September 12, 2014
Xorcom's Open IP-PBX and Video Conferencing Solutions Provide Big Features at a Low Price Point
By
Laura Stotler
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Xorcom, which has been in the IP-PBX (News - Alert) business for 10 years, knows the ins and outs of the industry and the importance of partnerships. The company has an interesting business model in that they sell their products exclusively through an international channel of distributors and resellers. Maintaining close relationships with that channel and ensuring they are properly educated and trained about Xorcom’s offerings is critical to the company’s success.
TMC (News - Alert) Group Editorial Director Erik Linask got a chance to catch up with Ruth Bridger, VP of marketing at Xorcom, at the recent ITEXPO 2014 in Las Vegas. Bridger said the company has attended many ITEXPO (News - Alert) events over the years, and uses the event to provide training to their international network of dealers.
Xorcom’s IP-PBX offerings are based on the open-source Asterisk (News - Alert) platform, and the company has made it a point to sell a complete bundle of their offering, including the designs, hardware and distribution.
“Just being able to provide that complete environment for our partners, it gives them an opportunity to bring to their own local markets a fully end-to-end solution based on an open-source platform,” said Bridger.
Xorcom (News - Alert) launched version 4.5 of its Complete PBX offering at the show, which features an integrated firewall and an open endpoint manager. The module handles definition of all endpoints in the system—typically IP phones—and is now completely open source. That means Xorcom’s partners can create their own templates for any phone they want to use with the system, or Xorcom will do it for them and provide interoperability testing.
“It’s going to be a continuously growing and supported system for all the endpoints that come to market,” added Bridger. Xorcom is also venturing into the video and multimedia arena, and the company recently announced an alliance with Surf Communication Solutions, a company that specializes in media processing. The company provides an MCU media processing platform that enables multipoint conferencing over Asterisk. The standalone unit may be easily integrated with an Asterisk PBX like Xorcom’s, and the companies’ combined offering has been dubbed Orion.
“The great thing about this solution is that it is endpoint agnostic,” said Bridger. “Any endpoint, whether it be smartphone, tablet, IP phone, room system, that supports the SIP or H.323 protocol can be incorporated into the system.” That openness makes it a good fit for SMBs since they don’t have to spend lots of money on proprietary endpoints, and also supports the BYOD trend, enabling anywhere and anytime videoconferencing.
Edited by Alisen Downey