Elastix is an appliance software that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based PBXs into a single, easy-to-use interface. It also adds its own set of utilities and allows for the creation of third party modules to make it the best software package available for open source telephony.
The goals of Elastix are reliability, modularity and ease-of-use. These characteristics added to the strong reporting capabilities make it the best choice for implementing an Asterisk-based PBX.
This week we had the visit of Alfio Muñoz , one of our closest collaborators in the Elastix
project.
Alfio's visit had as main purpose the presentation of the book "Elastix a Ritmo de Merengue”. This book has been released under the GNU FDL license and becomes an additional contribution to the existing library of Elastix, joining "Elastix Without Tears" by Ben Sharif and "Unified Communications Elastix by Edgar Landivar.
Pictures from left to right: Elastix a Ritmo de Merengue Cover; Alfio Muñoz and Edgar Landívar; Bruno Macías, Alfio, Alfredo Zambrano, Alex Villacís, Edgar Landívar
We hope that the community continues to support these initiatives and help us find errors in our publications, in addition to proposing the addition of text or topics. All the collaborators in these initiatives will be mentioned in the edition and corrections of the material.
Alfio Muñoz is an Elastix Certified Engineer with vast knowledge of Asterisk and Networking. Alfio is also one of our instructors at the Elastix Certification Program and will be present at the next Elastix training course that would take place in the city of Mendoza Argentina in April.
We want to salute Alfio´s initiative and support in the diffusion of Elastix as the number one unified communications solution in the world.
We have successfully completed two certification and training dates on Mexico and Bogota, with the addition of 9 Elastix Certified Technicians and 10 Elastix Certified Engineers.
Among this group we count with the first female professionals in Elastix
Leticia Diaz and Diana Yarce
This International Women Day we want to congratulate Leticia and Diana and give them the welcome to our Elastix community.
Next Dates
Continuing our training schedule our next date will take place in Mexico City for an Upgrade course to ECE, March 24, 25 and 26 at Neocenter. We also want to announce the opening of four dates:
ECE (Spanish) - Cali, April 12 to 16 - Testing Center: Business Support
ECE (Spanish) - Guayaquil, April 19 to 23 - Testing Center: PaloSanto Solutions
ECT/ECE (Spanish) - Mendoza, April 26 to 30 - Testing Center: Sisdetel
ECE (Spanish) - Lima, May 10 to 14 - Testing Center: Infobox
We are working hard to publish soon a certification date in Portuguese. For this effort we have the help of our partners from Brazil and Portugal, INNOVUS and PCMASTER.
The Elastix Project has the honor to announce that the January 2009
Community Member of the Month is Jorge Gutierrez (jgutierrez ). Jorge
is one of the contributers that helps the most in the Spanish and
English Elastix forums. He works at Palosanto Solutions , the company
that created Elastix, giving support to its clients. For Jorge, just
working at the company is not enough, he also dedicates a lot of his
free time giving support to the Elastix community through the forums.
Thank you, Jorge, for your support, and congratulations for doing a great job.
The INTERNET TELEPHONY CONFERENCE & EXPO 2010, better known as ITEXPO took place on January 20-22, 2010 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, USA.
ITEXPO is an event that brings together IP telephony exhibitors, integrators and providers of complementary services from around the world. It is one of the most important IP telephony Expos in the USA and takes place twice a year in Miami and Los Angeles respectively.
Elastix was represented in ITEXPO this year colocated with Sangoma Technologies, one of our leading technology partners.
At ITEXPO, Elastix had the opportunity to showcase the new features included in Elastix 2.0. This event was also used as a platform for the launch of the new ELX Series Appliance "ELX-5000", designed to reach 250 concurrent calls and to work in high availability environments.
At the same time, Elastix had the opportunity to share the open panel discussion “Has Open Source Telephony Crossed The Chasm” with executives from Sangoma, Xorcom, Digium, and Dialogic. This panel hosted a great discussion on the present and future of open source telephony.
Finally, this was a great time for meeting with many members of the Elastix community. Likewise, our partners had a chance to Exchange future ideas for Elastix.
Winners of the Award “Contributor of the Year 2009”
Friday, 15 January 2010
The Elastix project has the honour to announce the winners of the “Contributor of the Year 2009” awards. These awards are brought to you thanks to the following sponsors:
First Place $1000, “Contributor of the Year 2009” Award Goes to Bob Fryer
Bob, who is from Australia, is known by many of you because of the excellent support that he gives on our community forums, where he is also a moderator.
However, he does not only collaborate on the Elastix forums, but also is the founder of the Elastix Connection website, where one can find excellent documentation related to Elastix. Bob has also contributed in the development of Ben Shariff's book, “Elastix Without Tears .” Recently, Bob became one of the first Elastix bloggers, and he has already contributed with several posts. Bob is also one of our main beta testers, he actually has hardware specially dedicated for the testing of the beta versions of Elastix.
Among his most recent projects, Bob works together with Mark Brooker in porting an improved version of the Trixbox endpoints configuration module to Elastix.
Second Place $500, “Contributor of the Year” Award goes to Franck Danard
Franck Danard, from France, is the person that participates the most in the Elastix forum, and the one that has the highest karma rating. Thanks to Franck, the French forum was created where he is the moderator. He is also member of the beta testers and developers groups. Within these two groups, Franck has shared with the community some template improvements for the Elastix call center module.
Ten Honorable Mention Contributors
Besides the two “Contributors of the Year,” we have the pleasure to present to you the ten honorable mention contributors who will be awarded with an IP Phone. These are presented in alphabetical order:
Alfio Muñoz, from the Dominican Republic, participates in the Elastix forums, several mailing lists, and the Elastix chat channels. Thanks to Alfio, the Elastix Spanish chat channel was registered, and he is always there available to help when needed. Currently, his most important work is his book, “Elastix Con Sabor Merengue” that will be published next week.
Anderson Gouveia, from Portugal, has helped us to coordinate the Portuguese Elastix community. Thanks to him, we now have a Portuguese mailing list where problems are resolved in that language. Some of his other contributions include the translation of the Elastix installation manual into Portuguese.
Augusto Sepúlveda, from Mexico, is a very active member in the Spanish Elastix forums and in the Spanish mailing list. In both places, he always gives excellent support. Augusto is also one of the main bloggers in the Spanish Elastix blog.
Ben Shariff, from Australia, is the author of the book, “Elastix Without Tears.” This book is considered to be one of the main resources available to Elastix users.
Dicko Ollet, from the United States, is one of the forum members that participates the most. He also has one of the highest karma ratings. Most of you have probably received support from Dicko.
Fernando Villares, from Argentina, is one of our main Elastix Project beta testers. Thanks to Fernando, we created the mailing list for the beta testers, which is the main means of communication between the beta testers and the project developers. Fernando is also continually providing support in the Spanish mailing lists.
Josiah Spackman (chilling_silence), from New Zealand, is very active in the Elastix forums by giving support to users. He has also published several Elastix tips, and as a result, he has become one of our regular bloggers.
Haamed Kouhfallah, from Iran, helped translate Elastix to the Persian language. He has also worked on a RPM that allows to have right-to-left support in Elastix GUI. Thanks to Haamed, we also created the Asterisk Programming forum.
Patrick_elx, from France though now lives in Miami, USA, is very active in the Spanish and French Elastix forums. He also contributes to the Superfecta pluggin for FreePBX.
Ramón Lozano, from Spain, is better known as Ramoncio. Ramón is very active in both the Spanish and the English Elastix forums. Besides being one of our most active participants, he is also a forum moderator. His main contribution has been the creation of the Avant Fax RPM.
Congratulations to everyone, to those who are on the above list and to those that are not. This has been a great year!