Sangoma Enhancing FreePBX on Multiple Fronts, Including UC and Fax

By Peter Bernstein
Senior Editor

There is ample traction in the market for FreePBX, the web-based open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages the open source communications Asterisk (News - Alert) (PBX) server.  Now supported by Sangoma Technologies, there is a lot going on with FreePBX. To get an inside look Sangoma’s newest venture, TMC (News - Alert) CEO Richi Tehrani sat down with Tony Lewis, General Manager at Sangoma at last month’s ITEXPO.

As Lewis relates, from its beginnings as a board company, Sangoma (News - Alert) Technologies now has a full line of next generation communications solutions. Those solutions include a full line of Session Boarder Controllers (SBCs), SS7 and other gateways, and now FreePBX and fax-over-IP capabilities.

Lewis notes that the FreePBX stewardship is strategically important for obvious reasons, elaborating that “A lot of our products are carry-throughs. They compliment FreePBX with things like our cards that can be used to connect to PSTN, gateways and SBCs.” 

He added that due to the intense interest in unified communications (UC), FreePBX has lots of UC features.  And there is a lot in the pipeline.  Lewis explained, “We have announced and are pre-selling Zulu. It is an Outlook and web browser plug-in that will do call pop ups, click-to-call, and let you set presence based on appointments in Outlook, and send SMS and faxes through Outlook.” He said that even before its general availability the feedback has been “great.”    

Lewis also touted the availability of FreePBX 13 which includes a major rewrite. And, for those in the FreePBX community, he gave an advanced view of FireFax which will be tightly integrated with FreePBX so that customers can use their analog machines to send facsimiles over IP networks to any fax machine with total visibility of faxing activity as well.

In short, as Lewis explained, these are very exciting times for Sangoma and for FreePBX. Check out the details, and the full Tehrani/Lewis interview, below: