Fonality

Dell adds Toktumi VoIP service to catalog

Doug Mohney — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:54:43 -0500

VoIP provider Toktumi will co-brand and market its services through a micro-site (because people can't simply say "a couple of web pages") on Dell.com.

The "Virtual Office Phone Service" being marketed through Dell (and Staples) includes the usual bells-and-whistles of caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, visual voicemail, auto receptionist and voicemail-to-email, plus not-so-average features like conferencing for up to 20 people and a free 800 number. The service costs $14.95 per month with additional charges for international calls. There's also unlimited LD calling within the US and Canada from your PC.

Access to the Toktumi service can be done via softphone on a PC or via a mobile phone. One might lean toward the soft phone, because it includes a "search dialing" feature that allows you to type in a name or a keyword of a person or business and then have phone numbers found by searching Outlook contacts and the web.

Let everyone be clear - Neither Dell nor Toktumi have an exclusive relationship here. Dell has been selling Fonality's SMB IP PBX solution on their website, and Toktumi's first business partner was Staples.com.

For more:
- Catch the Twice write up here.

Related articles
Are VoIP users ready for Dell Hell? - FierceVoIP
FierceVoIP Leaders: Chris Lyman, CEO Fonality - FierceVoIP

Fonality, Top VoIP Company 2008: FierceVoIP, Fierce 15

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:49:38 -0500

Fonality

Where it's based: Los Angeles, Calif.
When it was founded: 2003
Website: www.fonality.com

Why it's Fierce: VoIP out of the City of Angels? Founder Chris Lyman took Asterisk and put the pieces together for an affordable turn-key IP PBX solution for businesses based on off-the-shelf hardware and an variant of Asterisk. The company has continued to grow at a rapid clip once they started shipping PBXtra. Additional features rolled into Fonality's products include call/contact center support, auto-configuration of IP handsets across the LAN, some very cool dashboard/monitoring features, and the introduction of unified communication and mobility functions.

Fonality has grown at an average monthly rate of 10 percent, achieved profitability in 2006, and has been increasing call volumes at a rate of 400 percent per year for the past three years. And 16 successive quarters of record growth. Did we mention they established a partnership with Dell in early 2008 and locked up $12 million in venture money in September 2008? Seriously, Fierce, ba-be!

Voixtas to offer snom SIP phones

Pete Wylie — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:21:04 -0400

Voxitas and snom announced Wednesday that they will form a partnership that will see snom's SIP-based phones integrated into Voxitas's business-class VoIP services. The deal comes after Voxitas extensively tested snom's 3xx series VoIP phones and m3 IP DECT mobile phones and found them to be interoperable with all Voxitas's IP PBX customers.

Voxitas said in a release that the partnership would enhance the value proposition it offers its small to medium business customers with its SIP True Voice service.

In addition to wide-ranging support for various security protocols, snom's phones support several audio devices simultaneously, giving customers flexibility and customability, as well as knowledge that their secure communications are protected.

snom's phones will be available through Voxitas's reseller network, as the German firm continues to add partners in the SMB VoIP space. Earlier this month, snom announced a partnership with Fonality.

For more:
- see the joint snom and Voxitas press release here

Related Articles
Pushing SIP trunking
Fonality and snom partner

AstriCon 2008 – A chat with FreeSWITCH, PIKA

Doug Mohney — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:44:56 -0400

PHOENIX, Ariz. - FreeSWITCH doesn't really compete with Asterisk, but complements it, says a spokesperson. Meanwhile, PIKA Technologies appliance has secured over 75 developers including one or two familiar names.

Brian West, in charge of quality assurance, public relations and administration of the FreeSWITCH project, said that many people are using Asterisk and FreeSWITCH in a complementary fashion. While some are replacing Asterisk with FreeSWITCH, many deployments are happening in a side-by-side fashion - sometimes in the same box. FreeSWITCH supports software-based conferencing, so people can load both programs on a single server and use FreeSWITCH to provide conferencing to Asterisk without any additional hardware.

