Fonality launches Asterisk-based trixbox Appliance

March 18, 2007
Fonality announced a new enterprise telephony appliance based on trixbox, a popular distribution of Asterisk and aptly named "trixbox appliance". Trixbox ApplianceIf an Asterisk-based appliance sounds familiar, you would be correct. Digium has their own Asterisk appliance as well. Are Asterisk-based appliances really that popular? Everyone I know that uses an Asterisk-based phone system runs it on standard PC hardware. But I suppose the Linux newbies or small businesses with no Linux expertise might want a nice easy-to-use plug-n-play Asterisk solution that an appliance brings.

In any event, 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. I'm not sure how this can be called an "appliance" since it is a large rackmountable server. When I think of appliances, I think of small portable devices.

The Digium appliance for instance is quite small, as seen by this picture:
Asterisk Appliance AADK

Digium appliance



In any event, the trixbox appliance is aimed at businesses with 5 to 500 employees and can be purchased for use with VoIP, E1/T1 or up to 48 analog lines. Fonality created this appliance with Asterisk resellers and IT professionals in mind and the trixbox appliance costs just $999.

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 manufacturer Aastra, as well as VoIP service providers GrandStream, VoicePulse, and Teliax.

 “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 into 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.”

The trixbox appliance includes trixbox 2.2, a new release of the popular distribution that integrates Asterisk with Apache, MySQL, SugarCRM and PHP. New in this release is AsteriskNow™, which gives customers an additional trixbox graphical user interface option, and an automatic update service for keeping all trixbox components up to date with the latest security patches and feature upgrades. trixbox technical support packages can now be purchased in five, ten and 15 hour blocks, and gives customers 7/24 access to Fonality support engineers.

“While Fonality has long offered its own PBXtra appliance, we felt the trixbox community also needed a reliable hardware appliance to run their trixbox asterisk-based 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.”

Update: I now have a product image to share. Pretty cool looking - love the green color.  Reminds me of - dare I say - Windows Media Center Edition 2005's logo (Vista is similar as well). Compare the two...
Windows MCE logo
Trixbox Appliance

trixbox Appliance



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Comments to Fonality launches Asterisk-based trixbox Appliance


  1. Jan Polet :
    March 18, 2007 6:33 AM

    I've been following this hype and must say it's beginning to look like a big break-through.
    At Ebay you see all sorts of voip-modems appear, which have been hanging in customers powercabinets for a year, and after a year they sell them on ebay, why? why not?!
    I mean everyone with such a voip-modem can call for free around the world!
    Only thing you've got to have is an telephone number, internet connection and an account at voipstunt of voipbuster, and you can call for free around the world.

    Check my url for more info
    http://www.squidoo.com/voipcallingforfree


  1. Jack :
    March 20, 2007 1:25 AM

    You know, what's interesting about this story is what's NOT mentioned. Note it says, "New in this release is AsteriskNow, which gives customers an additional trixbox graphical user interface option ....." An ADDITIONAL option? Oh, you mean in addition to FreePBX, which suddenly they don't seem to want to talk about, despite that fact that people who have tried both GUI's are pretty much in agreement that FreePBX is much further along in its development and offers a more robust feature set?

    I don't much care if you post this comment in your blog or not, but one of these days you might want to contact the FreePBX developer and see what he's up to, just for your own enlightenment. I think there's a link to his personal page (with his contact info) at the bottom of the page at http://www.aussievoip.com/


  1. chris_lyman :
    March 22, 2007 3:40 PM

    Jack,

    I think you are misunderstanding something about freePBX. We, at Fonalty *love* the freePBX GUI. And we totally agree, it is far more mature and powerful than the beta AsteriskNOW GUI. We just wanted to add the AsteriskNow GUI capability into trixbox, so folks have as much choice as possible when installing trixbox. trixbox is about choice.

    FYI, I did contact Rob (head of the freePBX project) about his feelings on the AsteriskNOW GUI a few months ago and his comment was: "The more options Asterisk users have the better." So, I think the freePBX gang is cool with other GUIs in trixbox as well.

    --
    Chris Lyman
    Fonaltiy CEO & Janitor


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