trixbox:: The Open Platform for Business Telephony - Press Releases

Fonality Names Dean Mansfield as CEO

pgoddard — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:14:30 -0800

CULVER CITY, Calif. — Fonality, Inc. (www.fonality.com), a leading provider of cloud-based business phone systems, today announced that it has appointed Dean Mansfield to serve as the company's chief executive officer. Mansfield succeeds Chris Lyman, the company’s founding CEO. Lyman will remain as chairman of the board.

Mansfield has more than fifteen years of global sales and executive management experience, including business development and sales operations in the technology industry. He held numerous positions at NetSuite from 2004 to 2009, including president of worldwide sales and distribution. Prior to joining NetSuite, Mansfield held senior management positions with Brocade Communications Inc., Plumtree Software Inc., and McAfee. Mansfield holds an honors degree in Law from the University of London.

“Dean is a fantastic choice to help propel us to the next level,” said Lyman. “His small and medium enterprise cloud experience, coupled with his strong international sales background, are a perfect fit to accelerate our position as a global powerhouse in cloud-based telephony."

“I am impressed with the company and the technology that Chris and the team have built,” said Mansfield. “Fonality's momentum is incredible. With our innovation in cloud technology and the unique nature of our applications we are prepared to take the industry by storm."

Products and Technology

Fonality's cloud-based business communications solutions replace traditional phone systems and add advanced functionality including conference bridges, unified messaging, chat, voicemail and email, presence management, contact center applications, and integration with products such as Microsoft Outlook, Google, Salesforce. Fonality's patented technology also provides automated system monitoring, configuration backups, rock-solid connectivity, simplified multi-location networking, and complete data privacy over the cloud. Solutions are a fraction of the cost of traditional premise-based systems and scale from single-site businesses with basic needs to multi-location corporations with distributed call centers.

About Fonality

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Culver City, Calif., Fonality is a leading developer and marketer of cloud-based business phone systems and unified communications solutions for small to medium sized businesses. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners. For more information, visit: www.fonality.com.

Fonality Serves Its One Billionth Cloud Call: Books Record Quarter and Month

pgoddard — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:02:32 -0800

CULVER CITY, Calif. - Fonality, Inc. (www.fonality.com), a leading provider of cloud-based business phone systems, announced today that it has achieved record sales despite the tough economy. With nearly 20% increased sales in Q4 2009 vs. the same period prior year, Fonality continues to strengthen its position as the only provider of cloud phone systems with premise options for businesses with 5 to 500 employees. Fonality also acquired 28% more customers in Q4 2009 vs. Q4 2008.

Fonality’s PBXtra phone system provides a local server option for the cloud that ensures the security and stability of a premise system with the reduced maintenance of a hosted solution. Typical premise features such as Auto-Attendant, FindMe, conference bridges, and call center functionality are enhanced with cloud features such as free calling between phones, zero-configuration teleworkers and branch offices, system monitoring, and automated configuration backups. PBXtra starts at $595, can be ordered online, ships the next day, is easily self-installed by the customer, and eliminates the need for costly third-party service contracts.

UNBOUND is Fonality’s fully hosted cloud phone system and VoIP service solution. UNBOUND includes the same core features as PBXtra, adding unlimited domestic and international calls to 9 countries, dedicated virtual, local and toll free phone numbers, the ability to keep existing phone numbers, and emergency 911 functionality. Customers simply plug phones into an existing high speed Internet connection. Best of all, Fonality’s UNBOUND does not require customers to sign a contract and starts at only $24.99/mo.

"In the religious telephony battles where customers are forced to choose between the benefits of premise or cloud telephony, Fonality has chosen to provide both solutions," said CEO Chris Lyman. "We call this our 'wide net' strategy and it appears to be fueling rapid revenue growth."

Fonality has helped many customers realize the advantages of cloud communications with its innovative solutions, superior customer service, and 24/7 support. Fonality and its customers achieved a significant milestone when Fonality served its 1.3 billionth call in the cloud in 2009.

About Fonality

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Culver City, CA, Fonality is the only provider of cloud-based, open source IP PBX business phone systems and unified communications solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners. For more information, visit Fonality at www.fonality.com.

World Telecom Group Partners with Fonality to Offer Business Phone Solutions

pgoddard — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:38:36 -0700

Malibu, Calif. — World Telecom Group (WTG), the largest and most diverse national telecom Master Agent, announced today a strategic partnership with Fonality to offer hosted and Hybrid-HostedTM business phone system solutions through its agent partner community. WTG agents will have access to a wealth of resources from Fonality, from sales and marketing materials to technical education and certifications.

“World Telecom Group is committed to delivering their customers advanced network services,” said Chris Vuillaume, SVP of Sales at Fonality. “We’re delighted to have the experts at WTG as our partners and look forward to helping them bring affordable business phone systems to their customers.”

Fonality’s fully-hosted PBX solution, UNBOUND, offers small to medium sized businesses an advanced phone system and phone service without a costly upfront investment. UNBOUND is scalable for companies as they grow, does not require a contract, and includes a user-friendly web interface as well as 24/7 technical support and system monitoring. With UNBOUND, customers gain unlimited local and long distance calling to virtually any telephone number in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as discounted calling to other locations worldwide. UNBOUND customers also receive free extension-to-extension calling as well as calling to and from any other UNBOUND customer.

PBXtra, Fonality’s Hybrid-Hosted IP-PBX, adds a premise-based server to provide rock-solid PSTN connectivity, in addition to advanced features such as call queues, Auto-Attendant, conference bridges, FindMe®, and complete data privacy for an affordable small business price. Fonality’s Hybrid-Hosted architecture provides telecommuter and branch office support, system monitoring, automated configuration backups, and simplified management. Finally, when coupled with HUD, Fonality’s award-winning application that enables real-time call control at the desktop, businesses also take advantage of Unified Communications capabilities such as instant messaging, presence and employee status, click-to-call, CRM integration, and contact center queue management.

"WTG is extremely excited to work with Fonality to provide excellent equipment and hosted VoIP services to our 1000+ agents. This helps complete our vast portfolio with one of the best product sets in the telecom industry," stated Vince Bradley, President / CEO World Telecom Group.

Products and Technology

Fonality’s phone system allows companies with up to 500 employees per location to scale from a single-site business with basic telephony needs to a multinational corporation with distributed call centers. In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, Fonality also includes conference calling, unified messaging with voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, advanced call center features, and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Google, and Salesforce.com.

About Fonality

Fonality, the number one commercial grade vendor of open-source IP phone systems, uses its Hybrid Hosted™ approach and Anywhere Management™ architecture to create the reliability and quality of a premise-based system with the convenience and cost benefits of a hosted system. Fonality also offers a fully hosted business phone system. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Culver City, Calif., the company has over 44,000 systems deployed worldwide. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners. More information can be found at www.fonality.com.

About WTG

World Telecom Group (WTG) is a premier Master Agent providing exceptional service to agent partners since 1996. WTG has one of the most diverse portfolios in the industry, including local, long-distance, data, internet and associated equipment. It also includes the following specialty Divisions with dedicated extra support: LEC, Wireless, Wholesale and Cost Containment (TEM, Logistics and all other Cost Containment). WTG Agents have the ability to sell and consistently expand their business without commitments or quotas. WTG is 100% partner driven and pays top commissions in the industry. WTG exceeds expectations with a dynamic approach to partner support and its commitment to success.

Networking Experts Computer Troubleshooters Enters Partnership with Fonality to Offer Business Phone Solutions Worldwide

pgoddard — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:25:42 -0700

CHICAGO, IL — Computer Troubleshooters, with nearly 500 offices in 25 countries providing computer and technology solutions to small-business owners, today announced a strategic partnership with Fonality to offer hosted and Hybrid-HostedTM business phone system solutions. CT franchisees will have access to a wealth of resources from Fonality, from sales and marketing materials to technical education and certifications.

“Our head office has been running on Fonality’s technology for years” said Chip Reaves, CEO of Computer Troubleshooters Global. “So as our small business customers increasingly started requesting the features and flexibility of a VoIP-based telephony platform, we knew first hand how effective the Fonality PBXtra platform would be for them. We’re thrilled to partner with Fonality because we know our clients are going to be thrilled with their solutions.”

“Computer Troubleshooters is committed to delivering their customers advanced technology solutions,” said Chris Vuillaume, SVP of Sales at Fonality. “We’re delighted to have the experts at CT as our partners and look forward to helping them bring affordable business phone systems to their customers.”

Products and Technology

About Fonality

About Computer Troubleshooters

Computer Troubleshooters provides a full range of computer and technology solutions to small-business owners and private home users. Computer Troubleshooters specialists are fully trained and are experts at diagnosing a broad range of computer and technology challenges. Launched in 1999, Computer Troubleshooters now has more than 450 franchises worldwide, including more than 200 in the United States and Canada and the remainder spanning 23 countries, including Egypt, Greece, Romania, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Spain and Australia, where the company was founded by Wilson and Suzanne McOrist. Computer Troubleshooters USA was named the top tech support business franchise company in 2007 by Entrepreneur magazine in its annual Franchise 500 rankings, and is ranked in the top 10 franchise systems by Franchise Business Review.

Tech Data U.S. Partners With Open Source Unified Communications Provider Fonality

pgoddard — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:26:54 -0800

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Tech Data Corporation today announced a distribution agreement with Fonality, a leading provider of open source unified communication business systems. Through its Telephony Specialized Business Unit (SBU), Tech Data will offer resellers Fonality’s open source, Hybrid-Hosted™ solutions, including the trixbox Pro IP-PBX system that provides easily deployed, cost-effective VoIP and unified communications for small and medium businesses (SMBs).

“Awareness about the cost savings and efficiencies gained by VoIP and unified communications continue to grow, especially in the SMB market,” said Tech Data Vice President, Networking Product Marketing Chuck Bartlett. “Fonality enables VARs to offer even their smallest customers the advantages of the latest communications solutions in a hosted and managed model that does not require significant investment in infrastructure or the need for onsite technical support.”

In addition to basic voice, messaging and conferencing capabilities for main office, remote locations and telecommuters, the trixbox Pro enables users to take advantage of more advanced communications capabilities, including Microsoft Outlook and CRM integration, voicemail to e-mail and call center support.

Resellers deploy the trixbox Pro IP-PBX appliance at a customer’s location. Fonality delivers its VoIP and unified communications services via the trixbox Pro, which it remotely manages and monitors on behalf of resellers via its Hybrid-Hosted™ technology. Fonality’s Hybrid-Hosted™ model provides users with the functionality and reliability of a premise-based unified communications solution through a hosted system that requires little onsite maintenance or support. Fonality provides management services such as 24x7 systems monitoring, automatic software updates, business continuity support, and comprehensive reporting and tracking for all actions performed.

“Fonality sees tremendous potential for VoIP and unified communication adoption to continue to grow among SMBs,” said Fonality Vice President John Bazzone“. Fonality provides big business capabilities to the SMB market. Our open source, Hybrid-Hosted approach is a perfect fit for the market and a strong complement to SMB resellers’ solutions offerings. Our partnership with Tech Data will enable us to engage the channel’s leading resellers and expand our presence among small businesses nationwide.”

Fonality will be on hand today to introduce resellers to its products and channel program during Tech Data’s Technology Solutions Tour in Anaheim, Calif., Jan. 12-13. The Technology Solutions Tour offers resellers expert-led sessions on growing and managing their businesses, as well as valuable vendor and peer-to-peer engagement opportunities to learn about the latest technologies being deployed in the SMB market.