FreeSWITCH also provides native support for 16 and 32 kHz wideband audio; Asterisk currently supports 16 kHz audio.

West says that FreeSWITCH does appear to be displacing another open source telephony packages. A number of OpenSER users are switching over to FreeSWITCH for various reasons.

Over at the PIKA Technologies booth, Vice President Terry Atwood said the company's appliance - announced at last year's AstriCon - has 75 developers working with it. "About half of the developers are running Asterisk on it and the other half are porting their own [Linux-based] telephony applications on it," said Atwood.

Among the companies working with the appliance are Fonality and Intuitive Voice Technology. The latter company has already ported its application over to the low-form factor PowerPC-based device, while Fonality is in the process of moving over its code base - including its newly announced HUD 3.0 software - to the device. Atwood said moving from a PC-based solution to a lower-cost embedded processor design with a paltry 256MB of flash storage was a challenge for some companies since they had to squeeze code down into a smaller space and then recompile applications for the embedded PowerPC environment.

Fonality dials up HUD to 3.0

Doug Mohney — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:23:39 -0400

Fonality has released HUD 3.0, the latest upgrade to its unified communications platform.

HUD ties presence management and detection into a single interface. New features added include SMS support and Google Talk integration; Google Talk provides a federation capability to communicate with users outside of the standard business HUD group, so desktop and mobile (BlackBerry & iPhone) users are available for presence and messaging.

A mobile presence feature adds visual presence to other users when a cell phone is logged into the system; presence is extended into queues and conferencing. There's also a visual conference feature that enables drag and drop of calls into conferences, plus ways to create permissions for recording, muting, and removing calls - adding a photo to ID a caller is an option.

Like everyone else these days, HUD adds a visual voice mail feature to allow users to search, sort, play, and save messages from a desktop.

To top it all off, HUD enables "visual queue" management for call center queues, providing a virtual wall board to show agents and managers all calls in queue. Managers can drag and drop calls onto agents and set alerts to notify when calls have been holding too long or when an abandoned call has occurred.

For more:
- Fonality announces HUD 3.0. Release.

FierceVoIP Leaders: Chris Lyman, CEO Fonality

Pete Wylie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:56:36 -0400

FierceVoIP: How did you get the idea for Fonality?

Lyman: I had purchased a start-up residential VoIP service from a friend and I realized I needed a phone system for the office. I had never priced one before, and so I was shocked to get a five-digit quote for the office staff of four. That's when I realized I was in the wrong market, and that's really how I started Fonality. I realized there was a huge opportunity in the SMB market for a better priced option than the major players were offering.

FierceVoIP: Bloggers have raised concerns in the past about the remote access you have to the IP-PBX solution. Have customers raised the same ones?

Lyman: Well it's more something we just discuss with the customer. We do have access to the end-users box, but that's a cost-saving mechanism, not a privacy invasion. Part of our value proposition is that updates and add-ons to existing systems don't require a truck roll. We can do it remotely, and save the customer a lot of money, while also ensuring the highest level of security. I mean, that's how we competed and eventually won the Dell deal. We weren't even on their radar until they realized our solution runs on a Dell box, and they looked into it and saw how much more cost-effective the Fonality solution is.

FierceVoIP: Speaking of the Dell deal, who was your biggest competitor there and in general in the VoIP space?

Lyman: I think in order it's probably Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Shoretel and I guess down to someone like Panasonic.

FierceVoIP: Why do you think you are competitive with these companies, all of which are larger and have more legacy business?

Lyman: I think we are competitive, and will continue to be competitive for two reasons. The first, most obvious one, we just are a better value. Our systems, since they are PC based, are much cheaper to make and install. Secondly, the open source code that we built our solution over enabled a really low cost of development, which we can in turn pass to the customer. We also offer a higher degree of mobility and ease of transition to additional systems or features.

FierceVoIP: Do you have any plans to expand out of the SMB market and compete for larger accounts like Dell more often?

