If you’ve been following along for any amount of time you know that I generally find most new VoIP PBX announcements to be rather ho-hum.
That’s because when it comes right down to it a PBX is a PBX. There are few – if any – MAJOR differences amongst today’s most popular brands.
As such most VoIP PBX systems hitting the market today can be labeled as YAOS – Yet Another Open Source PBX. In other words these systems are simply a new wrapper on the same ‘ole thing.
Admittedly I was expecting to see YAOS when I heard that snom had released a VoIP PBX. The snom One as it is called was announced earlier today and was touted as a simple and affordable VoIP PBX for the small medium business.
Sure it comes packed with everything that pretty much every other system on the planet has:
Oh and it’s available in three different versions – Free, Yellow and Blue depending on the number of extensions you need.
All of which is pretty standard fare.
But there was one thing that caught my eye that totally gives snom a unique competitive differentiator that is likely to be very popular with businesses of all sizes.
The snom ONE software works with multiple different operating systems.
No, I’m not talking about multiple different Linux operating systems. I’m talking about the snom ONE working on Linux, Windows and even the MAC OS.
That means if your business is a Windows house, you don’t have to learn Linux or worry about supporting a siloed system. Same goes for those businesses – like marketing/design firms – that are most often “MAC houses.”
This makes the technology so much more accessible and fills a hole in the marketplace for the demand for Windows and MAC based VoIP PBX systems. An opportunity within the marketplace that continues to grow as more and more mainstream businesses make the switch to VoIP.
Now I haven’t had a chance to play with snom ONE yet. So I can’t comment on anything outside of a feature list and it’s availability for multiple operating systems, but if the snom ONE is engineered and designed like the rest of the snom line I’m smelling a winner.
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Garrett:
I just downloaded the free version and set it up on my Mac and it runs without issues. However, while it certainly is a reasonable feature set and the features do work well, it's not really meant to be the self installable home or SOHO IP PBX "...for the rest of us."
This solution requires quite a bit of technical sophistication and experience in setting up a phone system especially if you are trying to either setup SIP trunks or connect to a PSTN gateway.
That being said, it's definitely a viable alternative for VARs to consider for smaller customers trying to keep costs down and/or using old computers as a server.
Thanks for all your work....
marc.
@Marc
Thanks for the comment. I never stated that this was a solution for the unskilled or uninformed. My statements were more along the lines of bringing the technology to platforms that companies are already using.
If you are "All MAC" or "All MS" then having a Linux box on you network isn't always ideal. With snom ONE being available for all three platforms, I think it serves a hole in the marketplace that others are currently addressing.
It is do to this - nothing else - that I think it smells like something that could be a success.
Hello,
I liked your article. What got us to reselling pbxnsip/snom ONE was that it runs natively as a Windows app.
snom ONE is an excellent platform and I do agree it will be a bit of a game changer. Along with multi-platform it brings rock solid stability, quite a few features and security to the smb space. (also very reasonable price and a packaged solution)
As with most professional products it really isn't suited for the casual DIYer-- at least at the moment. The feedback we have heard from snom is that they will continue to work on this area of ease of use. We as a pbxnsip/snom ONE reseller have been promoting they do for some time--to reduce friction to adoption and to increase uptake.
Matt
ps--actually it would be impossible for snom ONE to be YAOS because it isn't open source! ;-)
@ Matt
Thanks for the comment and feedback. In terms of it being YAOS, that was simply my assumption. Glad to hear they're doing something "different."
Just set this up on server 2003, looks good and works..........
setup was easy, GUI is good, has lots of great features.
So far testing has gone great with no problems,
only slight issue is when i dial out through a trunk there is about 5 seconds of "slush" (hissing) but once call connects its perfect, not had a chance to look at this yet.
Can we add G729 codecs to the free version??
If all continues to go well with testing i will start to market this to my clients, i like the fact we can set this up with 10 extensions, then as the clients grow we can upgrade to one of the paid versions.
Also because this is so "light" we can install on existing windows servers, reducing the need for additional hardware which is needed to run Asterisk based systems.
So, "so far so good" great product....................
@steve,
-slush = comfort noise; snom ONE audio quality is perfect
-No g729 for free edition.
-snomONE is incredibly "light"; but remember: most soft-pbx problems= people over using old server or a bad network.
More details faq on snom ONE i wrote up:
http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2010/10/various-thoughts-opinions-and-findings.html
tx
matt
@Matt
Is there a way to change the listening IP, i have bound an additional IP to the test server created an internal A record (snompbx) and would like to configure the firewall on the new IP...............
FYI testing has gone really well with no problems, audio is crystal clear..........
Good to hear you're good experience. that is what we've known.
Login as Sysadmin.
System > Ports.
There you can bind to a specific IP.
Do you know if anyone has tried to install this on a Mac mini computer which at the same time is being used as a network server on a small business network.? Any difference in the Mac OS software being a server or client version? As mentioned the advantage of the product allows one to use familiar hardware that has a history of being reliable.
Regards,
Dave
Hello,
I'm not an overly Mac guru but I do have a macbook. snom ONE installed on it perfectly.
Here is a video my install experience:
http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2010/10/software-based-phone-system-for-mac.html
If there are ports that snom ONE uses I believe it can give issues. Make sure before you install snom ONE that there are no port conflicts and I think it will work okay.
Hi There,
Do you know if this PBX only supports snom handsets?