Fonality is a leader in open source phone systems and contact center solutions for SMBs. Its solutions are supporting more than 5,000 companies with more than 125,000 users more than 100 countries. To learn more about Fonality solutions available through Tech Data, call the Telephony SBU at 800-237-8931, ext. 79284, or send e-mail to tdtelephony@techdata.com.

Specialized Telephony Solutions

The Tech Data Telephony SBU supports a broad product portfolio that includes VoIP, video conferencing and unified communications hardware and software applications; PBX and IP PBX switches; SIP trunking solutions; and hosted PBX from leading manufacturers. The Telephony SBU is comprised of dedicated sales and technical resources offering resellers the support and expert guidance they need to profitably deliver the latest telephony solutions.

About Tech Data

Tech Data Corporation (NASDAQ GS: TECD) is one of the world's largest distributors of technology products from leading IT hardware and software producers. Tech Data serves more than 100,000 IT solution providers in over 100 countries. Every day, these value-added resellers depend on Tech Data to cost-effectively support the technology needs of end users, including small and medium businesses (SMB), large enterprises and government agencies. Ranked 105th on the FORTUNE 500(R), Tech Data generated $23.4 billion in net sales for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2008. To learn more, visit www.techdata.com.

Fonality Phone System Drives Cost Savings and Competitive Advantage for London Private Hire Taxi Company, “Top Gear Cars”

pgoddard — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:16:40 -0700

LOS ANGELES — Top Gear Cars, an independent taxi company that services the London-metro area, is using Fonality trixbox Pro business phone system to compete more aggressively with established and larger companies in the crowded London taxi market. trixbox Pro is an enterprise class, affordable IP-PBX phone system that enables Top Gear Cars to project a larger, more professional image while keeping pace with peak customer call volumes. Top Gear Cars also seamlessly integrated trixbox Pro with its legacy taxi booking and dispatching systems, enabling the company to immediately offer a new face to customers while utilizing established backend systems without custom and expensive integrations.

“trixbox Pro cut our phone costs and made us more competitive almost immediately,” said Nash Mahtani, founder of Top Gear Cars. “With trixbox Pro, customers never get a busy signal and they know exactly how long the wait time is, which has dramatically reduced our abandoned call volume. As well, with the simple integration into our databases we can now identify existing customers, personalize their call and be more effective as we service them.”

Prior to deploying its Fonality trixbox Pro phone system, Top Gear Cars maintained one small central office with 10 analog phone lines for all inbound phone calls. To help the company market a local presence in and around London, Top Gear also had 10 remote phone numbers with local prefixes that were forwarded to the central office. Phone line costs were high and did not provide enough bandwidth for all of Top Gear’s taxi requests; customers often received a busy signal that resulted in abandoned calls and loss of business. Additionally, integration with booking and dispatch systems was complicated and expensive.

“trixbox Pro made our operations more efficient and scalable,” Mahtani continued. “We can now have operators that work from home, which reduces costs and give us more flexibility during peak calling times. And, we can still portray multiple locations, while having all the calls handled by one system for a fraction of the cost.”

Top Gear Cars worked with V4 Limited, a Premium Fonality Partner based in the UK. V4 provided the local expertise to architect and deploy the trixbox Pro solution and to integrate with the company’s current booking and dispatch systems.

“Top Gear Cars was looking for flexibility, a powerful set of features and low cost, all of which trixbox Pro was designed to deliver,” said Chris Vuillaume, VP of channels and business development at Fonality. “This is a great example of how trixbox Pro can deliver a vertical solution that is deployed quickly and at an affordable price.”

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by more than 5,000 companies and 125,000 end users in more than 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 350,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox® Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid-Hosted™ architecture, and deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with more than 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality’s headquarters are in Los Angeles with additional offices in Australia and Argentina. Company investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners.

Gizmo5 Introduces Gizmo5 for trixbox CE to Deliver Turnkey Calling Services to Businesses in Minutes, Joins Fonality's FACE Prog

nelson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:23:09 -0700

Gizmo5, the leading standards-based consumer calling service, today announced Gizmo5 for trixbox CE, the world's largest free and open source telephony community. Gizmo5 is now providing SIP trunk services to trixbox CE, which will help SMBs save up to 98 percent on business calls. The new offering also includes pay-as-you-go and is fully integrated with the trixbox CE open source project. The company has also joined Fonality's FACE program (Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem) as a Gold partner to ensure its products are optimized and compatible with the trixboxCE platform.

"Gizmo5 for trixbox CE is delivering great value to the trixbox CE community by providing cost effective phone services that can easily purchased and managed directly from within the trixbox CE dashboard. Users just create an account, purchase credit, and click one of the outbound route setup options and they can be making calls within minutes," said Chris Vuillaume, vice president of channels and business development at Fonality. "Gizmo engineers even went a step further with their module by providing the simplest way possible to setup SIP trunk services and inbound and outbound routes."

New users of trixbox CE or those performing upgrades can now set up a full range of SIP trunking services and be making calls within minutes from the same easy-to-use interface they already use to set up office phone networks. Administrators can purchase inbound telephone numbers from more than 20 countries and quickly map them to their business. Economical pay-as-you-go calling credits can be leveraged by the entire business to avoid costly per line setup or monthly fees. In addition calling credits can be rolled over each month for a more affordable option than phone systems that require a per user fee.

"For over a hundred years the phone company has charged businesses vast premiums for domestic and international business calling without providing any increase in quality. Now, with trixbox CE and Gizmo5 businesses can pay for only for what they use, save up to 98% over the phone company and have superior call quality", said Jason Droege, President at Gizmo5.

The calling service for trixbox CE is pre-configured to use the Gizmo5 calling network and includes a new UI for easy administration. Also included is a Tech Check system that confirms basic setup of a trixbox CE system and notifies users when new Gizmo modules are available.

About Gizmo5

Gizmo5, www.gizmo5.com is the largest standards based calling and IM network offering VOIP and IM. Gizmo5 serves more than 6 million consumer and business users with freely downloadable Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OSX software, mobile software for J2ME and Symbian phones and a web based IM solution with callback available at www.giz5.com.

Fonality Introduces HUD 3.0 Unified Communications Platform for trixbox CE

nelson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:20:23 -0700

LOS ANGELES – Fonality®, a leading provider of open source unified communication systems for businesses, today announced it is now providing the market leading HUD 3.0 unified communications software to the trixbox Community Edition (CE) platform. The new HUD 3.0 will provide trixbox CE users with presence management and detection in a single interface for all types of office communications, including SMS, instant message, landline calling, mobile calling, chat, voicemail, email, conferencing, recording, and barging.

“Open source rarely lacks in features, but often lacks in ease-of-use and polish. Our intention with this announcement is to bring the polish of the HUD 3.0 unified communications platform, which is in use by more than 100,000 paid users, to the trixbox community. This should allow them, now more than ever, to compete with the high-prices of the big-iron oligopoly,” said Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality.

trixbox CE is the world’s largest free and open source telephony project with more than three million downloads and 200,000 live deployments. The project is growing at a rate of 125,000 new downloads each month. The trixbox community is the largest and most active community in the open source telephony and Asterisk markets. Community members work together every day to help answer each other’s questions, resolve issues, fix bugs, make enhancements, and develop projects.

HUD 3.0 is a unified communications platform for small and medium-sized businesses that allows employees to work seamlessly together whether at the office, home or on the road. With HUD 3.0, trixbox CE users now have a secure and affordable way to support remote and home-based workers, and save workers time by tying together the many communications channels that have become a routine part of workplace communications.

Built on the market proven HUD platform, HUD 3.0 for trixbox CE delivers a unified communications dashboard that shows availability for onsite and remote employees, eliminating wasted time created by busy signals, voice mails and phone tag. Users can easily drag and drop calls onto a colleague’s desk or mobile phone, quickly convert IM chats to voice calls, and even personalize calls with photo caller ID.

The new capabilities of multi-lingual HUD 3.0 include:

Integration with Google Talk from any desktop, BlackBerry, or iPhone. Users will now be able to chat and exchange presence with any of Google’s more than five million Google Talk users.
Deep and instantaneous Web 2.0 integration with all applications such as CRM, Google, ticketing, billing, and financial systems. Web pages can either actively launch upon call activity or send silent (background http) notifications to web-based applications.
Mobile presence displays mobile users to the rest of the company when they connect to the trixbox CE phone system. Mobile presence also supports Busy-Ring Back™ so as not to disturb a fellow employee who is on a mobile device.
Personalized photo caller-ID displays photos of all inbound and outbound callers, and displays caller photos when listening to voicemail or joining a conference bridge.
SMS one-way text messaging is now included, in addition to the already supported one-click call, mobile call, voicemail, email, and chat.
Visual conferencing for the easy creation and recording of conferences. Drag users in, kick, and mute all with a single click. Each conference bridge participant has a face photo displayed, which makes it easier to talk to them, see them, and communicate with them using HUD 3.0 built-in instant messaging.
Visual voice mail allows users to receive voicemail directly on their PC or Mac desktop. A MWI (message waiting indicator) provides notification when a new voicemail has arrived and, with a few simple clicks of the mouse, messages can be played, fast-forwarded, rewound, or saved to disk. Also, voicemail contacts can be easily added to Outlook, and users can click to return calls, or click to chat.
HUD Queues take trixbox CE and HUD 3.0 into larger call centers without the typical associated costs. HUD 3.0 now supports big call center features such as real-time queue displays, up-to-the-second queue stats including ASA, dragging-and-dropping any holding queue call to an agent, call center alarms, abandon alerts, broadcast agent messaging, virtual wall boards, and much more.
Seven languages at launch including English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Russian, and simplified and traditional Chinese.

HUD 3.0 for trixbox CE will be available in October. For information about updates and availability, join the HUD mailing list at www.trixbox.org

About Fonality

Fonality Provides Free Replacement Phone Systems to Customers Devastated by Hurricane Ike

pgoddard — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:37:20 -0700

LOS ANGELES — Fonality, a leading provider of open source unified communication systems for businesses, today announced that it will provide free replacement phone systems to any of its customers devastated by Hurricane Ike. The new phone systems will be offered to Fonality customers that are under an active support agreement and operate their businesses within the affected areas. Customers should visit http://www.fonality.com/hurricaneike for further details.

“Fonality was created to provide small businesses with phone systems they can depend on. We have a responsibility to any customer overwhelmed by this storm to help them get their phones and their business operations back on track as quickly as possible,” said Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality. “Fonality’s products were built to be disaster proof, no matter what Mother Nature throws at us. With our hybrid-hosted architecture, critical phone system data is stored securely off-site, which means that customers can restore their systems and be back in business within an hour.”

Many of Fonality’s 5,000 customers rely on its hybrid-hosted model for disaster relief. This unique patented architecture combines the reliability and feature set of an on-premise PBX, with disaster recovery peace of mind.

About Fonality

Fonality trixbox Pro Channel Program Named to Top 50 by PHONE+

pgoddard — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:03:33 -0700

PHOENIX — PHONE+ magazine, a resource for the telecommunications indirect sales channel, announced that Fonality has been selected as a Top 50 Channel Program. The results of this contest will be published in the magazine’s 2008 Channel Program Guide special issue, due out Oct. 15.

PHONE+ is very proud to honor Fonality and the Top 50 Channel Program winners. Fonality was selected from hundreds of companies who submitted their channel program details in hopes of being recognized as a Top 50 Channel Program. Voted on by more than 1,000 indirect sales partners, the winners represent communications suppliers -- carriers, resellers, master agents and manufacturers — who provide their agents with that extra something -- extra attention, rapid quotes, sales training or special promotions -- that makes agents want to do business with them.

“PHONE+ is honored recognize these standouts. Their support for the indirect channel in the telecom industry are much appreciated and lauded,” said Mike Saxby, group publisher for PHONE+.