Lyman: We are really not comfortable working with a customer with over 500 seats at one location, and I offer this rationale. There is a deli near our office, and you go in to order, they hand you the menu; it's got like 16 pages. You can be pretty sure, that while nothing is going to be outright terrible, nothing is going to be that good either. I don't want to be that company. Our business model depends on the pricing we offer SMB's and I don't see a move out of that space anytime soon.

FierceVoIP: Well it's obviously working well for you; Fonality has demonstrated 15 consecutive quarters of growth.

Lyman: It's actually 16 now. We just got the second quarter numbers, and surprisingly enough, it was the largest percentage growth we've ever experienced at Fonality, revenues increased 31 percent.

FierceVoIP: That's impressive for a business that has already grown considerably. Do you foresee any slowdown in the growth given the present condition of the economy?

Lyman: I don't quite know, to be honest. We continue to grow and I guess I can think of two reasons why we would see continues growth in recession conditions. One, as budgets get tighter, our solution becomes more attractive. It enables people to work from home elegantly, as well as being cheaper to install and operate than traditional PBX offerings.

Second, I think more and more businesses are recognizing that the whole communications industry will be IP soon, and they are examining IP-centric offerings to cut costs and increase mobility.

FierceVoIP: Where do you see the industry, both your niche and the broader VoIP space, in the next three to five years?

Lyman: Well I think IP is the only way to go in the future. I just think "VoIP" as a term, can be misused and misunderstood, because it's really a question of "Which communications will not be IP in three to five years?" Kind of like if you asked me when the first digital camera was released, where I thought that industry was going. I think there really isn't any other way to go. Most of the big telcos even, its IP for most of a long-distance call, and it might travel the last mile on copper. And that's even getting replaced soon enough. The biggest question to me is when all the communications someone wants begin to converge; for instance, on my Blackberry, I'm texting, browsing, SMSing, all in addition to regular phone calls. I think that's where the industry is moving, total communications convergence and ease of use and access, and the mobility that IP can bring.

Fonality and snom partner

Pete Wylie — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:16:21 -0400

Fonality continued to add partners to its "ecosystem" this week, as German firm snom technologies announced it would be a third-party partner for deployments of Fonality IP-PBX systems. snom makes advanced VoIP phones, such as the 3xx series and m3 IP Dect, for the SMB market, which Fonality already targets extensively.

snom leadership praised the partnership, saying it would allow them to offer a high-quality, open-source solution to their existing customer base and future clients.

Fonality's FACE program (Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem) allows resellers and third-party vendors to assure customer confidence and decrease issues like hardware malfunction and non-compliance. These companies also offer increased integration with Fonality's products, including trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and PBXtra.

For more:
- see the press release here

BroadSoft, Fonality get Certified

Doug Mohney — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:10:15 -0400

BroadSoft and Fonality have performed a cross-certification ritual, assuring that their respective products play well together.

Specifically, BroadSoft has certified Fonality's trixbox Pro and PBXtra work with the BroadWorks VoIP applications platform. In addition, BroadSoft has joined the Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem (FACE). Certifying that the two products work together will allow the two companies to offer service providers a complete line of hosted and premise-based unified communications offerings for customers of all sizes; it should be noted Fonality focuses on the SMB space, however.

This dance gives Fonality Yet Another Way to sell its products above and beyond its traditional VAR/channel partners (about 7,000 at last count), its own website, and the bundles sold through/on Dell's website. About the only place Fonality isn't selling right now is down at Costco, and this reporter wouldn't put it past Chris Lyman and company to cut a deal with a Big Box retailer by the end of the year along with a FACEcon in '09.

BroadSoft is also wrapping up a busy week, having been selected by Belgacom to provide IMS-related services and teaming with Samsung Networks to provide hosted services for large enterprises in Korea.

