TMC and Fonality Partner on trixbox Certification Training Courses

NORWALK, Conn. & LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), world leaders in communications and technology media, and Fonality, Inc., a leading open source telephony company, announced today that the two companies have teamed up in support of trixbox, the Asterisk®-based platform that has become synonymous with open source telephony and home to the largest Asterisk-based community. Phase one of this partnership includes a collaboration to train and certify telephony resellers and IT professional on trixbox at the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO (ITEXPO) events in Los Angeles and Miami.

“trixbox certification is a natural extension of the high quality education delivered at ITEXPO and it is a service we’re proud to offer. Higher education leads to increased revenues, reduced support costs and increased customer satisfaction. I encourage every company to enroll its employees in this valuable program.”

trixbox has emerged as the open source telephony solution of choice for the reseller channel. Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification courses (FtOCC, pronounced "F-talk") consistently sell out and have proven to be a valuable way for Asterisk resellers to get practical, hands-on experience with the latest software developments, and also share best practices.

TMC will host the three-day FtOCC courses to run concurrently with ITEXPO in Los Angeles on September 10-12, 2007, and in Miami on January 22-25, 2008. The courses will include extensive instruction on trixbox 2.2, the latest version of the Asterisk-based telephony platform. The course will also include a special session covering installation, implementation and maintenance of the new trixbox appliance. Additionally, the three-day workshops will focus on all of the most pressing topics for trixbox users, including, but not limited to: VoIP, PBX development, network assessment, telephony troubleshooting, T1/PRI training and IP handset education. Andrew Gillis, trixbox project founder, and Kerry Garrison, senior product manager for trixbox at Fonality and author of “trixbox Made Easy,” will teach the courses alongside other members of the trixbox engineering team.

“trixbox is a driving force in the telephony market and gives the channel a lucrative way to participate in the rapidly expanding market opportunity for IP-PBX products and VoIP services,” said Michael Genaro, vice president of marketing at TMC. “trixbox certification is a natural extension of the high quality education delivered at ITEXPO and it is a service we’re proud to offer. Higher education leads to increased revenues, reduced support costs and increased customer satisfaction. I encourage every company to enroll its employees in this valuable program.”

“TMC has always been a reservoir of knowledge for data VARs and interconnects and is the place that the channel goes for both practical and forward-looking information about telephony,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “We felt TMC was a natural partner for our trixbox courses, which help people learn how to deploy trixbox and Asterisk to make real money.”

For more information on trixbox or to download trixbox 2.2 for free, go to www.trixbox.org. To register for FtOCC at ITEXPO go to www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-07/w-07-trixbox-training.htm.

WHAT:  Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification (FtOCC) at
       ITEXPO
WHEN:  September 10-12, 2007
WHERE: Los Angeles Convention Center
COST:  $1,999 includes training for three days, breakfast and lunch
       each day, dinner on Monday, FtOCC polo, trixbox shirt and cap,
       plus lots of other giveaways. A discounted early registration
       fee of $1,599 is available to anybody who registers before
       August 3, 2007.
NOTE:  Attendance is limited to 60 people and registration is on a
       first come, first served basis. For registration, visit
     www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-07/w-07-trixbox-training.htm.

About TMC^®

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes four print publications: Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 4,000 sites in the world by alexa.com(a), TMCnet serves two million unique visitors each month, according to Webtrends. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, Communications Developer Conference, and Call Center 2.0 Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. ((a)alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.)

About trixbox

trixbox is the world's largest Asterisk-based community and open source voice over IP telephony platform. The value of trixbox is that, in under an hour, a non-technical user can download and install, not only Asterisk, but Linux, SugarCRM, MySQL, FreePBX and other applications. trixbox tightly integrates these open applications to work together on one physical server, providing companies with a PBX phone system and the surrounding applications they need to support their business. The trixbox community has the largest number of registered users and the most active forums for discussing and resolving open source telephony and Asterisk-specific issues.

About Fonality

Fonality, www.fonality.com, is a leader in open source, Asterisk-based IP telephony systems. PBXtra, Fonality's award winning IP-PBX product line for small and medium-sized businesses, includes a modified version of the popular open source Asterisk code base. Fonality has modified Asterisk to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features, and PBXtra is the world's largest commercial Asterisk-based deployment. PBXtra uses Fonality's patent-pending architecture to deliver all the advanced features of an enterprise-class phone system and call center at 40 to 80 percent less than traditional offerings, and is deployed at more than 2,000 companies around the world. Fonality's trixbox, www.trixbox.org, one of the world's largest and fastest growing communities of users of Asterisk-based software with an average of 65,000 downloads a month, provides a free, easy to install Asterisk-based VoIP phone system.

Fonality, HUD and trixbox are registered trademarks and PBXtra is a trademark of Fonality. Asterisk is a registered trademark of Digium, Inc. Fonality, trixbox and PBXtra are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Digium Inc.