Fonality's PBXtra 3.5 Professional edition appliance is based on CentOS 4.3 and Asterisk 1.2. Fonality sells two other retail versions -- Standard and Call Center -- and offers a free downloadable open source IP PBX version called Trixbox.

PBXtra is offered as a complete turnkey IP PBX appliance. Customers fill out a simple questionnaire online and the device is preconfigured, provisioned and shipped to the customer site. It is designed for any level of technical knowledge or capability. The only requirements are an internal network and an Internet connection.

Fonality shipped the system to us as it would to a customer. We were able to get it up and running within five minutes. We did have to call technical support for one minor setting for outbound dialing that took all of five minutes to find. It's notable that two hours of setup support are included with purchase.

An annual software maintenance and support agreement can be purchased and is based on the number of users. The most current user database and configuration information is saved by the hosted site. If connectivity to the Internet is lost, the system will function normally based on its last known settings until the connection is restored.

The vendor externally monitors the health of the IP PBX at all times, and its technical support staff addresses any problems it detects per the service-contract agreement. This service certainly takes the headaches out of day-to-day management and maintaining VoIP network uptime.

The PBXtra offers all of the features inherent to Asterisk, as well as some extended, proprietary features, such as the Heads Up Display (HUD), an optional $998 client application that extends call-control features to a user's desktop and is available to all users in the system after a one-time purchase. The HUD feature also provides real-time presence awareness, one-click Outlook integration, barge-in capabilities, record, chat, hold and park features.

HUD privileges are controlled through class-of-service settings controlled from the Web-Admin Interface. Adding extensions and setting permissions is simple to do. A fully functional autoattendant editor is included should an administrator want to customize the system. We exercised the HUD remotely and found it added a rich call-centerlike functionality for users.