For more:
- BroadSoft, Fonality compatibility announcement

Related articles:
Fonality Logs 15 Quarters of Growth
Fonality, Allworx top SMB IP PBX appliance reviews

Fonality Logs 15 Quarters of Growth

Doug Mohney — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:38:25 -0400

Fonality has announced that the first quarter of 2008 marks its 15th-consecutive quarter of "high growth" and the company has doubled in size each year since its founding in 2004.

Fonality's trixbox CE open source project has achieved three million downloads, prompting the company to claim it leads the open source telephony market. Adding to the statistics being trumpeted, over 5,000 commercial customers use Fonality products, more than 7,000 VARs have signed on with the company's reseller program and there's also a strategic relationship (read distribution of Fonality software on hardware) with Dell.

The company has focused on affordable, easy-to-install business phone systems for small- to medium-size companies, a market niche that has attracted attention from a number of entities ranging from startups to Microsoft. It also has chosen to emphasize its hybrid-hosted architecture, call center applications, and adding unified communications features including mobility features.

Fonality now has 130 employees with offices in five countries and five global data centers.

For more:
- Fonality crows about 15 quarters of open source growth

Related articles:
Fonality rides decentralization
Fonality, Allworx top SMB IP PBX appliance reviews

Buy your IP PBX at Costco

Doug Mohney — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:07:53 -0400

Small businesses can now go to Costco.com for an IP PBX. The membership warehouse wholesaler better known for its discount prices and free food samples will be selling Quanta Computer's Syspine Digital Operator Phone System loaded with Microsoft's Response Point phone system software..

Selling a small business phone system through Costco might seem to be a bit of a risk, but Microsoft seems confident enough in its product's easy setup and voice recognition system to give it a try. The Syspine includes a base unit appliance with a four line analog phone adopter, four desktop phones and Response Point software. Businesses can ad up to 50 Syspine IP310 business phones to create a complete small business phone solution without additional license fees. If a small business does need help, Microsoft is more than happy to point out their searchable-by-zip-code list of Response Point specialists is available on line.

Microsoft isn't the only company to jump into mass market channels. Earlier this year, Fonality partnered with Dell to make Fonality's Small Office software available in an IP PBX bundle on Dell hardware.

For more:
- Microsoft's Costco.com IP PBX announcement

Related articles:
Fonality rides decentralization
Microsoft announces VoIP partners for Response Point
Fonality, Allworx top SMB IP PBX appliance reviews

Fonality, Allworx top SMB IP PBX appliance reviews

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:59:58 -0400

InfoWorld put SMB IP PBX appliances from Allworx, Critical Links, Fonality, Microsoft, and Sutus through the hoops in the lab, finding that all of them combine sophisticated features and low cost, differing in breadth and complexity. Fonality's PBXtra 4.0 got an 8.8 out of 10 points, but Allworx 24x v6.8 wasn't far behind with 8.6 points; there's less than half a point between four of the five systems tested.

Key points to glean from the tests are that you can get an IP PBX appliance and five phones for less than $3,000 and you can set up everything in less than an hour. Also, there aren't any real "dogs" in the bunch, so if you didn't buy Fonality, you don't have to re-justify everything to the boss tomorrow morning. Fonality is just an IP PBX solution while Allworx, Critical Links and Sutus bundle in additional functionality like firewall/VPN, router, WiFi, a web server, and file server.

Business should, of course, select the solution most appropriate for their needs, not grabbing who scored the highest in the lab--one size does not fit all. To nitpick, it would have been interesting to see Digium's SwitchVox in the line up.

For more:
- InfoWorld's Review of SMB IP Phone Systems
- Read TMC's Fonality's PBXtra Beats Out Microsoft, Other VoIP Products report

Related articles:
Fonality Launches Boomerang Mobile Integration in PBXtra 4.0
Microsoft announces VoIP partners for Response Point

ALSO NOTED: Fonality's PBXtra beats out Microsoft; Toddler's death reminder of VoIP 911 issues; and much more...

