Digium Switchvox Recognized as the Best Unified Communications Solution for 2011

International research organization Frost & Salivan called Switchvox the best solution for 2011 unified communications.

Researchers at Frost & Salivan compared alternative unified communications solutions and found that Switchvox is a clear leader in terms of cost / value for the consumer.
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They emphasize that the opportunities available without any restrictions in Switvhox give small businesses that are particularly cost-sensitive the opportunity to build and adapt innovative business processes through communications, making them extremely competitive.

As the technological development of our world progresses, more and more people interact with business partners (colleagues, customers) not with the help of their work phone, but with the help of other means, such as softphones (softphones), mobile phones, or instant messaging tools.

With Switchvox, all these tools are combined into a single convergent space, easily and simply controlled by the user.

Additionally, Digium conducted time-consuming research and found that the average employee spends about one and a half hours interacting with his unified communications system.

Digium designed Switchvox so that functions such as call transfer, fax and voice mail are simplified to the limit.

Small businesses often do not believe that they can afford to use such technologies.

Very often it is. Very often, such technologies are very difficult to use and do not justify themselves at the initial stage.

With the advent of Switchvox, it's all wrong.


Switchvox is built on Asterisk, a platform that gives small businesses a lot more than just talk — which is a better way to communicate.

Everything written above is a translation of the official press release.

And everything written below is a translation of the opinion of the famous blogger from the world of telecom Dave Michaels.

Frost & Salivan recently recognized Switchvox as the best UC solution of 2011 for exceptional customer value.

But what happens with these research organizations, you never know which places, prizes and awards are simply bought, and which are honestly earned.

Therefore, I decided to deal with this.

In recent years, I have been closely watching how Switchvox is developing.

It began as a startup (Fourloop), which offered only software.

They took the source code of Asterisk, and turned it into a supported boxed ready-made solution that can be understood even by an idiot.

Their decision was so cool that Digium bought Fourloops in 2007.

It was a takeover that fits perfectly in the “brilliant” category.

This transaction legalized Asterisk and Switchvox as multifunctional and supported solutions, it separated Switchvox from the rest of the Asterisk world, and it opened up completely new perspectives for Digium.

At the time Digio bought Switchvox, renowned Dan York blogger (http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/) wrote on his blog:

As for me, I absolutely understand that Digium just bought a whole team of professionals who made the world of unified communications through an excellent understanding of the world of unified communications, integration of business processes, WEB 2.0 mashups, and so on.

Digium had nothing to do with presence.

Now it is.

Asterisk is a platform with great integration capabilities with other applications, the realization of these capabilities has always been a headache.

Hire a couple of programmers, and you can do quite a lot with Asterisk ...

But this is not what most companies are ready to do!

Now, Switchvox gives businesses an easy way to integrate with databases and WEB sites.

Integration with Salesforce.com and SugarCRM is done in one click.

The Google Maps window that pops up during the call, indicating the place where the client is calling from, is a really cool mashup!

It is interesting, which of the "big" telecom systems vendors have this opportunity at least in the plans?

And what about the click to dial extensions to Firefox, allowing in one click to dial everything that at least somehow looks like a phone number?

Add the Outlook integration plugin here and you will get very serious solutions at a very tasty price.


After several years, Switchvox is still an exciting unified communications solution, now supplied as part of a complete hardware and software complex.

Its value for the business is beyond doubt, and technical support has only gotten better over time (especially considering the possibility of remote connection, if necessary).

My friends at Frost & Salivan told me about four main areas in which leadership provided an award.

• Sales growth . Sales growth reflects customer valuation. Switchvox sales grew by 27% in 2011. Swtichvox is the fastest growing part of Digium and currently provides 30% of all company revenues.
• A set of possibilities . The standard Switchvox license (and no others) includes the desktop client (Switchboard), rich telephony, unified communications, newsgroups, fax server, messaging and presence (IM / presense), video calls, mobility features, queues, call recording , monitoring, reporting and graphics. As well as a module that solves the complexity of managing SIP phones (SIP phone provisioning), with which the management of IP phones turns into a trivial task.
• Price . A very simple and understandable pricing model makes it easy to make commercial offers for customers, and it is easy to understand them, which is hard to say about alternative solutions. What is very important, access to the API is not worth the extra money.
• Value for the consumer. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is what surprised Frost & Salivan most. Switchvox licenses cover software support and upgrades that are very simple and convenient. All administrator functions are available through the WEB interface. Individual users are also provided with an interface for managing their voice mail, rules for cascading calls, reporting, notebooks.

Frost & Salivan did mention the Switchvox API, but I think it deserves much more attention, moreover, is the main distinguishing feature of Switchvox.

There are two types of APIs - user-oriented and user-oriented - Switchvox has both.

User APIs allow you to build mashups.

Switchvox is the first in this area and provides tools for interacting with the user's screen.

Instead of simply providing the caller's number, Switchvox can display it on a Google map.

Boxed (delivered in delivery) mashups include: Google maps, SugarCRM, SalesForce, as well as a ready-made mechanism for creating their own mashups (Custom panel).

But still, for business, what Switchvox calls Extend, which is an API for administrative functions, is more valuable.

For example, the HR system can automatically create an extension for a new employee and a voice mail box through the Extend API.

The system of organizing meetings and reminders can automatically ring up participants and ask for confirmation.

Digium expands and adds Extend API with every new release of Switchvox. Switchvox will sooner or later become a powerful CEBP system, used in situations where it is not even used as a PBX.

My respect to Switchvox.

Sources of translation:

• www.switchfast.com/news/digium-switchvox-awarded-best-customer-value-for-unified-communications.aspx
• www.talkingpointz.com/frost-recognizes-switchvox

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