Fonality’s tixbox CE, which is essentially an extension of Asterisk, clocked 2.8 million downloads in 2008 compared to the ‘parent’ open source platform Asterisk which had some 1.5 million downloads during the same period. trixbox CE (Community Edition) is more of a complete application. It provides administrators the tools necessary to deploy a fully-functioning phone system.
A good analogy would be Asterisk being an engine and trixbox CE a complete car. There are several extended Asterisk systems available in the market where developers are offering an alternative to licensed IP PBX software. Over 18% of all the IP PBX extensions configured worldwide now run open source IP PBX.
On a cumulative basis, trixbox CE has been downloaded about 6 million times.
While Digium (Asterisk’s owner) is in the business of selling hardware on the back of their Asterisk ‘channel’, most of Fonality's revenues are generated by PBXtra (a turnkey system for SMBs) and trixbox Pro (software used by Fonality’s indirect reseller and OEM channel to build complete solutions). Trixbox Pro is promoted by large distributors such as Dell Computers.
According to industry estimates Asterisk accounts for nearly 85% of all open-source PBX implementations. Out of these, Fonality reckons that trixbox CE makes up around 60% to 75% of all Asterisk-based, open-source deployments.
Some of the well known vendors that develop for and/or integrate with Fonality trixbox CE platform include Zoiper, QueueMetrics, Sangoma, Rhino, Aastra, Polycom, CounterPath, Broadsoft, Broadcom, and Pika.