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:59:52 -0400

> Fonality's PBXtra Beats Out Microsoft, Other VoIP Products Report

> Toddler's death a tragic reminder of VoIP limitations Report

> Net 4 acquires license in Singapore for VoIP services Report

> Matrix to Use Surf Chip For VoIP Gateway, IP PBX Article

> Track Developments In the Taiwanese Enterprise VoIP Equipment Industry Report

Fonality FACEes certification

Thu, 01 May 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Fonality has announced its very own ecosystem program, the Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem (FACE). (Why do I hear Billy Idol singing "Eyes without a Face" now? There's also some John Woo "FACEoff" action here, I'm sure of it).

FACE will certify third-party products for trixbox CE, trixbox Pro and PBXtra; certification validates interoperability with Fonality products and identifies the best components for use. First FACE partners include IP phone manufacturers Aastra and Polycom (no surprise), service provider Bandwidth.com, and hardware partner Sangoma (also not a surprise).

CEO Chris Lyman says the program is necessary to clear up the confusion in the open market, between "questionable" hardware and non-compliant providers. FACE should remove any worries about compliance, making everyone from customers to resellers to Fonality's tech support crew happier.

Fonality's arch-rival Digium relaunched their ecosystem program in October 2007, including offerings for software solutions, training and service provider partners, as well as straightforward compatibility. Are "FACEcon" and "Fonality world" on deck for later announcements this year?

For more:
- FACE Fonality release

Related article:
Fonality rides decentralization

'Look, Mom--no hands' IP phone autoconfig with new trixbox Pro

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Fonality has rolled out trixbox Pro 2.0, its open source IP PBX software specifically built for resellers. "A lot of the work we do is not very sexy, but it's under the hood work to save resellers time," said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. "Resellers make a living on margin, how few hours they spend on site for a fixed price contract."

The new trick for trixbox 2.0 is automated phone provisioning. "It's our 'Look, Mom, no hands' feature," Lyman said. "Everyone has been BSing about hands-free provisioning, so I'm calling them to the mat. You can take 100 brand new [IP] phones out of the box, stick them on people's desks, plug them in, and walk away."

Without auto-provisioning, it might take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes per desk. Multiply that by 100 phones and there's 25-50 hours of work. "Unless you're making McDonald's rates, you aren't making money, especially if you're changing a fixed rate for the installation … if we can keep chipping away at the time [resellers] spend on site, we have something they can make a living at on here."

Fonality tested a number of other products claiming to have auto-configuration capabilities and ended up writing two separate protocol detection engines to support Aastra and Polycom phones. Each engine uses three different algorithms to identify a new phone plugged into the system. Once a new phone is detected and identified, the appropriate firmware and boot code is downloaded on to the phone along with next available extension number, followed by a reboot of the phone so it comes up with the proper extension number. "Most of the time is spent waiting for the phone to reboot," stated Lyman.

For more:
- TMC comments on new trixbox release

Related articles:
Bosses use Boomerang to find staff
Fonality rides decentralization

“Look Mom – No Hands” IP phone autoconfig with trixbox Pro 2.0

Doug Mohney — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:16:27 -0400

Fonality has rolled out trixbox Pro 2.0, its open source IP PBX software specifically built for resellers. “A lot of the work we do is not very sexy, but it’s under the hood work to save resellers time,” said Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. “Resellers make a living on margin, how few hours they spend on site for a fixed price contract.”

The new trick for trixbox 2.0 is automated phone provisioning. “It’s our ‘Look Mom, No Hands’ feature,” Lyman said. “Everyone has been BSing about hands-free provisioning, so I’m calling them to the mat. You can take 100 brand new [IP] phones out of the box, stick them on people’s desks, plug them in, and walk away.”

Without auto-provisioning, it might take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes per desk. Multiple that by 100 phones and there’s 20 hours of work. “Unless you’re making McDonald’s rates, you aren’t making money, especially if you’re changing a fixed rate for the installation… if we can keep chipping away at the time [resellers] spend on site, we have something they can make a living at on here.”