“Fonality is very proud to get this award only one year after launching the trixbox Pro channel program,” said Chris Vuillaume, Fonality vice president of business development and channels. “ We will continue to grow our channel, and continue to improve our program and product.”

This week in Los Angeles, Fonality is hosting the first trixbox Advisory Panel (TAP). The event is an opportunity for a group of Fonality’s trixbox channel partners to meet with the company to learn about the product roadmap. It gives Fonality the chance to get direct reseller feedback on both the product and its related channel programs. The goal is to understand what is working and where changes are required, so that the program continues to grow and channel partners are maximizing the revenue potential that trixbox represents.

For more information about the Fonality reseller program, visit http://trixbox.com/resellers.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium—sized businesses. Used by more than 5,000 companies and 125,000 end users in more than 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP—PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 350,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox® Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent—pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid—Hosted™ architecture, and deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise—class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with more than 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality’s headquarters are in Los Angeles with additional offices in Australia and Argentina. Company investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners.

About PHONE+

PHONE+ magazine is the country’s leading publication for communication distribution channels. For more than two decades, PHONE+ has been the undisputed leader in providing news and analysis to alternate distribution channels serving the communications industry. It is the unrivaled resource for resellers, aggregators, agents, brokers, VARs, systems integrators, interconnects and dealers that provide network-based communications and computing services and associated CPE, applications and professional services.

PHONE+ includes a monthly print publication, a Web resource (www.phoneplusmag.com), a weekly newsletter as well as special issues, such as the Channel Program Guide.

PHONE+ also hosts the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, the industry’s only event exclusively for the channel. The spring conference is set for March 1-3, 2009, at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. For more information, visit www.channelpartnersconference.com.

Fonality, PBXtra, and trixbox are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality Announces HUD 3.0 - Mobile and Google Integration Raises Bar on Unified Communications

pgoddard — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:15:31 -0700

LOS ANGELES — Fonality®, a leading provider of open source unified communication systems for businesses, today announced a major upgrade to its unified communications platform, HUD. HUD ties presence management and detection into a single interface to be used by employees for all types of office communications, including SMS, instant message, landline calling, mobile calling, chat, voicemail, email, conferencing, recording and barging. It gives companies with five to 500 employees a secure and affordable system that meets the demand on today’s businesses to support remote and home-based workers, and save workers time by tying together the many communications channels that have become a routine part of workplace communications.

“We’re delivering enterprise-level unified communications capabilities to a large, underserved market at a fraction of the price of similar offerings from Microsoft, Cisco and others,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “HUD 3 brings SMS, mobile integration and many more unified communication features to our PBXtra and trixbox customers, allowing employees to work seamlessly together whether at the office, home or on the road.”

HUD 3 is built on the market proven HUD platform with over 100,000 paid users to date. It delivers a unified communications dashboard that shows who is available, both onsite and remotely, eliminating wasted time created by busy signals, voice mails and phone tag. It’s easy to drag and drop calls onto somebody’s desk or mobile phone, and sessions that start on chat can be instantly converted to voice calls. Photo caller ID puts a face with a number, bringing the system to life with real people and making it easy for everybody to react and connect quickly.

Google Talk integration opens up the HUD chat feature for instant communications beyond the network of HUD users. Google Talk IM can be downloaded to any desktop, BlackBerry or iPhone, allowing users to interchange email and chat contacts, and see who’s online and available for calls and messaging. Google integration enables user of HUD 3 to communicate and stay connected with the over five million Google Talk users today.

Mobile presence provides visual presence to other HUD users when a cell phone is connected to the system. Mobile presence is extended into queues and conferencing and optionally allows users to perform an all-new Busy-Ring Back™ so as not to disturb a fellow employee who is on their mobile.

Visual conferencing makes it easy to initiate and manage conference calls. You can drag and drop calls into conferences, and create permissions for recording, muting and removing people from calls. HUD 3 displays the names and faces of everybody on a conference call, and lets you IM conference participants.

Visual voice mail sends alerts to HUD when voice mail arrives and allows you to search, sort, play, and save messages right from your PC or MAC desktop. You can click on voice messages to send email, text messages, initiate chats and return calls.

HUD 3 can also be used by phone-based sales and support teams to manage call center queues. A visual queue performs like expensive call center applications, providing a virtual wall board to show agents and managers all calls in queue. A real-time queue control system allows managers to drag and drop calls onto agents, and broadcast instant messages to some or all agents simultaneously. Managers can set up alerts to notify when calls have been holding too long or an abandoned call has occurred. Real-time queue statistics can also be broadcast, allowing for up-to-the second views of your call centers vitals such as completion rate, abandonment rate, holding volume, and even ASA (average speed of answer). HUD also now supports integration with premise-based and hosted CRM systems, without having to write custom code.

HUD 3 will be available in October 2008. For information about updates and availability join the HUD mailing list at www.gimmeHUDnow.org.

About Fonality

Fonality, PBXtra, and trixbox are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality Announces Support for R2 ITU Telecom Standard in Latin America

nelson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:42:27 -0700

Los Angeles – Fonality®, the leading provider of open source telephony and communications systems for growing businesses, today announced that the open source telephony platform, trixbox CE, now supports the E1-R2 ISDN (ITU R2 Signaling Recommendations) configuration standard on trixbox CE systems distributed in Latin America. With more than 125,000 downloads a month, trixbox CE is the most popular Asterisk®-based distribution in the world. It combines the best open source telephony tools into one easy-to-install package, along with the trixbox dashboard which provides a web-based interface to configure and manage a complete IP-PBX system. With this update, all Sangoma-produced cards for trixbox CE now have built-in R2 support.

“Adding R2 support underscores Fonality’s commitment to trixbox CE community by providing easy-to-use, tested and supporting ITU Telecom standards, anywhere in the world,” said Chris Vuillaume, Fonality vice president of business development and channels. “With R2 support we have added Central and South America to the rapidly growing list of regions that are seeing adoption of trixbox.”

“It is vital for open source telephony users in México, Brazil and other central and South American countries to have stable, compliant and well supported R2 signaling support," said Moises Silva, who is responsible for the OpenR2 project. "Developed with the financial help of Sangoma as well as their development hardware, OpenR2 provides a reliable and functional MFC/R2 implementation.”

The addition of E1-R2 support expands trixbox’s impressive portfolio of support for international telecom standards. In addition to E1-R2, trixbox CE already includes BRI support, an ISDN configuration standard in many European countries, and E1 support that delivers deep compatibility with European standards.

“Support of E1 R2 ISDN connections in Latin America, is absolutely a MUST ” said Gonzalo Blousson, IT Director for Clixolutions in Argentina. “For the last two months, we have been testing the R2 solution with trixbox and are very pleased with the integration it provides with R2 networks in Latin America. We look forward to supporting installations throughout the region.”

About Fonality
Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by more than 5,000 companies and 125,000 end users in more than 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 350,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox® Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid-Hosted™ architecture, and deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with more than 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality’s headquarters are in Los Angeles with additional offices in Australia and Argentina. Company investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners.

Fonality, PBXtra, and trixbox are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality Closes $12M Financing Round to Accelerate Growth in Open Source Communications Market

pgoddard — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:32:53 -0700

Los Angeles – Fonality®, a leading provider of open source telephony and communications systems for growing businesses, has secured a $12 million financing round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund with participation from existing investor Intel Capital. Fonality, which has driven 16 successive quarters of record growth, makes open source Internet—based telephony and unified communications solutions that enable market—leading capabilities for growing enterprises, including globally—distributed operations, home—based workers and highly mobile workforces. The company will use this additional capital to continue expanding its share of the $7B domestic telephony market and take a position in the $25B global telephony market, with a special focus on affordability and mobility for businesses with 5 — 500 people per location.

“Fonality’s model has always been to free people from the prison of their cubicles, and to do so affordably,” said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. “But, with the rising price of gas and the increased adoption of high quality broadband, our vision of ‘your office is the world’ is nearly upon us. This investment by DFJ and Intel Capital, two top—tier investment firms, gives us the freedom to further accelerate our growth and acquisition strategy.”
Fonality’s open source technology ties together all forms of business communication—instant message, landline calling, mobile calling, chat, voicemail, customer relationship management (CRM), e—mail and more—into one unified desktop software application. The company’s phone systems are sold direct to businesses at fonality.com, through a global network of resellers, and by Dell.

Randy Glein, managing director of DFJ Growth Fund, has joined Fonality’s board of directors. “Fonality is the right solution at the right time,” said Glein. “The company has developed a powerful, affordable communications platform for small and medium—sized businesses, allowing Fonality—enabled businesses to compete more effectively in the global economy. Fonality combines the benefits of open source development, rich proprietary features, and professional support to help its 5,000 customers take advantage of the latest communications innovations very affordably. Fonality supports workers wherever they are and lets them communicate inside and outside their organizations with easy—to—use software available everywhere, on any device.”

The company’s focus on building affordable, easy—to—use, and full—featured products enables it to compete directly with Cisco, Microsoft, Nortel and Avaya while creating an entirely new market for affordable professional call centers for companies with five to 500 employees. ”Before Fonality, a 50—person office with a seven—person in—house sales group could never afford these technologies,” said Lyman. “You could never tell your best salesperson: ‘work from home or the road today and take sales calls as if you were in the office.’ This used to be a $100,000 expense. Fonality’s open source technology gives growing businesses a big—time presence that fits within their budgets.”

Fonality redefined the business phone system, and over 5,000 companies worldwide depend on its products for affordable, easy—to—use, Internet—powered communications. More than 7,000 computer consultants, vendors and resellers augment Fonality’s direct sales organization. Earlier this year, the company launched a relationship with Dell to sell Fonality products online at Dell.com and via Dell telephone sales. Fonality currently has 140 employees, offices in three countries, and operates four global data centers.

About Fonality
Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium—sized businesses. Used by more than 5,000 companies and 125,000 end users in more than 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP—PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 350,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox® Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent—pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid—Hosted™ architecture, and deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise—class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with more than 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality’s headquarters are in Los Angeles with additional offices in Australia and Argentina. Company investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners.
Fonality, PBXtra, and trixbox are registered trademarks and Hybrid—Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

About Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund invests in revenue—stage technology companies that are expanding rapidly in large markets and are well—positioned to be category leaders. Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a leading venture capital firm with global presence through the DFJ Global Network of funds. DFJ’s mission is to identify, serve and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world. The DFJ Network has grown to encompass over 150 venture capital professionals in more than 30 cities around the world, more than 600 portfolio companies funded, and over $6 billion of capital under management. Together, the DFJ Network funds have been the most active venture capital investors in the world in 2006 and 2007. The DFJ Network has produced such notable, industry changing companies as Athenahealth (ATHN), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by eBay), Focus Media (FMCN), DivX (DIVX), Mobile 365 (acquired by Sybase), Massive (acquired by Microsoft), EnerNOC (ENOC), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Four11 (acquired by Yahoo), xFire (acquired by Viacom/MTV Networks), Mozy (acquired by EMC), Myfamily.com (acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors), Overture (acquired by Yahoo), Parametric (PMTC), TicketsNow (acquired by TicketMaster), and buy.at (acquired by AOL). www.dfjgrowth.com and www.dfj.com

About Intel Capital
Intel Capital, Intel's global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start—ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing, and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$7.5 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in 45 countries. In that timeframe, 168 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 212 were acquired or participated in a merger. In 2007, Intel Capital invested about US$639 million in 166 deals with approximately 37 percent of funds invested outside the United States. For more information on Intel Capital and its differentiated advantages, visit www.intelcapital.com.

