Oy vey! It appears we may have another Asterisk-based PBX in the mix. The chutzpah! The gall to launch an Asterisk-based system without telling me! 
I feel like such a schmuck for not knowing. After schleping some Aastra phones into the labs I sat my tush down and started munching on my kosher bagel (it's Bagel Friday). I was reading some dreck on the New York Times when I decide to check out the trixbox forums. It's then that I came across some threads that pointed towards a new Asterisk PBX called Schmooze (hence all the Yiddish 
).The threads were from Tony Lewis, Director of Business Development for Schmooze Communications. I noticed he had "FtOCCc" in his signature, which means that he has a Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification. Hmm. Does that mean he sells an IP-PBX based on trixbox?
I did some more research on Schmooze and came across an October 2007 blog posting by Ethan Schroeder (also with Schmooze) which shed some light on what Schmooze is about: (BTW, Ethan recently came up with a cool add-on for FreePBX which adds a speech-rec button. I wrote about it here)
Schmooze Communications, a leading provider of IP-PBX solutions has designed a custom-manufactured wall-mount appliance for Asterisk® PBXs. One of the barriers of entry Asterisk integrators have in selling open standard PBXs is the "you're going to install a computer to run my phone system?" mentality. As a wall-mount PBX, the OpenAppliance appears as any legacy PBX does with the benefit of running an ultra-powerful Asterisk-based solution.
The wall-mount enclosure was designed specifically for Asterisk-based solutions and works with any Asterisk distribution, including Trixbox®, Elastix, AsteriskNOW, Elastix, CentPBX, and PBX-in-a-Flash (edit).
High quality, carefully chosen components work towards zero interrupt (IRQ) problems with TDM cards and standard RAID for redundancy, all while maintaining extremely low pricing. The motherboard is SuperMicro, power supply Antec, and memory from Crucial.
We have also struck up a deal with Sangoma, the manufacturer of (what we believe to be) the highest quality TDM cards available. The deal allows us to package Sangoma cards with the OpenAppliance for unbeatable pricing.
So it would appear that they offer a wall-mountable appliance that can run any of the various popular flavors of Asterisk and that Schmooze doesn't create their own flavor of Asterisk. Well, that may be true, but they apparently sell turnkey solutions and brand them with something called PBXact with no mention of Asterisk.I checked out their website and couldn't find any mention of Asterisk. I'm not knocking them for this, I'm just trying to understand what their product is. Is it trixbox, Elastic, AsteriskNOW, PBX-in-a-Flash, or what? Also, did Schmooze add any additional features to the core Asterisk to make it better? Maybe Schmooze thinks the customer doesn't care what the underlying flavor of Asterisk is. I would still think most customers want to know if their phone system is "future proof" and not proprietary, which obviously Asterisk meets both criteria. So knowing it's Asterisk-based should be a selling point, not something that isn't mentioned at all on their website.
Well regardless, I'm happy to learn about an Asterisk player I wasn't familiar with. Mazal Tov to ya Schmooze and best wishes for success.
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Tom,
Thanks for the writeup. Schmooze Communications sells custom PBX solutions through Schmooze brand, as well as the Teleconnex brand. While our solutions are Asterisk-based at their heart, it's not something that we specifically focus on from a branding perspective. The reason for this is customers are only really concerned with 1.) are we selling them a PBX, 2.) does it work and 3.) is it "future-proof" as you mentioned. Once you start talking Asterisk, Linux, servers, etc, their eyes glaze over.
Down to the nuts and bolts, our solution is deployed on a custom distro that we maintain in house, so no Trixbox, Elastix, or PBX-in-a-flash. We do often support these distros in our day-to-day operations, including Fonality's PBXtra product.
While we have done many customizations to Asterisk, it is mostly to enhance the user experience of our customers. Asterisk from a platform perspective is solid. We have some pretty complex solutions out there that never miss a beat. For example, 100+ extension systems and systems comprised of multiple remote offices over MPLS.
Our user experience mantra flows from the PBX down to the handset. We develop customer-centric applications that utilize Asterisk to improve business processes, as well as developing heavily for in the XML applications area (and recently the voice-recognition area). We stay mostly under the radar and distribute our products through a reseller chain.
Our other specialties are hardware and provisioning. We custom manufacture wall-mount PBX appliances that have very carefully chosen hardware components for longevity and optimal call quality. On the provisioning side, we feel we have one of the industry's most comprehensive automatic provisioning systems. This allows us to deliver a PBX to the end customer that is 100% setup and ready to function. It also reduces our staffing requirements and, for example, allows us to ship a completely setup 100 extension PBX in as little as an hour - both cost savings we can pass on to the customer.
As far as the "open source" world goes, we focus our energy on helping FreePBX stay in the spotlight. Most people don't realize that FreePBX, aside from Asterisk itself, really is the "guts" of an Asterisk solution. It's not just the interface for making changes to the PBX. It is the piece of software pulling the strings of Asterisk to make things happen. They really deserve support from the community.
Sincerely,
Ethan Schroeder
Schmooze Communications/Teleconnex
P.S. Keep an eye on our blog today for the Asterisk Voice Recognition Company Directory, which I'm releasing as open source today.
Thanks for the quick and informative response Ethan. Explains a lot.
I saw your support for FreePBX and Tony's as well in various trixbox forum threads. The mere fact that you post on the trixbox forums seemed to indicate you support trixbox somewhat as well. Of course, those forums due draw a mix of other Asterisk distro fans as well besides trixbox.
Interesting that you have your own distro and as you said, you operate "under the radar". You certainly missed my radar until today.
It sounds like even though you have your own stuff, you're actively supporting FreePBX and taking some of the stuff you develop and giving it to the community, such as the magic/easy/fantasmic button. Good for you!
You're on my radar now. Hope I drew the attention of potential customers or partners to Schmooze Communications with my post -- and Yiddish humor...
Hi Ethan,
This may of interest to you, as you appear to be offering a Kosher PBX :-)
Being a Jew located in Israel, one of the main concerns for a PBX in Israel is for it to speak Hebrew. I'm the maintainer of the current Hebrew patch for Asterisk, including the recordings and studio work.
A while back I was thinking of doing a Yidish translation for Asterisk, unfortunately, I don't speak Yidish. If you believe there is a market for any of the two, please contact me, I believe there is a true opportunity here.
Regards,
Nir Simionovich
http://www.asterisk.org.il
http://www.greenfieldtech.net
Tom,
A quick word on Schmooze. As you pointed out if you scan the forums you will find their community support that is common in this Open Source space. The community support of people helping each other is one of the great and rewarding things and makes it very fun to work in.
I know you follow FreePBX development because the bulk of what gets trixbox users excited is what FreePBX brings them - they just don't always realize it. So you know there are often new features and modules that get introduced with new releases, along with the continual improvement in quality and stability.
As an Open Source project there are plenty of contributions from the community, but it is also through the funding of projects from companies like Schmooze that some of the much demanded requests make it to the community. Schmooze believes in a win-win eco-system and they demonstrate it in their help, in their development contributions and in their monetary support to have features and modules developed that are much desired by the greater community.
Tom
I was really surprised to see this write-up about us the last few days. We have some really exciting new features that we are working on and have announced some of them and will be giving some of the features back to the open source world. I wanted to repay you in some form and was wondering if you would be interested in attending our Training Class if I could convince the others to give you a free pass. Please email me back and let me know. I think you would really enjoy it and it would be nice to meet you in person along with Ward from Nerd Vittles and Philippe from FreePBX. The event as you know will be in South Carolina Febuary 27th thru the 29th. We only have 2 seats left!!!!!!!