Vodia PBX

The rumor was spreading already for some time. Many of you probably have already seen the new web site, http://snomone.com. Now it is official: snom ONE version 5 is out! There are four things that are interesting with this release. The first one is that it now supports fax to email. This was a feature that we all waited for a long time, and it is a significant improvement to many offices. Especially in offices where fax is not so popular any more, it makes it possible to receive fax messages and redirect it into the email folders of the users. For outbound fax, you still need an ATA and a fax machine; but considering the fact that you usually fax documents that require a signature, which requires paper form anyway, this is okay in most cases. The second one is the support for Microsoft Lync. We are not talking about voice or even video here. This is really simply about the update of the call status on Lync. It is actually a very simple, basic feature. However it is very useful when operating Lync and snom ONE at the same time. You can use Lync as a kind of operator console for snom ONE. I have not tested it with Office 365 yet, but I believe it is a killer for small offices to have both systems talk to each other. The third point is the new web interface. The version 4 web interface was what it was and many customers expressed that improvements are possible. The focus on the new web interface was it to get things done faster, easier. The navigation bar is now on the left side, and you have to click less to get to the page that you need. We even have a wizard in the new web interface; however it did not make it into the 5.0.0 build and we have to deliver it later. The last point is the licensing. I know that not everyone like changes, but those changes were simply necessary. I have talked about it already in another post this week and don't want to repeat everything here. The web site is now publically available, and after you take a look at it you might wonder why some people get so upset about it. Every system now must have an activation code, which is a token representing that system. That code can have a lot of attributes attaches, bundles and features. It is now even possible to mix trial with permanent licensing, which is very useful for trying things out. We would be happy if you try it out. As with the version 4, there is a free license available. Maybe you have a virtual machine or a computer somewhere for giving it a test ride. All you need to do is to go to the Wiki (http://wiki.snomone....tle=Release_5.0) and follow the instructions for installing a new PBX. You'll have to register with snomone.com to get the activation code, which you then have to copy & paste into the PBX. For those who are using MacOS we beg you for a few days patience. We are trying to move to Mountain Lion, and there are some bumps on the road. We will also come out with a snom ONE mini build soon. As we did in the past years, we are open for feedback. Complex software is not a constant. We want to make sure that it is moving into the directions that matter most.

In theory (when the build is available for the mini), you can go and just get a new license for V5. However looking at the price tag of the mini you can bet that we'll come out with a special upgrade promotion for the mini to sweeten the deal.

Just register at http://snomone.com, send an email to partner at snomone with the email login in the message with some more information about you so that we can qualify you (e.g. the snom VAR status). Also if you have participated in a snom ONE training please let us know. We did not automate that process on the website yet.

Can you check if the extension has a different time zone set up? It can be different than the domain time zone. That might also help explain the discrepancies with what calls are shown.

Yes. At least it is international. Some people say why is it so cheap! Check out the prices for recording solutions. We did not want to go that far, although we are able to record calls if they are on SRTP. The problem here is that domains are a reason for trouble in support. Most companies don't need it, and if someone really needs multiple domains the price is not a show stopper. Well the support starts with the second domain... We have seen that 3rd party programs are using CSTA (which is a good thing), and they easily cost 50 or more USD per extension. This is more than we charge per extension for the whole system! Having a flag on CSTA makes sure that we can also have a fair share in the CSTA game. A couple of new fixed (see http://wiki.snomone....tle=Release_5.0). We'll address this question in the upcoming days. But 5.0 is not a feature freeze, more features coming up later that we could not include in this release (e.g. wizard, phone-specific PnP pages what make button setup super simple). Because this is a relatively high-volume hardware product it is sold by snom (without the ONE) through the snom distribution channels.

It will be difficult to protect a specific distribution channel like it was common twenty years ago. In the age of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipedia things have become a lot more transparent for end customers. While this can be a major problem for some of the established vendors, we can and should use this fact to our advantage. There will be a open price for everyone. But there will also be rebates for registered partners and also for distributors. The levels depend on the partner status, and they will not be completely static. The overall goal is to give resellers an adequate position in the value chain and stay competitive in a dynamic market.

"Midnight" is defined by the time zone. Are the logging time-stamps like what you expect? What about the time-stamps in the call statistics in the web interface? Maybe your whole time zone has drifted...

Well you will not be able to get any hardware delivered through your internet connection. This is really only about the snom ONE software. As usual, we wanted to release it already but still finding bugs!

Sure. Once all the functionality is there for the AC (and installs on all kinds of Windows OS), we can start stripping it down e.g. into a call center agent edition. The last build for the AC that I saw was quite promising; you can see the status of extensions and also ACD. Not sure how far we are with hte display of the queue details, but that step is not that difficult any more.