BroadSoft and Fonality Team Up to Offer Managed IP PBX for Service Providers

stef — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:20:40 -0700

Los Angeles and Gaithersburg, MD – July 16, 2008 – Fonality®, the leading provider of open-source phone systems, and BroadSoft Inc., the leading provider of VoIP application software, announced today that the two companies have certified their products to work together, enabling service providers to market and deploy Fonality to their small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers with confidence. BroadSoft®, which provides VoIP applications and SIP trunking to seven of the top 10 and 13 of the 25 largest carriers worldwide, has completed certification of Fonality trixbox® Pro and PBXtra® with BroadWorks®, BroadSoft’s industry-leading VoIP application platform for fixed-line and wireless service providers. BroadSoft has also joined the Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem (FACE).

BroadWorks offers a range of carrier-grade applications that includes hosted PBX, unified communications, mobile PBX, business trunking, and residential broadband. Fonality products include a family of open-source-based, hybrid-hosted IP PBX offerings tailored for SMBs. By certifying the products together, the companies offer service providers a complete line of hosted and premise-based unified communications offerings for customers of all sizes.

“By collaborating with Fonality, we’re giving service providers a way to go to market quickly with fully integrated, market-tested offerings for smaller companies,” said Leslie Ferry, Vice President of Marketing for BroadSoft. “Service providers can now take new products to their customers with the confidence that comes from knowing that both companies’ solutions will work together seamlessly.”

“BroadSoft is the dominant VoIP platform deployed by service providers and MSOs,” said Chris Vuillaume, Vice President of Business Development and Channels at Fonality. “Their certification is an important stamp of approval for Fonality products and expands our market opportunity to include Tier 1 and Tier 2 providers.”

Fonality business phone systems are designed for modern workplaces, accommodating companies that have a mix of office, mobile and home-based workers. Fonality solutions support both VoIP calling and traditional phone lines, allowing a smooth transition for businesses upgrading their calling services. Its patented, hybrid-hosted architecture allows employee identity to be maintained as they travel between work, home and hotels. Fonality products, when paired with the award-winning HUD® presence software, provide a unified view of Instant Messaging, e-mail and calling for all fixed and mobile workers.

About the BroadWorks Platform
BroadSoft's IMS-compliant BroadWorks® platform provides a comprehensive range of VoIP applications, including Hosted Unified Communications, Mobile PBX, Business Trunking and residential broadband services fully integrated into a single VoIP application platform. BroadWorks is capable of providing these applications with the reliability, redundancy, scalability and regulatory capabilities required to deliver carrier-class service.

About BroadSoft
BroadSoft® provides VoIP application software that enables the delivery of hosted telephony and multimedia services. Its award-winning flagship BroadWorks technology empowers wireless, wireline and cable carriers to deliver next-generation voice and multimedia applications and advanced features that enable them to increase revenue, enhance competitive differentiation and elevate customer satisfaction. BroadSoft's family of carrier-class software products delivers the scale, open architecture and reliability that the world's leading telecommunications companies demand to serve mission-critical enterprise and residential broadband customers. BroadSoft provides VoIP applications to seven of the Top 10 and 13 of the Top 25 largest carriers worldwide, as measured by recent annual revenue, including Korea Telecom, KPN, SingTel, Sprint, Telefonica de Espana, Telstra, T-systems and Verizon. For additional information, go to www.BroadSoft.com.

About Fonality
Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid-Hosted™ architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles and company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital

# # #

BroadSoft and BroadWorks are registered trademarks of BroadSoft, Inc. Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, and HUD are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. All other names are trademarks of their respective companies.

For further information contact:
BroadSoft Contact:
Francis Hopkins
+1 (240) 364-5375
fhopkins@broadsoft.com

Fonality Contact:
Phil Novack
Spark PR for Fonality
415-321-1870
phil@sparkpr.com

trixbox Live! Sells Out, Event Expanded, Registration Reopened for Limited Time

stef — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:23:02 -0700

LOS ANGELES – June 17, 2008 – Fonality®, the leading provider of open source business communications systems, announced today that it is has expanded the July 15th trixbox Live! event, a free gathering for the trixbox community being held at the Westin LAX in Los Angeles. trixbox Live! sold out on the first day of registration and has now been expanded to accommodate all trixbox community members. Designed as a free networking and education event for the largest open source telephony community, attendees are coming from around the United States and 20 different countries. To reserve space, register today at http://trixboxlive.eventbrite.com.

trixbox Live! is the first in a series of free nationwide events created especially for the trixbox CE and trixbox Pro communities. trixbox founder, Andrew Gillis, along with trixbox Community Director, Kerry Garrison, will host a full day of training on how to take trixbox to your market and be successful selling trixbox-based phone systems.

“I am humbled and excited by growth of the trixbox project,” say Andrew Gillis, trixbox founder. “It started as a simple means of installing Asterisk for myself and some friends and has grown into the largest project in the world for open source telephony. And now with the trixbox Live! events, we can bring the community face to face with each other and spur more innovation and a deeper sense of community.”

trixbox Live! attendees will learn about new features, get insight into the trixbox roadmap and see live demos that demonstrate how to integrate trixbox with a variety of different hardware components. trixbox-specific sales training will include:

How to explain the value of trixbox
How to effectively sell against competing products
Details on effective closing techniques
How to increase your profits by cross-selling services and third-party products

All attendees will receive a free trixbox Pro demo kit, lots of great trixbox schwag and a free community networking lunch. The demo kit includes two trixbox Pro 2.0 Call Center Edition lifetime licenses with one month of unlimited technical support. As part of the sales training agenda, Brad Pitt, director of Fonality channel sales, will provide an overview of trixbox Pro 2.0 with HUD, the award-winning application that provides a unified view of chat, email, and calling for all fixed and mobile workers. For more information about trixbox Live! Visit http://trixbox.org/event/trixboxlive.

trixbox CE is the world’s largest free and open source telephony project with 3 million downloads, 200,000 live deployments, and is growing at 125,000 new downloads each month. Just released, trixbox CE 2.6.1 has new, expanded hardware support, an enhanced user interface and new admin modules, including an improved backup system and a bulk extension import tool.

trixbox Pro, a commercial offering, is designed for modern workplaces where companies have a mix of office, roaming and home-based workers. It supports both VoIP calling and traditional phone lines, and a patented hybrid-hosted architecture allows employee identity to be maintained whether they are working at the office, at home or traveling.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, and HUD are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

###

CONTACT:
Kerry Garrison
trixbox Community Director
Fonality Inc.
(310) 861-4300 x7036
kgarrison@fonality.com

Fonality Records 15 Quarters of High Growth, Leads Open Source Telephony Market

pgoddard — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:10:42 -0700

Fonality^®, the leading provider of open source business communications systems, announced today that the first quarter of 2008 marked its fifteenth consecutive quarter of high growth, and that the company has doubled in size each year since its founding in 2004. Key to the company’s success is a reinvention of the architecture and delivery of the modern day business phone system. Today, 5,000 commercial customers worldwide depend on Fonality’s PBXtra^® and trixbox Pro^® products for affordable, VoIP-powered unified communications. In addition, Fonality’s open source project, trixbox CE, has achieved three million downloads and is now the number one open source telephony project in the world.

“We’ve at least doubled in size every year since we started Fonality in 2004,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “We’ve done this by staying focused on our bread and butter: making telephony affordable, easy to use and standards-based. This is in stark contrast to an industry that seems fixated on keeping telephony expensive, complicated, and proprietary, a trend that continues to create enormous growth opportunities for Fonality in a $20 billion dollar global market.”

“Telephony becoming a component of a complete unified communications solution is causing a landscape evolution and giving rise to a number of new products and companies that hold significant growth potential,” says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Krithi Rao.

Fonality has rebuilt the business phone system from the ground up with the goal of creating a low-cost product that is easy for a small or medium-sized business to install and manage. Adoption of Fonality products has come from companies wanting a modern, feature-rich alternative to costly systems from companies like Avaya and Cisco, and one that will grow with them and not need replacing or upgrading on regular intervals.

Fonality’s patented hybrid-hosted architecture, call center applications, as well as a rich set of unified communication applications, have helped fuel the company’s success. A hybrid-hosted approach combines the benefits of a hardware PBX with the affordability and ease of use of a hosted offering. It also enables a variety of fixed-mobile convergence capabilities that allow employee identity to be maintained whether they are working at the office, at home or traveling. The award-winning HUD^® application works with the core system and provides a unified view of chat, email, and calling for all fixed and mobile workers.

Fonality has created a powerful distribution channel comprised of computer consultants, VARs and OEMs. Today, more than 7,000 data VARs have signed onto the Fonality reseller program. The company also formed a strategic partnership with Dell and a distribution agreement with PC Mall.

Fonality now has 130 employees, with offices in five countries, and operates five global data centers. In addition to standard phone systems, the company has more than 1,300 Fonality-powered call centers and 125,000 active unified communications desktops.

“We have created an entirely new category of business communications — the small business call center,” added Lyman. “We realized early on that ‘call center’ doesn’t just mean 1,000 agents in cubicles. If you have 15 employees with three sales and three support guys, you’ve got a call center. We make call center software cost effective and easy enough for this market to quickly adopt.”

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^™ Hybrid-Hosted^™ architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, and HUD are registered trademarks and Hybrid-Hosted and Anywhere Management are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality trixbox Pro with HUD Takes Home 2007 Communication Solutions Product of the Year Award

stef — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:15:40 -0700

LOS ANGELES – June 9, 2008 — Fonality®, the leading provider of open source business communications systems, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC) Communications Solutions has named trixbox® Pro with HUD® as a recipient of a 2007 Product of the Year Award.

“trixbox Pro with HUD gives IT consultants and data resellers the perfect solution to create fully managed, feature-rich business phone systems for their SMB customers,” said Arnold Waldstein, Fonality senior vice president of marketing. “This honor from Communications Solutions recognizes Fonality’s commitment to building a highly scalable and affordable business phone system with powerful unified communications capabilities via HUD.”

trixbox Pro has all the enhanced end user features available in Fonality’s turnkey offering PBXtra® 4.0. FindMe® with Boomerang® Mobile Integration uses presence detection to automatically find employees on their mobile devices, allowing them to answer the call or bounce it to another extension. It allows employees to decide when and how they will be found according to their personal schedule and rules. trixbox Pro with HUD is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the software is downloaded and installed on a local computer that connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted architecture of trixbox Pro with HUD also allows resellers to proactively monitor the health of their customer systems and handle a wide variety of remote configuration tasks.

HUD changes the way employees work in the office, at home, and on the road. HUD matches inbound caller ID to Outlook contacts, and allows employees to find contacts quickly and effortlessly, view their status, and initiate communication with a single click. From phone calls to chat to e-mails, HUD reduces time spent in meetings by enabling effective communication, and offers powerful integration with web-based CRM systems.

“Fonality has been recognized with a 2007 Product of the Year Award for its excellence in the advancement of voice and data communications,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC President and Group Editor-in-Chief of Communications Solutions. “Fonality has proven it is committed to quality and excellence in solutions that benefit the customer experience as well as ROI for the companies that use trixbox Pro. I am pleased to honor Fonality’s hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from the company in the future.”

The eighth annual Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award recognizes the vision, leadership and attention to detail that are the hallmarks of the prestigious award. The most innovative products and services brought to market in 2007 were selected as recipients of this year’s Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award for their groundbreaking achievement.

The 2007 Product of the Year Award winners can be found on the Communications Solutions Web site.

