TMCnet's Greg Galitzine is reporting that Digium has announced the latest member of the Switchvox appliance family, the Digium|Switchvox AA300 appliance to go along with the AA60 and AA350. Essentially, the AA300 sits in the "middle" targeting 150 users, where as the AA60 appliance supports 30 users and the AA350 appliance supports up to a whopping 400 users.

According to Tristan Degenhardt, Product Line Director for Digium|Switchvox, "Not only in capacity," Degenhardt, "but the physical size of the appliance is in between the two as well. The AA60 is a tiny, little box designed to wall mount, appropriate for a small business with not a lot of room; the AA 350 is a full-depth 3U rackmountable machine; and the AA300 can also be rackmounted. It too is 3U high, but it's half-depth, and can be deployed on a desktop rather easily."

In addition to 150 users, it supports up to 45 simultaneous calls. It also supports up to 10 recorded calls and up to 15 simultaneous conference calls.

I'm interested to learn how the Switchvox appliances compete or compliment Digium's Asterisk Appliance 50 (AA50) depicted here:


The Asterisk AA50 Appliance comes in 4 flavors: VoIP Only (S800i), Eight FXO (S808B), and Four FXS with Four FXO (S844B). It was designed for 2-50 users and ranges from prices of $1259 to $2579. The AA50 appliances existed before Digium acquired Switchvox. It appears the AA50 appliances compliment the Digium|Switchvox AA60, AA300, and AA350 appliances since the AA50 targets very small businesses (2-50 users). The closest product in user density to the AA50 is the Digium Switchvox AA60 ($3,390), but I should point out that the AA60 has more features than the AA50, including Web 2.0 mashups and SugarCRM integration. So you can't necessarily compare apples-to-apples between these two products.

In any event, the Digium Switchvox AA300 highlighted features include:

•  Full coverage by the Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program, the strongest guarantee in open source telephony, which gives customers their money back if the product is defective or fails to perform as described.
•  VoIP ready--No extra hardware is necessary to connect to SIP or IAX voice over IP trunks.
•  A standard one-year warranty and optional three-year warranty.
•  Support for analog and T1/E1 interfaces gives customers flexibility in working with their existing network.
•  A choice of three subscription plans to suit every company's support and service needs.

Pricing for the Digium Switchvox AA300 with SMB 3.5 software begins at U.S. $4,240. It is available immediately.