Almost three years after the release of version 4.0 we are coming out with version 5. Before rumors are spreading around too much, we would like to keep you updated with what is going on. The new version is more than just a version number change. Over the past months we sat down and discuss about the vision and the mission regarding the VoIP business in general and in regards to the PBX service in particular.It is clear that as of today, customer premises-based PBX systems make up the majority of the installed systems; however the cloud topic must be addressed properly in order not to miss the future. One core point of the vision is the separation of the world into endpoints and servers, which demand different approaches. This is why we decided to spin the PBX topic off into a separate company that focuses entirely on the server topic. We had the domain name vodia.com already sitting there for a couple of years, and now it is time to begin to use it. To make the transition smooth, we'll keep the snomone.com domains as well. We do this while we are coming up with a new version. It is quite common in the software industry to change the version number from time to time. After Windows 2000 comes Windows XP, then Vista, 7 and then finally Windows 8; other companies like Apple or Adobe are not so much different. Of course this does not mean that everybody must immediately switch to the new version. For new installations it makes sense to consider the new version; for existing installations unless there is a need for new features in the new version,customers can just continue running their system. Never change a running system.For those who want to switch, we will make sure that there are generous discounts available. Along with the version change also comes a change in the license model. The snom ONE free, yellow and blue models were taken into the market to help promoting the sales of snom phones. This model did not always work well; we have seen installations where customers did use snom ONE only with cell phones and at the same time we had to say it makes sense. The new license model takes a more classical approach that we already used in pbxnsip times based on the number of extensions and used features, regardless of the phones used and if phones are used at all. Customers and resellers are able to pick the components for their license as they need it. There will be a handful of bundles to start off with; additional features can be added as required. New will be that licenses can be upgraded around the clock without manual interaction,and additional features can be tried out independently from the core feature set. This makes it possible to try out for example the Microsoft Lync integration for a few days on a system that is already running, without loosing the license for operating the rest of the service. For companies that are hosting the snom ONE software, we will continue to offer recurring payment models that align very well with the cash flow of the customers. We also spent some time looking into marketing text books. It is important, but not enough to have a good product; the pricing is an important topic as well. You can overprice a product, but you can also underprice a product. It is not a good strategy to take a look at what competitors are charging and then just discount something. At the end of the day, customers are paying a price for value; the price model has to be able to match the value that customers are receiving and perceiving. Just having essentially two prices in the market (or three if you count the free in) is very inflexible, and unnecessary.It is not reasonable that a company with 150 users is paying the same price like a company with 30: The values that those two companies receive are quite different. But that's not where our marketing studies ended. We also had to realize that software is distributed in a different way than hardware.Customers today expect that they can get software instantaneously over the Internet. This does not only mean that shipping physical USB sticks with the software on it is antique. Customers expect that they can purchase software and services around the clock, independent from time zones and holidays, automated.While it is possible for companies to purchase their software directly from the manufacturer, it is more efficient if someone who knows the companies infrastructure and knows the product does that the job. That's why it is so important to partner with snom ONE. In today's marketing the "community" is an important factor,too. We are proud of the relatively long history that we can present in the IP-PBX space, and this is not the first change that the forum is going through. Search engines are a powerful force in today's promotion strategies. The forum does not miss a beat while we are moving on to version 5. We have a lot of people who invested in snom ONE outside of the company by learning how the product works and contributing to the forum; we know that this is the true value of the product. We have made a new web page, http://snomone.com which is dealing only with the PBX. Now we have a lot more room to explain the numerous features in more detail. If you have some time, take a look at it,even though the page is not 100 % finished yet you'll get the picture. We'll keep on adding content; consider the web page a moving target. We'll make an announcement when version 5 is ready for download.

Well, true the SoHo is not the mini. Factory reset on SoHo will be difficult, you probably have to RMA it or boot from a USB stick to access the file system directly.

Guys you did not even see the license model...

This would be a workaround. You can take anything dangerous from the templates for the user web interface.

We are working on a new feature, it is called "smart blind" and a domain setting. After a blind transfer, the call is actually set into a "listen in" mode, so that the one who transfers the call can hear if the other side is ringing, connected, voice-mail and so on. In order to get the call back, the transferring party may press "*" to get the call back. It all requires that the connected phone does not automatically hang up after it initiated the blind transfer and does not hold the call (that will be the hardest part rolling this feature out).

But you should be able to see the calls in the browser? The PBX uses now AJAX technology to give you a live view on the calls in the ACD.

It has to be actually the primary name of the domain. In the next versions of the PBX I believe the system is less picky on such names.

We don't have much experience with Wildix (although I believe it will be possible to get it working). In the ISDN world Patton, Beronet and Audiocodes are the most popular gateway types.

The web interface also displays the stat. However that requires that you are logging in through a HTTP session. In theory you could use curl to automate this and retrieve information (the web interface uses actually AJAX for this, so there would be no huge parsing overhead). What would be your preferred access method? SOAP?

We'll make an announcement about it soon. Stay tuned.

It is not clear yet. "The end is near", maybe already this week; at least for Windows32 and CentOS64 (other OS will follow then). Lets hope the power stays up!

Hmm. Seems to be tricky. Are IP address conflicts possible? Or are certain ports blocked somewhere down the routing path? MPLS sounds very good in principle; maybe you can double check if the routing from the PBX to the phone works like a no-brainer.

PDF.

Good point. Will be "*" in version 5; version 4 does not have that feature yet!

With Apple announcing the mini and Microsoft coming out with 8, we thought we should be next in line!

There is something on the Wiki: http://www.yealink.com/index.php/Products/detail/id/5. If you want to use TLS, you probably also have to import the certificate that Skype is using: http://forum.snomone.com/index.php?/topic/4738-problem-with-skype-sip-connection/ and http://forum.snomone.com/index.php?/topic/4827-skype-connect-seems-to-be-not-compatible/.