For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

About Fonality
Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management™ Hybrid-Hosted™ architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Argentina and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, HUD and trixbox are registered trademarks and Anywhere Management and Hybrid-Hosted are trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

About TMC
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) is an integrated global media company helping our clients build communities in print, in-person and online. TMC publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and IMS Magazine. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. TMCnet is read by nearly one million US visitors according to Quantcast* and by over three million unique visitors each month worldwide, according to Webtrends In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, Call Center 2.0 Conference and Communications Developer Conference.

WIMAX.TMCnet.com – Now live!

Cable.tmcnet.com – Now live!
For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

Fonality Launches Open Source Telephony Ecosystem

pgoddard — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:09:56 -0700

LOS ANGELES – April 15, 2008 Fonality^®, the leading provider of open source phone systems, today announced the Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem (FACE), a program that certifies third party products for trixbox^® CE, trixbox Pro and PBXtra^® so customers and resellers can deploy them with complete confidence. FACE certification validates interoperability and identifies the best components for use with Fonality’s software platforms. Ground floor FACE partners include IP phone manufacturers Aastra and Polycom, communications service provider Bandwidth.com and connectivity hardware provider Sangoma.

Fonality FACE partners provide the highest quality technology and the deepest integration with Fonality’s IP-PBX VoIP phone systems, and Fonality provides support discounts and incentives to resellers and IT consultants who choose FACE-certified hardware products when building Fonality phone systems for their customers.

“A big problem in this emerging, open market is the glut of questionable hardware and non-compliant providers,” said Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality. “This creates a confusion which leads to customers inadvertently using sub-standard components, and then paying the price for it. FACE removes any uneasiness about compliance, allowing customers to deploy phone systems with complete confidence.”

Following are comments from FACE partners about the new ecosystem:

“Aastra and Fonality are both committed to developing and implementing open standard VoIP products and systems for the needs of small and medium businesses. Our respective products have been tightly integrated to exceed our customers’ expectations for value and performance.”
— Yves Laliberte, Executive Vice President, Aastra Telecom

“Bandwidth.com is excited to participate as the Platinum network service partner in the Fonality FACE program. This certification is a testament to our commitment to Fonality and to the hundreds of mutual customers that have already benefited from a certified IP communications solution, great rates and unparalleled support all specifically tailored for the business community.”
— Henry Kaestner, CEO, Bandwidth.com.

“By supporting Polycom’s full line of SoundPoint phones, Fonality is able to deliver a reliable, turnkey solution to SMB customers on both PBXtra and trixbox. Together, we provide integrated, cutting-edge solutions that enable our customers to smoothly transition to VoIP for more streamlined, cost-effective business communications.”
— Chalan Aras, Vice President of Marketing, Polycom Voice Communications Solutions Group.

“We’re pleased to be Fonality’s partner to bring the highest quality IP-PBX systems to the SMB. Our award-winning cards combined with Fonality’s breakthrough technology guarantee reliable calls and great voice quality.”
— Dave Mandelstam, CEO, Sangoma

To find out more about Fonality’s business phone systems and for a complete list of FACE-certified components, go to http://www.trixbox.com/partners.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^® hybrid-hosted^® architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, hybrid-hosted and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

trixbox Pro Delivers First Fully Automated Phone Provisioning – Look Mom, No Hands!

pgoddard — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:01:35 -0700

LOS ANGELES – April 15, 2008 – Fonality^®, the leading open source phone systems provider, today announced the release of trixbox^® Pro 2.0, a major new release created specifically for resellers participating in the fast-growing open source telephony market. trixbox Pro 2.0 incorporates new features for greater flexibility in setting up and managing trixbox deployments, as well as new compatibility with telecom standards outside of the United States.

Since its release last year, trixbox has filled the hole in the market for an IP-PBX with a feature set and price point optimized for companies with 20 to 200 seats. The price-to-feature ratio of trixbox Pro, coupled with its ease of deployment, has created a groundswell of reseller conversion from established players such as Cisco and Avaya.

trixbox Pro delivers the first standards-based, 100 percent hands-free phone provisioning of any IP-PBX product, significantly cutting the time required to set up a new phone system. Other vendors claim auto-phone provisioning but they all require keypad input for each new phone, vastly slowing the deployment time of the system. trixbox Pro, however, instantly recognizes Polycom and Aastra phones, and automatically adds them into both the phone system and HUD^®, the employee dashboard that unifies company-wide phone calls, voice mail, presence indicators and instant messaging.

“Resellers live and die by two things: margin and the time spent on site. trixbox Pro offers 50 percent margins and our hands-free provisioning reduces or eliminates on-site visits,” said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. “We continue to lead the open source telephony market by introducing innovative and time saving features.”

trixbox Pro also brings strong support for international telecom markets. According to consultancy firm MZA, uptake among small and medium-sized businesses drove the number of IP PBX desktop extensions installed in the United Kingdom to 40 percent of all installations in the fourth quarter of 2007. To support the growing European market opportunity, trixbox Pro now includes BRI support, an ISDN configuration standard in many European countries. New support for E1 circuits also delivers deeper compatibility with European standards. Country-specific configuration support has been added so administrators can set a server to the host country in which it’s located, and trixbox Pro will automatically set the relevant telecom settings.

Also added for resellers is a consolidated interface that allows resellers to manage all of their trixbox Pro customers from a single web-based administration interface, with hot switching between deployments. A new network card configuration option allows you to manage the IP address on a remote trixbox Pro system. There is also a new interface for custom configuration of analog and PRI and T1 cards. New alerts are also available so resellers can receive email to text messages when issues arise with a PRI, RAID disk, analog line voltage, and a host of other indicators.

trixbox Pro now has all the enhanced end user features available in Fonality’s turnkey offering. PBXtra 4.0^®. FindMe^® with Boomerang^® Mobile Integration uses presence detection to automatically find employees on their mobile devices, allowing them to answer the call or bounce it to another extension. It allows employees to decide when and how they will be found according to their personal schedule and rules. trixbox Pro automatically observes a person’s keyboard and mouse activity and routes calls to their mobile phone or another number when they are inactive on their computer. FONcall^® is a new plug-in for the Firefox web browser and is the first one-click dialing application for business telephony. By clicking the link, trixbox Pro will automatically take an Aastra or Polycom phone off the hook and dial out to the number hands-free. New branch office integration merges spell-by-name directories, allowing callers to dial into one branch and find an employee at any other branch anywhere in the world.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, HUD, FindMe, Boomerang and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

ISupportISP To Resell Fonality; Drops Digium’s Switchvox

pgoddard — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:59:59 -0700

Columbus, OH – April 2, 2008 -- ISupportISP, Inc., a distributor of voice and data services in the United States and Canada, announced today that it will resell trixbox® Pro, Fonality’s® VoIP-based business phone system for small and medium-sized businesses. ISupportISP is removing its current Switchvox offering and using trixbox Pro to create a managed service offering for its national network of VARs, ISPs and agents.

“Despite our investment in Switchvox, we decided to move to Fonality’s trixbox Pro based on its flexible pricing model and a superior feature set,” said John Scully, President and CTO of ISupportISP. “Fonality allows us to sell through to the end customer with a feature set and support options that can be completely tailored. With Fonality we are able to offer both hosted and customer-premise IP PBX solutions, as well as build advanced voice applications that combine our database and web management tools with trixbox Pro. An example is automated political campaign calling with the ability for the called person to press 1 and connect to a volunteer working from his home on an IP phone.”

ISupportISP sells direct to businesses and is also a private label service provider of Internet access and VoIP services. It customizes product branding for resellers, and also offers ISupport-branded offerings. In addition to a distribution network that extends throughout the U.S. and Canada, the company has many private sector, non-profit, education and government customers that it works with directly.

“The trixbox reseller program is structured so incentive and product value are delivered at every level, from the master distributor through to the end customer,” said Chris Vuillaume, vice president of business development and channel at Fonality. “ISupportISP has tremendous market reach and we are glad to deliver a great product combined with an open pricing and support model.”

trixbox Pro is a business phone system that allows companies with as few as two to as many as five hundred employees per location to scale from a single-site business with basic telephony needs, up to multinational corporations with distributed call centers. In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, advanced call center features and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com. trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the software is downloaded and installed on a local computer that connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted nature of trixbox Pro also securely extends the phone system outside the corporate firewall, so an employee’s extension can follow them when they work from home, remotely on a laptop, or even on a mobile phone. For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

About ISI

ISupportISP LLC is a seven-year-old privately held company located in Columbus, Ohio. ISI is a Private Label Service Provider in the Internet Access and Digital Internet Telephone Service arenas, currently operating over 200 brands in the US and Canada. ISI offers their clients a complete, turnkey solution to allow a quick launch with minimal capital requirements. ISI's clients consist of ISPs, cable operators, MDU (Multiple Dwelling Units), carriers, CLECSs, wireless providers, Non-Profits, retailers and resellers.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra® and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base that has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features and delivers the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org) is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Thomas Technologies To Resell Fonality, Drops Cisco Line

pgoddard — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:19:36 -0700

Rockwall, TX – March 18, 2008 – Thomas Technologies, Ltd, a regional value added reseller with an established customer base in Texas and Kentucky, announced today that it is picking up the Fonality^® trixbox^® Pro product line and will begin selling the IP telephony phone system to its small and medium-sized customers. The company is a longstanding Cisco Premier Partner and is now switching to Fonality for VoIP and IP telephony in order to better meet the needs of the growing companies it serves.

“As a Premier Partner of Cisco we have experienced a number of shortcomings with their telephony products and feel that their push into the SMB market is hindered by their price points and their established enterprise ideals,” said Tom Haack, CEO of Thomas Technologies. “With Fonality and trixbox Pro, we can offer products that don’t strain the budget of a growing company, yet offer it features that are flexible enough to grow with the business. By offering an open source-based product we give customers the flexibility to have a system that fits their exact needs, instead of offering something rigid that is designed for the large enterprise market.”

Thomas Technologies is one of many resellers looking at alternative vendors to meet the voice and data networking needs of small and medium-sized businesses. Fonality meets the needs of these resellers by providing what Cisco, Nortel and Avaya cannot: new products designed and priced specifically for smaller companies and delivering the same value, at 40 to 80 percent less the cost.

“We’re increasingly working with resellers who are walking away from their established vendor relationships in order to offer products that are tailored for their small and mid-size customers,” said Chris Vuillaume, vice president of business development and channel at Fonality. “Thomas is committed to delivering the best possible solutions to their customers and we’re proud to be working with them.”

trixbox Pro is a business phone system that allows companies with up to 500 employees per location to scale from a single-site business with basic telephony needs, up to multinational corporations with distributed call centers. In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, advanced call center features and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com. trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the software is downloaded and installed on a local computer that connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted nature of trixbox Pro also securely extends the phone system outside the corporate firewall, so an employee’s extension can follow them when they work from home, remotely on a laptop, or even on a mobile phone. For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra^® and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base that has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features and delivers the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org) is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

About Thomas Technologies

Thomas Technologies Ltd. is a twenty-five year old company that prides itself in customer support and satisfaction. It is set apart from other companies by providing customers with the best product fit, and is not driven by vendor quotas. Thomas provides network design, implementation and troubleshooting via its certified engineers. The company’s Cabling Division services Fortune 1000 companies. The Thomas Technologies motto is “The Customer is our Board of Directors.”

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality trixbox Pro With HUD Garners 2007 Unified Communications Magazine Product Of The Year Award

pgoddard — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:28:12 -0700

LOS ANGELES — March 17, 2008 — Fonality^®, a leading open source telephony company, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC^®) Unified Communications^® magazine (www.uc-mag.com) has named trixbox^® Pro with HUD^® as a recipient of its Product of the Year Award for 2007. trixbox Pro is the business-grade phone system that allows companies with up to 500 employees to make free VoIP calls and features HUD, Fonality’s market-leading unified communications desktop application that gives employees one-touch control over their phone system and real time visibility and access to the people using it.