Fonality tested a number of other products claiming to have auto-configuration capabilities and ended up writing two separate protocol detection engines to support Aastra and Polycom phones. Each engine uses three different algorithms to identify a new phone plugged into the system. Once a new phone is detected and identified, the appropriate firmware and bootcode is downloaded on to the phone along with next available extension number, followed by a reboot of the phone so it comes up with the proper extension number. “Most of the time is spent waiting for the phone to reboot,” stated Lyman.

Related articles:
Bosses use Boomerang to find staff
Fonality rides decentralization

Asterisk--Threatening or Boring?

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Digium CTO and founder Mark Spencer has people talking about Asterisk again. But you wonder if everyone heard the same speech.

Giving a keynote at the IT 360 conference in Toronto last week, Spencer said he wants people to see the open source software as a telephony engineering platform rather than just a vanilla VoIP IP PBX. He plugged SwitchVox, acquired by Digium last year, as an example of how people have taken the core Asterisk software and built innovative applications around it. Other apps cited include a phone-based interface to access eBay auctions to the "Popularity Dialer," a mechanism for placing pre-scheduled callers to users--just the sort of thing to get out of a bad date.

Chris von Neida of Axcess News declared that Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel "better watch out" and says the software is poised to disrupt a $7 billion dollar telecommunications market the way Linux put a beatdown on Sun and Microsoft. This despite the fact Spencer noted they only have 130 employees and it's hard to get carriers to respect you when you're that small.

On the other side of the spectrum, Sean Michael Kerner was bored; he's still waiting for an Asterisk appliance he saw at NXTcomm last year. He more rationally notes both Asterisk (the software) and Digium (the company) have a lot to do before they actually reach full potential.

None of these folks caught some of the more real world politics about who feels threatened by Digium. A number of companies in the Asterisk ecosystem got bent out of shape when Digium bought SwitchVox, seeing acquisition of the SMB turnkey solution as a threat to their own livelihoods.

And Digium is not really worried about the Avaya and Cisco and Nortels of the world as much as they worry about Microsoft and are irritated by the hybrid-hosted model of Fonality. Spencer has compared Microsoft to the Death Star and tends to use adjectives such as "evil" when it comes to hybrid-hosting.

For More:
- DevX News Asterisk more than IP PBX feature.
- Von Nieda's Asterisk Love piece
- Kerner's Asterisk is Boring blog posting

IBM ups the ante in UC battle for big business

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

IBM has upped the ante in the battle for UC dominance this week committing $1 billion to UC research, development and acquisitions over the next three years. Stung by Microsoft's aggressive move into its big enterprise space, IBM is fighting back with a series of upgrades to its Lotus Sametime communication and collaboration platform. IBM's $1 billion commitment was made at a briefing this week led by Steve Mills, the senior vice president of IBM's software group.

The funding commitment follows an IDC prediction that the UC market will be worth $17 billion by 2011 and as both arch rival Microsoft and now Siemens have announced new UC server platforms. Siemens Communications enters the UC fray hoping to leverage its voice and carrier experience. Siemens is a working example of the evolution from carrier to enterprise that is now characterizing much of the vendor plays. Its all software, fully integrated and ready-to-use-now OpenScape platform has changed the race for mid-sized to big enterprises that has been traditionally an IBM v. Microsoft contest.

But IBM says it Sametime platform is part of a 10-year heritage of providing messaging, voice and, more recently, video to large enterprises. With 20 million clients installed, IBM does not intend to simply let others take away its hard-earned Rolodex of clients.

Maybe. Reports of IBM's demo this week of its new unified telephony features highlighted the ability to route calls to various devices and setting rules on how to handle calls based on status. Call forwarding has been around for at least 20 years so lets hope there is a better feature to sell when it finally hits the market in December. In a space on fire with new products, features and alliances, December seems a very long time to wait.

Meanwhile, there are a whole swag of smaller vendors really pushing hard into the enterprise space. IVT's Evolution PBX, Fonality's PBXtra and even Google's Grand Central Beta are offering sophisticated find me, cellphone integration, presence and call management features. Fonality has teamed with Dell and hopes to exploit Dell's 30 percent share of the U.S. desktop enterprise market.

