Monday, June 30, 2008

Iotum's Calliflower Conferencing Service Targets Small Businesses

Traditional conference calls can be among the most boring and user-unfriendly experiences in the business world, as they consist mainly of listening, pressing phone keys and trying to be heard. Add a Web interface, though, and a conference call can perk up considerably; moderators and users can set up and join conferences through their browsers, and they can even communicate with each other in different ways besides voice during the conference itself. A new service from iotum Inc. called Calliflower provides a good example of how Web-based conference calling can increase both the usefulness and the ease of use of group phone calls.

More about it here.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

3CX Develops 10 Key New Features for Its IP PBX in Only 20 Weeks

Call conferencing, Paging and Windows 2008 support among major features added to software-based 3CX Phone System for Windows in record time

London, UK – 24 June 2008 - 3CX (www.3cx.com) has announced the release of version 6.0 of 3CX Phone System for Windows. The most recent version of the award-winning and software-based PBX ships with 10 key new enterprise-level features such as call conferencing, paging and Windows 2008 support. These 10 new features were developed by the international software development company in only 20 weeks.

“We are very excited to launch this new version of 3CX Phone System for Windows. 3CX’ development team has proved that we can turn around new versions and new features in record time. What would take years on traditional PBXs takes only months on a software-based PBX like ours; simply because the structure is much more manageable” said Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX.

“With our new Windows 2008 support, organizations can virtualize the PBX and run a phone system without the need for an appliance or an extra server. This means lower administration costs, no extra hardware and less energy consumption.”

10 Key New Features of 3CX Phone System for Windows v6.0

  1. Call conference service – up to 32 participants.
  2. Windows 2008 server support – run a PBX virtualized.
  3. Paging – page groups of users to broadcast a message.
  4. Intercom – with two-way audio capability.
  5. Support for Vegastream gateways (Patton & Audiocode already supported).
  6. Enhanced SIP interoperability – addition of support for many leading international VoIP providers and SIP phones.
  7. BLF provisioning – automatic provision of BLF lights indicating extension status on phones.
  8. Phonebook Provisioning – listing all extensions and allowing addition of custom entries.
  9. Fax – 3CX’ fax server allows the whole network to send and receive faxes.
  10. Extended HTTP API - ability to switch recording on/off, disable an extension, and disable outbound calls for an extension.

3CX Phone System for Windows allows businesses to completely break free from the restrictions of costly hardware-based, proprietary phone systems. It also includes many other features that make 3CX Phone System easy to install, configure, manage and use; helping businesses increase employees’ mobility and productivity.

Four available editions: Small Business, Pro, Enterprise and Free

3CX Phone System is available in four editions, all supporting an unlimited number of extensions. The Free edition is limited to 8 simultaneous calls, whereas, the commercial editions can be extended beyond that and have a more extensive feature set. The Small Business version supports up to 8, the Pro version up to 16 and the Enterprise edition supports up to 32 simultaneous calls. Call capacity can be expanded with upgrade packs. A detailed edition comparison chart can be found on http://www.3cx.com/phone-system/edition-comparison.html.

3CX Phone System Free edition

A Free edition, supporting an unlimited number of extensions, is also available. It can be downloaded from http://www.3cx.com/phone-system/download-phone-system.html.

About 3CX

3CX is an international developer of telecommunications software, headquartered in Europe with offices in the UK, USA, Germany, Cyprus, Malta and Hong Kong. It is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and is backed by an experienced management and development team. Its product, 3CX Phone System for Windows, developed specifically for the SMB (small & medium business) market, has earned Windows Server 2003 Certification and has received numerous awards, including the TMC Labs 2007 Innovation Award, The Windowsnetworking.com Gold Award, as well as, the IT EXPO Best of Show award 2007, the INTERNET Telephony Magazine Product of the Year Award, and the Communications Solutions 2007 Award, all in recognition to the company’s commitment to innovation and quality. 3CX maintains a global presence with offices in six countries and localized information available in various languages. For more information, visit www.3cx.com.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

3CX IP PBX Passes Tests for Interoperability with Linksys IP Phones

London – 4 June 2008 – 3CX (www.3cx.com), developer of the award-winning 3CX Phone System for Windows has announced that interoperability testing with Linksys IP telephones has been completed successfully. The tested integration offers a cost effective VoIP Telephony solution that is well suited for the small and medium business market.

“3CX Phone System for Windows’ interoperability with Linksys IP telephones portfolio conforms to our strategy of offering a SIP-based IP PBX that works with the world’s leading IP phones,” said Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX. “We are pleased that the collaboration between 3CX and Linksys to perform interoperability in laboratory tests between our products has proved fruitful, as this will benefit many of our mutual customers.”

The 3CX-Linkys VoIP combination provides a highly scalable and efficient solution to help address the increasing IP communications needs of today’s businesses. Using 3CX IP PBX and Linksys IP telephones, businesses can leverage the power of end-to-end VoIP communications to help reduce deployment costs, and to benefit from a rich set of features normally only available to large enterprises.

“We are glad that all the required tests have been completed so that Linksys and 3CX customers can benefit from an excellent value VoIP solution. It is a pleasure to collaborate with such an industry innovator as 3CX,” said Alberto Montilla, Linksys Product Manager.

3CX Phone System for Windows is a software-based IP PBX that is simple to install, configure and manage, and yet includes enterprise-grade features such as integrated fax server, phone provisioning, and unified messaging that can help businesses increase productivity, reduce their telecommunication costs and boost their profit margins.

About 3CX

3CX is an international developer of telecommunications software, headquartered in Europe with offices in Cyprus, USA, UK and Hong Kong. It is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and is backed by an experienced management and development team. Its product, 3CX Phone System for Windows, developed specifically for the SMB market, has earned Windows Server 2003 Certification and has received numerous awards, including the TMC Labs 2007 Innovation Award, The Windowsnetworking.com Gold Award, as well as, the IT EXPO Best of Show award 2007 and the INTERNET Telephony Magazine Product of the Year Award, all in recognition to the company’s commitment to innovation and quality. 3CX maintains a global presence with offices in four countries and localized information available in various languages For more information, visit www.3cx.com.

About Linksys

Founded in 1988, Linksys, a Division of Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the recognized global leader in voice, Wireless and Ethernet networking for consumer, SOHO and small business users. Linksys is dedicated to making networking easy and affordable for its customers, offering innovative, award-winning products that seamlessly integrate with a variety of devices and applications. Linksys provides award-winning product support to its customers. For more information, visit www.linksys.com.