“trixbox Pro with HUD gives IT consultants and data resellers the perfect solution to create fully managed, feature-rich business phone systems for their SMB customers,” said Arnold Waldstein, Fonality senior vice president of marketing. “This honor from Unified Communications recognizes Fonality’s commitment to building a highly scalable and affordable business phone system with power unified communications capabilities via HUD.”

In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro with HUD also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, advanced call center features and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. trixbox Pro with HUD is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the software is downloaded and installed on a local computer that connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted architecture of trixbox Pro with HUD also allows resellers to proactively monitor the health of their customer systems and handle a wide variety of remote configuration tasks.

“Fonality has proven they are committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace. Unified Communications is pleased to grant a 2007 Product of the Year Award to trixbox Pro with HUD,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC President and Editor-in-Chief of Unified Communications Magazine. “We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from Fonality in the future.”

For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management^® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra^® and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org), is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, HUD, trixbox and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

About Unified Communications magazine

New in July 2007, Unified Communications magazine is devoted to educating enterprise decision makers on why and how they need to deploy unified communications (UC) solutions. Every issue of Unified Communications magazine features a comprehensive news section; case studies of successful deployments and lessons learned; interviews with leading hardware and software companies; and an 'industry' section, featuring analysis of important mergers and acquisition, partnerships and a Wall Street perspective on the unified communications market. Unified Communications has a subscriber base of 41,509.

About TMC

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 6,000 most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves as many as three million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, and Call Center 2.0 Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.) For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

Fonality Hits 2.6 Million trixbox Downloads and 5,000 PBXtra Deployments

pgoddard — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:28:48 -0700

LOS ANGELES — March 12, 2008 — Fonality®, the world’s largest deployment of open source-based phone systems, today announced high growth in the company’s commercial and open source business units. trixbox® CE, Fonality’s open source project, has now been downloaded a total of 2.6 million times, which includes 1.6 million SourceForge downloads and an additional one million upgrades downloaded from trixbox.org. Separately, over the past five months Fonality’s commercial customer count has doubled. More than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries are now using the company’s business phone systems and have made a total of 225 million calls over the company’s hybrid-hosted systems, PBXtra® and trixbox Pro.

“We’ve hit the 225 million call threshold and have proven that Fonality can scale with the market opportunity,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “We are on track to serve a broad segment of the 35 million small businesses that will adopt VoIP over the next several years.”

Fonality business phone systems are designed for modern workplaces where companies have a mix of office, roaming and home-based workers. PBXtra supports both VoIP calling and traditional phone lines, allowing a smooth transition for businesses upgrading their calling services. Its patented hybrid-hosted architecture allows employee identity to be maintained as they travel between work, home, and hotel. PBXtra, when paired with the award-winning HUD® presence software, provides a unified view of chat, email, and calling for all fixed and mobile workers.

trixbox CE, formerly Asterisk@Home, is Fonality’s open source project and one of the world’s largest communities devoted to open source telephony. trixbox CE integrates Asterisk, Linux, MySQL, FreePBX, HUDlite and several additional applications. It operates on a single server, providing companies with a PBX phone system and the surrounding applications needed to support their business. The trixbox community has the largest number of registered users and the most active forums for discussing and resolving open source telephony and Asterisk-based issues.

About Fonality

Fonality is a leader in business phone systems and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 5,000 companies and 100,000 end users in 100 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 225,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra and trixbox Pro deliver the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE, is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of open source telephony users, with over 200,000 live deployments and 125,000 new downloads each month. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia. Company investors include Azure Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Fonality, PBXtra, trixbox, HUD, and Anywhere Management are registered trademarks of Fonality. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Fonality trixbox Pro Brings Home 2007 Internet Telephony Magazine Product of the Year Award

stef — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:14:04 -0800

LOS ANGELES – January 9, 2008 – For the third year in a row, Fonality, a leading open source telephony company, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC®) INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine (www.itmag.com) has named one of its products as a recipient of its Product of the Year Award. trixbox Pro, the business-grade phone system that allows companies with five to 500 employees to make free VoIP calls, has been named winner of the INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award for 2007.

“With trixbox Pro, data resellers now have the perfect solution to create fully managed, feature-rich business phone systems for their SMB customers,” said Arnold Waldstein, Fonality senior vice president of marketing. “We’re proud that INTERNET TELEPHONY has once again recognized Fonality and the trixbox Pro software team for building a highly scalable, affordable, and powerful business phone system.”

In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, advanced call center features and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the software is downloaded and installed on a local computer that connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted architecture of trixbox Pro also allows resellers to proactively monitor the health of their customer systems and handle a wide variety of remote configuration tasks. The hybrid-hosted nature of trixbox Pro also securely extends the phone system outside the corporate firewall, so an employee’s extension can follow them when they work from home, remotely on a laptop, or even on a mobile phone.

“Fonality has proven they are committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace. INTERNET TELEPHONY is pleased to grant a 2007 Product of the Year Award to trixbox Pro,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC President and Editor-in-Chief of INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine. “We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from Fonality in the future.”

For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

TMC and Fonality Host Two trixbox Open Communication Training Courses at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO in Miami

spark — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:36:08 -0800

NORWALK, Conn.--Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) announced today that the company has once again teamed up with Fonality to host several trixbox Open Communication Certification Courses at its upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO at the Miami Beach Convention Center on January 23-25, 2008. Registration is now open at www.itexpo.com.

Attendees can sign up for FtOCC Admin, which prepares people to sell and install trixbox, or FtOCC Technician which focuses on trixbox support and troubleshooting. Both courses are part of the Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC, pronounced "F-talk") series.

The courses will serve as trixbox Pro certification for resellers, integrator and developers, and attendees who successfully complete the training will receive a free demo kit, as well as product and services discounts that will allow them to recoup the cost of the training.

“trixbox is a driving force in the telephony market and gives the channel a lucrative way to participate in the rapidly expanding market opportunity for open source products and services,” said Michael Genaro, vice president of marketing at TMC. “ITEXPO is committed to educating the reseller community on new ways to increase their value in the marketplace and FtOCC Technician certification certainly will do that.”

trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, meaning the IP-PBX and application software is downloaded to the customer site and installed on a centralized PC that connects out to the Fonality network where system health, availability, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The free hosting service that is part of trixbox Pro allows employees to take their work phone number with them when they leave the office, and have calls ring through to their mobile phone or PC.

“trixbox Pro downloads and installations have exceeded our expectations and we’re fielding lots of incoming requests for specialized training at a variety of levels,” said Arnold Waldstein, Fonality senior vice president of marketing. “FtOCC gives the channel the knowledge and the tools to sell and support trixbox at companies of all sizes.”

For more information or to register for FtOCC Training Courses at ITEXPO, go to http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/east-08/e-08-trixbox-training.htm.

For more information and a complete schedule of FtOCC Training Courses being held in 2008, go to http://www.ftocc.org.

About TMC®

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 6,000 most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com, TMCnet serves as many as three million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, and Call Center 2.0 Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

Fonality Acquires Insightful and Offers Integrated CRM-VOIP Solution

ryan — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:21:28 -0800

LOS ANGELES – November 5, 2007 – Fonality, a leading maker of business phone systems, announced today that it will create the industry’s first phone system that unifies both telephony and customer relationship management (CRM) for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). As part of the initiative, the company has acquired Insightful Solutions Pty Ltd., a leading hosted CRM solution provider and a SugarCRM Gold partner for the Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific regions.

Over the past two years, Insightful has made substantial enhancements to SugarCRM’s Sugar Professional product and hosts more than 1,000 seats in 13 countries at the company’s three global data centers. By combining Insightful’s CRM expertise with Fonality’s awarding-winning telephony suite, small businesses will have an affordable solution that unifies employees with presence management, instant messaging, fixed and mobile calling, and provides a single 360-degree view of customers and business partners.

“Fonality has over 1,000 hybrid-hosted call centers deployed in 25 different countries and our hybrid-hosted platform is a powerful framework for delivering integrated applications directly to the SMB with no investment in premise equipment required,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “Telephony and CRM have a naturally concentric relationship, so this is a good place to leverage hybrid-hosted and we are thrilled that the great folks at Insightful have joined forces with us to accelerate our unified offering to the global SMB marketplace.”

As part of the deal, Fonality will also begin selling Insightful’s CRM managed service offering immediately. Called FonalityCRM, it integrates Sugar Professional with Fonality’s PBXtra and trixbox Pro IP-PBX applications. FonalityCRM provides click-to-call dialing, agent screen pops, telephone campaign management for outbound sales teams, and more. It is hosted at one of the six Fonality data centers and available immediately to PBXtra and trixbox Pro customers worldwide. The underlying FonalityCRM managed service platform was developed by Insightful to provide a complete on-demand offering that is updated, maintained, backed-up and always available. Fonality will leverage Insightful’s knowledge and experience supporting Sugar Professional deployments, as well as its own world-class support infrastructure.

Marc Englaro, co-founder and CEO of Insightful, is now general manager of Fonality’s CRM Division. Before founding Insightful, Englaro was director and principal consultant with Si2, leading its open source consulting practice. He will remain in his role as director of Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA), the country’s national industry body for open source adoption. The Insightful team brings valuable CRM development and marketing expertise, and all employees will continue to work for Fonality. The Insightful offices in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore will remain open.

“In Fonality we found a like-minded team which values going beyond simple integration, and building fully conjoined products that expand the definition of what’s on the market today,” said Englaro. “Together we’re going to continue to raise the bar for what people expect from both VoIP and CRM.”

For more information about FonalityCRM go to www.fonalitycrm.com or call 1-888-296-4340.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in unified communications and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Used by over 6,500 companies and 60,000 end users in 97 countries, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX VoIP phone systems have connected more than 155,000,000 mission critical phone calls. The PBXtra and trixbox Pro product lines are based on Fonality's patent-pending Anywhere Management® hybrid-hosted architecture, plus an improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base that has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features and delivers the advanced capabilities of an enterprise-class phone system for 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's fully free and open source telephony platform, trixbox CE (www.trixbox.org) is home to one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of users of Asterisk-based software, with over 150,000 live deployments and 65,000 new downloads each month. FonalityCRM www.fonalitycrm.com provides contact center communications and sales force automation solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. Fonality headquarters are in Los Angeles, and the company has offices in the UK, Brazil and Australia.

Fonality, PBXtra, HUD, trixbox and trixNet are registered trademarks of Fonality. Asterisk is a registered trademark of Digium, Inc. Fonality, trixbox, PBXtra and trixNet are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Digium Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

trixbox Pro Turns 10,000, Cuts Prices Up to 50 Percent

ryan — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:24:13 -0700

LOS ANGELES – October 22, 2007 – Fonality, a maker of business phone systems, announced today that trixbox® Pro, the company’s channel-focused IP-PBX, has been downloaded 10,000 times since its release ten weeks ago. As a result of strong reseller feedback, new aggressive price tiers have been introduced that make trixbox Pro up to 50 percent more affordable for larger deployments. With up to 50 percent discounts, and the option of monthly pricing, trixbox Pro continues to be a strong fit for data VARs, interconnects, ISPs and MSPs.

To support larger resellers and deployments, Fonality has introduced a revised pricing structure that makes trixbox Pro a compelling alternative for companies with up to 500 seats. These changes can reduce prices up to 50 percent for very large capacity deployments. A new release of trixbox Pro, available now, also supports larger deployments with unlimited mailboxes for voicemail-only extensions, and unlimited use of the Agents on Cell Phones feature which provides enhanced mobility by allowing agents to log into queues remotely.

