3CX frees office phone systems from proprietary hardware and protocols and transforms them to a manageable server application
London, UK – 9 May 2007 – 3CX today released its commercial edition of 3CX Phone System, a new Windows-based IP PBX that completely replaces a proprietary PABX. Based on the open SIP standard, it interoperates with a wide range of popular soft phones and hardware phones. Since it supports SIP, it is possible to interface with all SIP-based providers and gateways and connect to standard PSTN lines and/or hosted VOIP lines.
“The release of 3CX Phone System is significant because we have freed the IP PBX from dedicated hardware and proprietary protocols. Now an office phone system can run as a server application on Windows and can be more scalable and more manageable,” said Nick Galea, 3CX CEO.
“The move to IP-based phone systems has been in progress for some time. But often it still involves proprietary hardware – a black box. Solutions from AVAYA, Cisco and even Microsoft’s Promised Response Point are all linked to a proprietary piece of hardware. In the case of AVAYA and CISCO it even involves a proprietary protocol and proprietary phones. 3CX Phone System delivers a truly open system that runs on any machine using Windows and interoperates with all popular SIP phones, gateways and providers. Furthermore, it doesn’t tie you to Linux,” continued Nick Galea.
View Nick’s introduction to the product on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7kYNvM0WzU
Key features of 3CX Phone System:
- Complete phone system – provides call switching, routing & queuing
- Eliminates phone wiring & patching of extensions to a particular network point
- Makes teleworking easy because employees can answer extension from home
- Purchase cost dramatically lower than a traditional hardware PBX
- Scalable – Unlimited extensions and phone lines. No proprietary expansion modules needed!
- Web-based configuration & status indication – Easy phone system management!
- Unified messaging – Receive voice mail via e-mail
- Auto attendant (e.g. 1 for sales, 2 for support etc.)
- Reduces long distance and inter office call costs using VOIP providers.
Three available editions: Small Business, Pro and Free
3CX phone System for Windows is available in 3 editions: The Small Business Edition supports up to 25 extensions, whilst the Pro edition supports an unlimited number of extensions. Pricing is competitive: Small Business costs $350 and Pro runs at $895.
3CX Phone System Free edition
A free edition, supporting an unlimited number of extensions, is also available. The main difference with Pro and Small Business phone system is that it’s not possible to buy a support package for the free edition, nor does it include the advanced features of 3CX Call Assistant. Not withstanding, the Free Edition does more than most commercial PBXs do; including an auto attendant, voice mail and even user-to-user support via the 3CX moderated product forums at http://www.3cx.com/forums/. The free edition can be downloaded from http://www.3cx.com/ip-pbx/index.html.