at trixbox as a solution to their company’s telephony needs. The third group is the existing phone system integrators or the IT consultants that are offering trixbox systems to clients. It is the last two that we feel would benefit the most from the training program.

GS: What topics will be covered during the training?

KG: We will walk people through all of the installation and configuration of the trixbox platform, show them how to use all of the different components, setting up trunks, extensions, and some standard and commonly requested scenarios. We will also cover some basic Linux skills that an admin should know as well as the common troubleshooting tasks. We will cover some real-world examples of some more complicated installations that required some outside-the-box configurations to get the final solution implemented. In the end, the attendee will configure a complete system from beginning to end to ensure their comprehension of all of the topics.

GS: You have mentioned a dinner the first night, what is that about?

KG: Since one of our goals is to help resellers and integrators build successful businesses around trixbox, I am hosting a dinner on the first night aimed at helping people to market trixbox systems, how to do comparative analysis against other platforms, how to offer support and maintenance contracts, and how to position themselves in the space. This should be very useful for those people who are unsure or need some tips on building their telephony business.

GS: Are there any special perks people will get for attending the training?

KG: Of course, but we will be saving some of them as surprises. Everyone will receive a SIP hardphone, a bag of goodies, some discounts from some resellers, and there will be a number of prizes given away during the event. Those who complete the training will get a “Fonality tribox Open Communication Administrator” certification with a certificate and logo they can use.

GS: How much does this training cost and where will it be held?

KG: The training is going to be held at the Westin LAX hotel in Los Angeles on March 5-6. The training itself is $1,495 and we have discounted rooms available at the hotel. The dinner will also be held at the hotel. All of the information is available at http://www.learntrixbox.com. For your readers, we are going to offer two different specials. When they sign up, in the comments section, if they mention smithonvoip.com they will receive a 25% discount.

That’s right! All Smith On VoIP readers will receive 25% off ($375 USD!) the Fonality trixbox Open Source Communcation’s Workshop when they mention smithonvoip.com in the comments section when ordering!

Have Additional Questions For Kerry?

Have any additional question about the workshop? Please leave them in the comments section below, as Kerry is a frequent Smith On VoIP reader, and he will answer them as they appear!