Fonality has also announced a new reseller tier into the trixbox Reseller Program that allows smaller resellers to qualify for discounts on Fonality products and services by becoming FtOCC (pronounced “F-talk”) certified. No quotas are required and certification training includes a free demo kit with two trixbox Pro Call Center Edition lifetime licenses, and one free month of support with certified hardware. Certification and a low initial investment give resellers the accreditation, discounts, and tools to resell and support trixbox Pro without a sales commitment.

“The phone system is just one spoke in a wheel made up of many applications, and we have given the data community a game-changing telephony platform they are actively selling alongside the many products they already service,” said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. “Now we have structured a channel program that lets the little guy make real money on smaller deployments, and creates substantial opportunity for large resellers working on much bigger deployments.”

Fonality supports all solution providers with a range of certification programs designed specifically for trixbox and Asterisk resellers. FtOCC Administrator, FtOCC Technician and FtOCC Engineer are each customized for a different level of technical expertise and depth of experience with trixbox. FtOCC Administrator teaches the basics of trixbox installation and administration. FtOCC Technician teaches Linux system administrators how to support trixbox deployments. FtOCC Engineer is in response to the growing popularity of trixbox as a platform and teaches developers how to create their own innovative telephony applications on top of trixbox. FtOCC courses are conducted monthly in the U.S., Europe and South America. For more information on registration for FtOCC go to http://www.trixbox.com/support-and-training/training.

trixbox Pro is a managed system driven by a patent-pending, hybrid-hosted architecture. Once downloaded and installed on a standard PC, trixbox Pro automatically updates software, configures phones, and connects to Fonality so that server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted nature of trixbox Pro also securely extends the phone system outside the corporate firewall, so an employee’s extension can follow them when they work from home, remotely on a laptop, or even on a mobile phone. With automatic software updates, 24x7 remote proactive monitoring and automatic configuration back-up, resellers can lower support costs and charge for valuable services to their customers, at no additional cost.

Fonality developed trixbox Pro to give resellers and IT professionals simple, easy to use phone software that saves them time so they can focus on growing their business, increasing revenue and delivering a higher level of customer service. Additionally, all three editions of trixbox Pro can be easily branded by resellers for a custom look-and-feel. Product logos, screen appearance and color schemes can all be tailored to match the brand of the reseller or end-customer.

For a complete list of features or information about the trixbox Reseller Program, please visit www.trixbox.com.

About Fonality
Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source, Asterisk-based IP telephony systems. PBXtra, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX product line for small and medium-sized businesses, is widely recognized as the world’s largest commercial Asterisk-based deployment with over 2,500 systems in 50 countries making over 130 million calls. PBXtra includes a hardened and improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra uses Fonality's patent-pending architecture to deliver all the advanced features of an enterprise-class phone system and call center at 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's trixbox, www.trixbox.org, is home to trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of users of Asterisk-based software with an average of 65,000 downloads a month.

Fonality Expands IP Telephony Channel Network Into Europe With Partners in France, Italy, Poland and the UK

ryan — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:25:17 -0700

LOS ANGELES – Oct. 1, 2007 - Fonality®, maker of business phone systems, today announced that it signed partnerships with solution providers in France, Poland, Italy and the UK to resell and support its newly launched trixbox® Pro phone system. CNSI (France), Halo2 (Poland), V4VoIP (UK), VCOMM (UK), VoIPon (UK), and Wildix (Italy) are among the first to sign-up for Fonality’s value-added partner program, and are establishing themselves as important resources for advanced IP communications in Europe. Now small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Europe have access to affordable, easy–to-use IP communications that helps them compete with larger, more established enterprises.

To facilitate adoption of trixbox Pro in Europe, Fonality will host an FtOCC (Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification) training workshop in London on October 9-11, 2007, at the Sheraton Skyline at Heathrow Airport. FtOCC is a training and certification course designed around the Asterisk®-based trixbox platform.

Fonality created trixbox Pro specifically for the channel. It is a fully brandable, software-only product that creates new revenue streams for VARs and systems integrators expanding into IP communications. It is a hybrid-hosted phone system that offers an affordable alternative to the traditional, expensive IP-PBX solutions currently available in Europe.

“European SMBs need affordable business-class phone systems that easily scale as they grow and we’re supplying them with a system that does just that,” said Chris Vuillaume, vice president of business development and channel for Fonality. “We are giving our partners a product that enables them spend more time growing their business, and therefore boost revenue streams, rather than customizing solutions for customers.”

Fonality certifies trixbox and Asterisk® resellers, as well as IT professionals, through a series of workshops - FtOCC Technician, FtOCC Administrator and FtOCC Engineer. Each is customized for a different level of technical expertise and depth of experience with trixbox. In London, Fonality will be hosting FtOCC Administrator which covers all of the core operations that a trixbox administrator needs to handle on a regular basis. It covers installation and administration basics for trixbox CE and trixbox Pro, and is a hands-on way for those new to trixbox to learn the ins-and-outs of the system. To sign-up for the London-based FtOCC session or for more information, please visit: http://ftocc-uk.eventbrite.com/.

About New Fonality Partners

• CNSI (www.cnsi.fr), a French-based IP Telephony, security and network management reseller that has been successful in serving French SMB customers.

• Halo2 (www.halo2.pl), a Polish-based value-added distributor that delivers solutions to central and Eastern Europe and focuses entirely on serving the hardware and software needs of the open source telephony reseller channel.

• V4VoIP (www.v4voip.co.uk), a UK-based reseller and service provider in the voice market. V4 also provides other services including number porting from traditional PSTN to VoIP.

• VCOMM (www.vcomm.co.uk), a UK-based, Internet communications distributor who provides IP telephony products and services to the UK and Irish reseller channel.

• VoIPon (www.voipon.co.uk), a UK-based IP telephony distributor selling a wide range of VoIP products and services to resellers worldwide.

• Wildix (www.wildix.com), an Italian-based European distributor specializing in Voice over IP for the SMB market, selling to VAR’s throughout Europe.

For more information about becoming a Fonality partner please visit: www.trixbox.com/resellers/

Fonality Launches Workshop For Developers Innovating on trixbox and Asterisk Platforms

ryan — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:26:08 -0700

LOS ANGELES – September 26, 2007 – Fonality, Inc., a maker of business phone systems for small and medium-size businesses, today announced a new course designed to teach developers how to create custom applications with trixbox, the world's largest Asterisk®-based community and open source telephony platform. Dubbed FtOCC Engineer, it is the most advanced course within the FtOCC (pronounced F-talk) educational series, and will teach trixbox and Asterisk resellers how to write code interfaces that integrate with real world applications like CRM, ticketing and sales force automation.

onality certifies trixbox and Asterisk resellers and IT professionals through a series of workshops - FtOCC Technician, FtOCC Administrator and FtOCC Engineer. Each is customized for a different level of technical expertise and depth of experience with trixbox. FtOCC Engineer is in response to the growing popularity of trixbox as a development platform for creating innovative telephony applications. The course will cover a wide range of topics required for custom development, including database and application integration, implementing text-to-speech, conducting Internet look-ups, and writing to the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) and Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) using a CGI script, SQL database query or interactive voice response (IVR).

Anyone interested in monetizing Asterisk or trixbox should take note of this course,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “It will teach developers how to make real money from the trixbox movement, and in a few days they will learn how to build telephony applications that used to cost millions to develop."

WHAT: Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification – FtOCC Engineer
WHEN: December 4-6, 2007
WHERE: Los Angeles, California
COST: $4,999
NOTE: Attendance is limited to 10 people and registration is on a first come, first served basis. For registration, visit http://ftocc-engineer.eventbrite.com.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source, Asterisk-based IP telephony systems. PBXtra, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX product line for small and medium-sized businesses, is widely recognized as the world’s largest commercial Asterisk-based deployment with over 2,500 systems in 50 countries making over 130 million calls. PBXtra includes a hardened and improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra uses Fonality's patent-pending architecture to deliver all the advanced features of an enterprise-class phone system and call center at 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's trixbox, www.trixbox.org, is home to trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of users of Asterisk-based software with an average of 65,000 downloads a month.

Fonality Announces trixbox Pro Appliance

ryan — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:17:08 -0700

LOS ANGELES - Sept. 10, 2007 - Fonality^® a maker of business phone systems, announced that the new trixbox^® Pro appliance, which formerly only shipped with the trixbox Community Edition software will soon begin shipping with the trixbox Pro commercial software. Now, trixbox and Asterisk^® resellers, and IT professionals will have access to pre-built, tested and certified hardware specifically designed for trixbox Pro software, making for simpler, faster deployments in the small to medium sized business (SMB) market. The trixbox Pro software has already been deployed more than 2100 times in 70 countries, even though it was released less than a month ago.

The trixbox Pro Appliance costs $999 and delivers 80 times the storage and 10 times the capacity of similar-priced Asterisk^® solid-state appliances on the market today. It is an industrial grade, rack-mountable server that comes standard with two 80 GB hard disks in RAID-1, 512MB of RAM, and a powerful Intel Duo Core processor. It also comes with an optional dual power supply to increase long-term reliability. The trixbox Pro appliance is tailored for businesses with five to 500 employees and can be purchased for use with VoIP, PRI, E1/T1, or up to 48 analog lines.

"We designed the trixbox appliance to be multi-purposed for both trixbox CE and trixbox Pro," said Fonality CEO, Chris Lyman. "The goal was to free resellers of having to build their own servers, and then install the trixbox software. The faster they can put a reliable appliance out in the field, the higher their ROI will be on each deployment."

The trixbox Pro Appliance is powered by Intel and comes with pre-configured Sangoma line cards. Broad support for the appliance and the trixbox software platforms has been announced by a growing trixbox ecosystem that includes phone manufacturers Aastra and Polycom, card provider Sangoma, as well as VoIP service providers Allgent Communications, Broadvox, and Cbeyond.

trixbox Pro Phone System

trixbox Pro phone system software is a "hybrid-hosted" system that offers an affordable alternative to the traditional, expensive IP-PBX solutions. trixbox Pro includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, embedded corporate chat server, and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. The base edition of trixbox Pro comes already installed on the appliance. Resellers can choose to upgrade to paid editions: trixbox Enterprise Edition (EE) or trixbox Call Center Edition (CCE). The upgradeable versions are available for a monthly fee or one-time, per-seat charge.

To sign-up for advanced purchase of the trixbox Pro Appliance, or for a complete list of features please visit www.trixbox.com.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source, Asterisk-based IP telephony systems. PBXtra, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX product line for small and medium-sized businesses, is widely recognized as the world.s largest commercial Asterisk-based deployment with over 2,500 systems in 50 countries making over 120 million calls. PBXtra includes a hardened and improved version of the popular open source Asterisk code base which has been modified to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra uses Fonality's patent-pending architecture to deliver all the advanced features of an enterprise-class phone system and call center at 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings. Fonality's trixbox, www.trixbox.org, is home to trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of users of Asterisk-based software with an average of 65,000 downloads a month.

