Who is trixbox?
trixbox®, formerly Asterisk@Home, which started as a home-grown Asterisk® project, has rapidly become one of most active open source projects in the world. In 2006, trixbox attracted the attention of Fonality, a Los Angeles-based IP-PBX company. The synergies between the companies quickly became clear and Fonality acquired trixbox in October 2006. Fonality now offers PBXtra™, a turnkey enterprise-class phone systems for small and medium-sized businesses; trixbox Pro, a hybrid-hosted software-based solution for resellers; and trixbox CE, an open-source flexible solution for the "build it yourself" enthusiast.
The Story of Fonality
Fonality was founded in 2003 as a residential VoIP provider by serial entrepreneur and SMB expert, Chris Lyman. Within months, Lyman and his team of four people needed to purchase a PBX phone system for their new office. After shopping around and receiving a $15,000 bid for a phone system for five employees, Lyman went to his team and said "we're in the wrong business." Fonality immediately shifted gears from residential VoIP to business telephony and built version 1.0 of PBXtra.
Lyman's vision for Fonality was to change the phone market by creating the world's first truly affordable enterprise-class phone system for SMBs. Also wanting to leverage his expertise in making technology easy to use, he designed PBXtra to be "as easy to use as Hotmail." That way, business owners and managers could manage and administer their own phone systems and eliminate the expense of having to call the "phone guy" every time they needed to make a change to their phone systems.
Fonality stormed into the SMB IP-PBX market fueled by leveraging an investment from a small group of angel investors. In 2006, the company received its first round of venture capital from Azure Capital, which Fonality used to expand its management team and continue product development. Fonality has demonstrated significant business success - growing at a monthly rate of ten percent on average, achieving profitability in 2006 and increasing call volumes at a rate of 400 percent per year for the past three years. As a result of these successes, in early 2007, Fonality secured additional funding from Intel Capital. In 2008, Fonality announced a partnership with Dell, Inc. where Dell will sell Fonality VoIP Phone systems to their small and medium business customers.
Company Timeline
| December 2003 | Fonality founded |
| February 2004 | Fonality goes shopping for PBX and realizes it is in the wrong business |
| October 2004 | PBXtra Standard Edition Ships |
| November 2004 | Asterisk@Home 0.2 Released |
| March 2005 | PBXtra Call Center Edition Ships |
| July 2005 | Fonality Customers Place 4 Million Calls |
| September 2005 | Fonality Named to 2005 "Pulver 100" |
| January 2006 | Fonality Secures Financing from Azure Capital |
| March 2006 | Business 2.0 Names Fonality Top 25 Start Up |
| May 2006 | 20 Million Calls and 10,000 Fonality Users |
| June 2006 | PBXtra Wins Internet Telephony Editor's Choice Award |
| June 2006 | Fonality Introduces HUD® |
| June 2006 | Asterisk@Home Renamed as trixbox |
| September 2006 | Network Computing Names PBXtra Best IP-PBX for SMBs |
| October 2006 | Fonality Acquires trixbox |
| November 2006 | Fonality Customers Place 50 Million Calls |
| January 2007 | trixbox 2.0 Released |
| February 2007 | Fonality Secures Financing from Intel Capital |
| March 2007 | Fonality Named to 2007 "Pulver 100" |
| March 2007 | trixbox Appliance and Support Announced |
| April 2007 | Fonality Customers Place 75 Million Calls |
| August 2007 | Fonality introduces trixbox Pro and launches trixbox.com |