Author: James Chapman

A True Off-the-Shelf Phone System? Introducing plug n’ go: An Interview with Mark Trowbridge, CEO of Foncordiax

Posted by | Nov 17, 2009 | , , , |

Last Friday we had the opportunity to speak with Mark Trowbridge, CEO of Foncordiax, an interesting company that seems ready to take the retail world by storm with its new, off the shelf plug n’ go range of appliances that pretty much anyone can sell and any customer can setup and get going without a whole lot of intervention. The product is set to launch this Wednesday.  Listen to the podcast or read the summary below. If you’re running a small business, this is really interesting stuff. [VoIPon] We understand that this product is going to be targeted at some specific vertical markets and this is supposed to be a very easy product to set up and get going. Can you walk us through a simple setup? [Mark Trowbridge, CEO of Foncordiax] Yeah, I guess you’re talking about our new retail product, uh, which we devised really couple of months ago and we’re launching this Wednesday coming, the 18th of November. So we spent quite a few months looking the hardware the branding the point of sale, and in particular the installation and configuration, really to ensure that retail outlets need little or no technical knowledge. The first thing, I’d like to mention is that Foncordiax is a phone system. It’s not a PC converted into a phone system. Actually, we’ve started from the ground up and actually built the hardware centered...

Read More

Another Cool Mobile Video Development from Octasic

Posted by | Nov 17, 2009 | , |

Today, Octasic announced that it is offering solutions for 3G-324M gateways, video conferencing, mobile video, video streaming and IVVR for 3G phones. The company is adding RADVISION’s 3G-324M stacks to its recently enhanced Vocallo Media Gateway (MGW) solution, which is enabling Octasic to deliver a complete gateway solution for the rapidly growing mobile video market. This is all done via packet based API and doesn’t require any DSP processing. “Enhancing our Vocallo MGW with RADVISION’s stacks extends our reach in the mobile video gateway market to include today’s 3G handsets,” saids James Awad, product manager at Octasic in a company news release. “By relying on the industry expert for this protocol, our customers can rest assured that all interoperability testing has been completed, allowing them to focus on the development of video gateway solutions to address today’s expanding 3G market.” Anatoli Levine, Director of Product Management at RADVISION added, “Our 3G-324M stack enables the development of a wide range of 3G products, handsets and servers. With Vocallo, video gateway design engineers now have an all-in-one solution that incorporates our 3G-324M stacks to deliver the best in voice and video quality available today.” It will be interesting to see what new products incorporate this technology and how it rolls out in the new...

Read More

Choosing the Right Office PBX: An Interview with Digium Switchvox’s Tristan Degenhardt

Posted by | Nov 11, 2009 | , , , |

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Tristan Degenhardt, Digium’s Director of Product Marketing for Switchvox to learn more about choosing the right PBX system for an office environment. VoIPon: There seems to be a lot of controversy lately surrounding the best method of implementing a next generation PBX into an office environment.  What are some of the most important things you believe a VoIPon customer who is for example, an office network or telephone administrator, should look for in selecting the best system for their business? Tristan Degenhardt, Digium’s Director of Product Marketing for Switchvox: Flexibility is probably the key thing to look for. Because with this kind of purchase, even if it’s not an expensive one, you should be assured that it can grow with you, and do what you need— no matter where your business takes you. Software-based systems are great for that, because getting new features and capabilities is as easy as a software upgrade, which, in Switchvox’s case, is a one-click process. But having one that supports open standards can really help make your system future-proof. If you’ve got support for open standards, you’re not only compatible with the stuff you have already (phones, network, service providers) but you’re also compatible with the stuff you don’t even know you need yet. If your company grows and needs a piece of software that hasn’t even been invented yet, wouldn’t it be great...

Read More

Fritz!Box Announces New Entry Level Integrated Access Devices: FRITZ!Box Fon 5113 and Fon 7113

Posted by | Nov 10, 2009 | , |

Read about it here first.  AVM has just released two new entry level FRITZ!Box devices. FRITZ!Box Fon 7113 The FRITZ!Box Fon 7113 unlike its 7140 counterpart only offers 2 analogue ports and one LAN connection without the USB connectivity, multiple LAN connections and additional ports that the higher end 7140 model offers. With FRITZ! Box Fon WLAN phone calls over the Internet are designed to be as easy as they should be: connect your existing telephones and pick up the receiver. You can easily use voice over IP and route calls over the internet using  your existing phone number and without your PC. The German engineered FRITZ! Box device also enables PCs to connect to the internet via ADSL over ethernet or wireless LAN. FRITZ!Box Fon 5113 FRITZ!Box Fon 5113 is a a scaled back version without the WLAN capabilities.  Unlike the FRITZ! Box Fon 5124 that offers 1 USB-host and 4 LAN ports plus  2 analog extensions the FRITZ!Box Fon 5113 offers: 2 ports for analog terminal devices like telephones, fax or answering machines Can be connected to ADSL or ADSL + fixed-line network 1 x Ethernet (10/100 Base-T) for connecting and networking computers Read more about this product on the VoIPon...

Read More

New Version of Xorcom’s Rapid Recovery Product Released

Posted by | Nov 10, 2009 | , , |

Xorcom Rapid Recovery, a credit-card-size Disk-on-Key device for recovering your IP-PBX, has recently had its full PBX Backup and Restore Utility improved with this latest round of enhancements. This unique software package, installed on a credit-card-size Disk-on-Key (DOK), enables simple, safe and speedy recovery of Xorcom’s XR1000 , XR2000 and XR3000 IP-PBX solutions. In just a few minutes, the XRR can restore and recover the Xorcom IP-PBX, including its configuration files, voice prompts and even voice mail, if desired. Since it is possible to give each backup a descriptive name, many different IP-PBX system backups may be stored on the same DOK. The XRR compresses typical Asterisk configurations, including the complete trixbox CE™ or Elastix™ Asterisk distributions, to less than 0.5 GB. Consequently, a standard 2 GB DOK will typically store up to 4 different system recoveries. Due to previous problems experienced during restore of RAID backups on smaller disks, the Rapid Recovery utility has been improved. As a result, the “kernel panic” no longer occurs during the restored server boot procedure. In this latest version, when the target disk is bigger than the hard disk from which the backup was made, Rapid Recovery allocates all space on the hard disk. The previous Rapid Recovery versions allocated disk space equal to that of the original disk size, and left the rest of the disk space unused. Unlike in previous...

Read More