TMC Announces Fonality-Sponsored trixbox Training Courses at ITExpo

ryan — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:16:16 -0700

Internet Telephony Conference & Expo West 2007 NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) announced today that they have added a new trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC) course to the program at the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2007 (www.itexpo.com) on September 10-12, 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Titled “FtOCC Technician”, the new course provides telephony resellers and IT professionals with in-depth technical training on Fonality PBXtra, as well as trixbox CE and the newly introduced trixbox Pro. FtOCC Technician, and the previously scheduled “FtOCC Administrator”, are being presented in collaboration with Fonality, a leading open source telephony company. Registration is now open at www.itexpo.com. FtOCC Technician is a three-day technical certification course designed to train resellers and consultants how to support customers running trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and PBXtra systems. Taught by Fonality technical support instructors, FtOCC Technician includes an in-depth look at platform and application installation, carrier setup and integration, network configuration, echo causes and remedies, and other common issues. FtOCC Technician is for Linux technicians and engineers who regularly support client installations. Upon completion of FtOCC Technician, Fonality Authorized and Premium Resellers qualify for full reseller discounts on trixbox Pro and PBXtra. FtOCC Administrator teaches the basics of trixbox CE and Pro installation and administration. This course is a hands-on way for resellers who are new to trixbox to learn the ins and outs of trixbox Pro and CE, and master the basics of installing and maintaining those systems. It covers all of the core operations that a trixbox administrator needs to handle on a regular basis. “trixbox gives the channel a lucrative way to participate in the rapidly expanding market opportunity for open source products and services,” said Michael Genaro, vice president of marketing at TMC. “ITEXPO is committed to educating the reseller community on new ways to increase their value in the marketplace and FtOCC Technician certification certainly will do that.” “TMC continues to be an authoritative voice for telephony and the data VAR channel.” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “As these two worlds come together, IT Expo and Fonality’s FtOCC open up a new source of revenue for the data VARs. Move over phone guy, the IT guy now has your parking spot!” Attendees who complete the FtOCC Technician courses can expect to achieve the following objectives:

Install and configure trixbox CE, trixbox Pro, and PBXtra with confidence.
Resolve installation, administration, and usage problems more quickly.
Provision your own phones, decreasing turnaround time required for add-on phones and devices.
Experience fewer problems by avoiding the usual "beginner" mistakes!
Gain an in-depth understanding of how trixbox and PBXtra work (product, process, policy, protocol).
Receive full reseller discounts (for signed Authorized and Premium resellers only).
Receive direct priority Level 2 access to trixbox and PBXtra support services (for signed Authorized and Premium resellers only).

FtOCC Technician includes training on the recently introduced trixbox Pro, a new offering created for resellers and IT professionals. trixbox Pro is a “hybrid-hosted” phone system, so the IP-PBX and application software is downloaded to a customer site and installed on a centralized PC. It then connects to the Fonality network where system health, availability, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. This free hosting service also allows users to take their work phone number with them and use a mobile device as a primary phone, or have calls ring through to a PC at home or any other remote location. The entire trixbox Pro user experience call be branded with any look and feel. All product logos, screen appearance and color schemes can be completely customized to match the brand of the reseller or end customer. trixbox Pro also comes in seven different localized versions, including US English, UK English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

About TMC® Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 5,000 most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves two million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, Communications Developer Conference, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.)

Fonality Launches Free Business Phone System with Free Worldwide Calling

jay — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:42:56 -0700

LOS ANGELES — August 13, 2007 — Small and medium-size businesses no longer need to pay for a phone system or in-network phone calls worldwide, according to an announcement today from Fonality, a maker of business phone systems. Companies can now download trixbox® Pro, a free business-grade phone system that allows companies with five to 500 employees to make free VoIP calls. In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, embedded corporate chat server, and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

trixbox Pro includes trixNet", a free in-network calling service which lets any trixbox Pro user call any other trixbox Pro user, using their regular phone numbers. Calls over trixNet are not subject to any local or long-distance charges. Fonality will soon extend trixNet to the trixbox CE (Community Edition) platform, its popular open source Asterisk®-based software which has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times. In early 2008, Fonality will also extend free trixNet calling to include anybody using GoogleTalk, Google's instant communications service.

"As the lines between the PC and phones increasingly blur, the data community is asking for a low-cost commercial IP phone system that they can install along with the routers and firewalls they already service, said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. trixbox Pro, as a brandable software-only product, stands to create a whole new revenue stream for this community of VARs."

trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, which means the free software is first downloaded by a business and installed on a local computer and local IP phones. After this step, the local computer connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored. The hybrid-hosted nature of trixbox Pro also securely extends the phone system outside the corporate firewall, so an employee's extension can follow them when they work from home, remotely on a laptop, or even on a mobile phone. Fonality's hybrid-hosted services are market proven and have processed more than 120 million calls for 2,500 companies with 53,000 individual extensions worldwide.

The base edition of trixbox Pro is free and there are two paid editions tailored specifically for the reseller market that are available for a monthly fee or one-time, per-seat charge. trixbox Pro Enterprise Edition (EE) and trixbox Pro Call Center Edition (CCE) have the enterprise feature sets required for larger businesses and professional call centers, but at a low fixed or monthly fee. Fonality developed trixbox Pro EE and trixbox Pro CCE to give resellers and IT professionals simple, easy to use phone software that saves them time so they can focus on growing their business, increasing revenue and delivering a higher level of customer service. Additionally, all three editions of trixbox Pro can be easily branded by resellers for a custom look-and-feel. Product logos, screen appearance and color schemes can all be tailored to match the brand of the reseller or end-customer. trixbox Pro will be available in seven languages: US English, UK English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

For a complete list of features and more information please visit www.trixbox.com.

trixbox 2.4 Launches with Asterisk 1.4 Support and CentOS 5

jay — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:38:48 -0700

LOS ANGELES –August 7, 2007 – Fonality®, a leading open source telephony company, today announced the beta release of trixbox 2.4, the latest version of the Asterisk®-based telephony platform that has become synonymous with open source telephony and home to the largest Asterisk-based community. trixbox 2.4 incorporates the newest releases of CentOS 5, Asterisk 1.4 and FreePBX 2.3 for broader compatibility, choice and usability. trixbox 2.4 is beta software and timing of the general release will be gated by stability of Asterisk 1.4, as well as integration of all of the components and testing to ensure that it is ready for deployment in a demanding production environment.

For greater compatibility, this release gives trixboxers the option to deploy trixbox on CentOS 5 compatible hardware and reduce install time with the 100 percent Red Hat Package Manager Installer. For greater choice, trixbox incorporates Asterisk 1.4, the latest release from the Asterisk community. The new version of FreePBX 2.3 included in trixbox 2.4 also improves usability with new features including an updated flash operator panel and an improved FreePBX landing page with more status information.

trixbox 2.4 beta, like previous versions of trixbox, includes a host of stable and reliable packages and applications, including Apache, a modified version of Asterisk, FreePBX, Flash Operator Panel, MySQL, phpMyAdmin and SugarCRM. trixboxers who prefer a hardened and supported version of trixbox can still download and use trixbox 2.2. Other key features included in trixbox 2.4 include an automatic back-up and restore system and DHCP manager.

“Listening to the trixbox community is our first priority. They wanted to see Asterisk 1.4 incorporated into trixbox, so we are delivering just that. This beta release is just the first step,” said Andrew Gillis, trixbox founder at Fonality. “And, by having trixbox 2.4 based on CentOS 5, trixbox is compatible with the newest hardware on the market.”

The release of trixbox 2.4 is just one of the latest improvements in a series of updates for both trixbox itself and the community. In recent months, Fonality has added service and support for trixbox, the trixStore, the trixbox Buyer’s Club, additional Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certifications (FtOCC, pronounced "F-talk") and the popular trixbox Appliance that was awarded four stars by PC Magazine and was named a 2007 TMC Labs Innovation award winner.

FtOCC courses consistently sell out and have proven to be a useful and important way for Asterisk resellers to get practical, hands-on experience with the latest software developments, and also share best practices. There are two upcoming FtOCCs scheduled; FtOCC at ITEXPO will take place in Los Angeles on September 10-12, 2007 and FtOCC London will take place in London from October 9-11, 2007. To register for FtOCC go to http://www.trixbox.org/ftocc

For more information on trixbox or to download trixbox 2.4 for free, go to www.trixbox.org.

trixbox 2.2 Released with Asterisk GUI from AsteriskNow

pgoddard — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:48:32 -0700

VON CONFERENCE & EXPO, SAN JOSE, CALIF - March 19, 2007 - Fonality, a leading open source telephony company, today announced the beta release of trixbox 2.2, the latest version of the Asterisk®-based telephony platform. With this release trixboxers have the option to deploy the new Asterisk GUI (graphical user interface), a Digium user interface from the AsteriskNow. distribution. The additional GUI provides trixboxers with another choice in the free Asterisk GUI market.

Other new trixbox 2.2 features include enhanced call reporting and an integrated network configuration tool. The new reporting feature allows managers to view and export detailed reports about inbound and outbound calls, and includes a click-to-listen capability for recorded calls. Also new is broader TDM card support, including built-in drivers for Sangoma and Rhino cards, to ease trixbox configuration. trixbox 2.2 also includes a new administration screen that provides a quick view of things like network and memory usage, process status and phone status.

Starting today, new trixbox support packages will be made available to the trixbox and Asterisk community. Support can be purchased on an annual basis for holistic support of a complete site deployment, or in hourly increments for ad hoc support. Professional grade technical support ensures that a reliable trixbox engineer is always just a phone call away.

"trixbox 2.2 speaks directly to the openness of our platform," said Andrew Gillis, founder of trixbox and director of community development at Fonality. "And we are thrilled to finally provide the trixbox and Asterisk community with tech support no matter what type of line card they are using."

For more information about trixbox 2.2, the trixbox Appliance and trixbox support options, please visit www.trixbox.org.

Fonality Launches the trixbox Asterisk-Based Appliance

pgoddard — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:31:14 -0700

VON CONFERENCE & EXPO, SAN JOSE, CALIF - March 19, 2007 - Fonality, a leading open source telephony company, today announced a new enterprise telephony appliance based on trixbox®, a leading Asterisk-based IP-PBX, and a range of complementary professional support options. The trixbox Appliance comes pre-installed with the trixbox software platform and is an industrial grade rack-mountable server with dual hard disk and dual power supply redundancy options. It is aimed at businesses with five to 500 employees and can be purchased for use with VoIP, E1/T1 or up to 48 analog lines. Created for trixbox and Asterisk resellers, as well as IT professionals, the trixbox Appliance costs $999 and delivers the industry's best price performance value for a PBX.

The trixbox Appliance is powered by Intel and comes with pre-configured Sangoma line cards with industry-leading Octasic echo-cancellation hardware inside. Broad support for the appliance has been announced by a growing trixbox ecosystem that includes phone manufacturers Polycom, Aastra, and Grandstream, as well as VoIP service providers VoicePulse and Teliax.

"We are excited about the new Intel-based trixbox Appliance, which combines an innovative SME offering with Polycom.s line of standards-based high quality IP phones," said Sunil Bhalla, senior vice president and general manager of voice communications at Polycom. "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."

The trixbox Appliance includes trixbox 2.2, a new release of the popular distribution that integrates Asterisk with Apache, MySQL, SugarCRM and PHP. Included in this release is the new open source Asterisk GUI (graphical user interface), a component of the AsteriskNow. distribution, which gives customers an additional trixbox GUI option.

In addition to delivering an appliance, Fonality is offering professional support options to ensure that a reliable trixbox engineer is always just a phone call away. A new suite of comprehensive technical support packages can be purchased on an annual basis for a complete deployment, or in hourly increments for ad hoc support.

"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," said Lisa Lambert, managing director, Software and Solutions Group, Intel Capital. "Fonality's investment in trixbox should provide the opportunity for the company to grow their market position and leadership."

"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," said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. "Our goal was to create a box that had enterprise performance, but still came in at under $1,000 bucks."

For more information about the trixbox Appliance, trixbox 2.2 and trixbox support options, please visit www.trixbox.org.