GOC

Third Lane Technologies today announced new capabilities for the Thirdlane PBX software appliance and Thirdlane PBX Manager GUI. The newest version of the company’s open management platform for Asterisk (News - Alert), Thirdlane PBX 6.0 “adds features for hosted IP-PBX providers, VARs and end users,” company officials say.

 

Thirdlane PBX (News - Alert) 6.0 also has CRM Integration with pre-configured connections to popular CRM products and search engines, plus the ability to custom-configure screen pops with any Web-based CRM.

Thirdlane PBX “enhances Asterisk management without limiting its capabilities,” says Third Lane’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer Alex Epshteyn, adding that a GUI and new features such as multi-site management, CRM integration and enhanced device auto-provisioning make Thirdlane PBX a “mature, feature-rich and flexible system.”

Thirdlane – I know, the product and company’s names are stylistic variations of one another – offers management of the open source Asterisk PBX while giving system integrators access to the Asterisk feature set for building telephony apps. VoIP service providers also get PBX Manager’s multi-tenant capabilities for managing multiple virtual hosted Asterisk PBXs for small businesses.

“With the multi-tenant edition, customers can start with a hosted system,” said James Sturtevant, chief executive officer of Sigma Networks, a Sunnyvale, California supplier of hosted and on-premises IP-PBX and networking systems.

 

“When they grow, all they have to do is install an on-premises PBX, they can use the same phones,” he added.

In February, Pika Technologies, a vendor of media-processing hardware and software, announced that it had expanded its product range to support fax applications built on the open-source platform Asterisk.

 

Pika Fax software is now extended to Asterisk, allowing developers on the platform to build fax capabilities into their applications.

 

Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at Pika, called the addition of fax support “the logical evolution of our product suite.”

 

Until now, faxes could be sent and received in Asterisk-based applications only by using Span DSP, a software fax plug-in. Unlike Span DSP, Pika Fax works independently from zaptel. Its driver works at the kernel level, providing control of real-time applications. Pika Fax will work with any vendor’s board that supports Asterisk and has been tested specifically with Digium (News - Alert), Sangoma and Pika hardware.

 

Earlier this year Ottawa-based Pika Technologies announced that Pika Warp, the Appliance for Asterisk, has been named a winner of a “Best of Show” Award at TMC’s Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Conference and EXPO East 2008.