But the real battle is at the big end of town and IBM has already integrated Sametime functionality into Lotus Notes to bring UC and collaboration together to compete against Microsoft's OCS/Office and Exchange platform. IBM last week got a PR bonus after Frost and Sullivan awarded the Sametime platform 2008 North American Enterprise product of the year.

For more:
- IBM pledges $1 billion for UC Article
- IBM Lotus Sametime wins two awards Release

Related articles:
Siemens announces new UC platform Article
Comcast takes aim at business Article

Qwest upgrades Enterprise VoIP service

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:59:56 -0400

Carriers are not standing still as the Comcasts of the world push into their enterprise space, with Qwest the latest telco to upgrade its enterprise VoIP offering. The upgrade to its OneFlex product includes significant improvements to bandwidth management to enable more data and voice calls into existing bandwidth. Qwest is also introducing sub-office portals to enable businesses to delegate the management of the phone system among work groups, rather than having a central person having to manage the whole service. Coupled with the sub-portal is an escape to operator service which allows callers to dial "0" for assistance.

The enhancements however still look rudimentary against the feature sets now being rolled out by specialist operators such as Fonality and the big vendor offerings. Siemens Communications last week released its fully integrated unified communications server platform in the biggest UC announcement of the year. It has certainly set a high bar for all other players. The software-based platform known as OpenScape integrates voice, video and data and is being offered as both an installed and hosted service.

For more:
- Qwest makes VoIP upgrade Release
- Siemens challenge Microsoft OCS Podcast

Related articles:
Siemens releases new UC platform Article
Cisco vs. Microsoft in unified comms Article
Fonality launches Boomerang follow-me service Article

Bosses use Boomerang to find staff

Tom Burton — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:59:54 -0500

Bosses will be able to easily find and communicate with mobile employees using a new presence technology Fonality released this week. Dubbed "Boomerang" the new system observes a person's keyboard and mouse activity and can route calls to their mobile phone or other number when they are inactive on their computer. Users set up rules how they wish to be communicated to and the system will follow them based on their movements.

Using Fonality's HUD product bosses can see at a glance the status of staff and their availability. This is particularly useful for distributed work forces such as sales groups, travel representatives or calling centers where reps are engaged from there homes.

The feature is part of a general upgrade of Fonality's PBXtra platform. Also included is a new Firefox plug-in to enable one-click dialing for business calls. The plug-in turns a phone number on any site into a link that, when clicked, will automatically take an Aastra and Polycom phone off the hook and dial the number hands-free.

Fonality recently teamed with Dell to be their supplier of VoIP to SMB's

For more:
- Fonality launches PBXtra upgrade Release

Related articles:
Fonality takes alternative route Article
Are users ready for Dell Hell Article

Cisco leaps to No. 2 enterprise VoIP vendor

Tom Burton — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:59:57 -0500

Cisco has capped an aggressive 2007 growth path, leaping from fifth to become the second largest supplier of enterprise telephony technology. According to Infonetics latest report, Cisco has climbed over Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and Siemens to grab the second-largest market share behind leader Avaya. The top five PBX/KTS system vendors accounted for three quarters of total market revenue. However only Cisco enjoyed significant market-share growth, with other vendors flat or losing share.

The enterprise telephony market rose to $9.6 billion for 2007, up 6 percent over 2006, despite a sharp fall in traditional TDM infrastructure, down 20 percent to $1 billion. Hybrid IP PBX systems accounted for two thirds of all lines shipped in 2007 while pure IP systems accounted for 18 percent.

Perhaps most significant of the numbers was the 55 percent increase in softphone deployment to 385,000, as companies finally start to exploit the features and UC savings from fully IP-software driven telephony. This heralds the next generation of IP usage with initial VoIP deployment focused on telephony savings.

For more:
- Infonetics release

Related articles:
Fonality and Dell take on Enterprise market Article
Cisco king of vendors Article