[Asterisk-biz] Epygi PBX and Asterisk

[Dan Iordanescu]

Hello,

I have recently started to work with a new company in the area of IP
PBX. I am deeply impressed and I would like to let everybody know. The
company is called Epygi, www.epygi.com. They sell special boxes, which
deserve a detailed look. Like me, I'm sure business-oriented Asterisk
people will be impressed.

My business is selling, installing, maintaining etc IP PBXs on business
premises. We all know how hard it is: first to educate people on the
concept and limitless capabilities of such a system (see the earlier
post VoIP Guide for Business People) and second the lack of a fully
featured, user/admin friendly product. I sympathise with all people at
the bleeding edge in this industry; when I hear their stories my scars
itch.

Epygi solves the CPE problem for an IP PBX system. Their boxes are fully
featured (by Asterisk standards) and even more. Anybody tried the paging
feature with Asterisk? Remember, we are only talking PBX functionality
on customer premises here. Asterisk is an incredible system. If you are
looking for billing, CDR processing, IAX/H323/SIP/ADSI conversion or
database interfacing, Epygi is not the product for you. At some point I
made plans to develop a user/admin interface for Asterisk, but it's not
easy to do a commercial product. I tried others recommended on Asterisk
lists, but for various reasons none of them was good enough.

Epygi expands a lot on the concept started by Talkswitch. Just reading
the Epygi website does no justice to the box. You have to either play
with one or speak with an Epygi guy. The concept is having one or more
boxes residing on customer premises. It can be controlled with a browser
either from the LAN or Internet (IPSec tunnels for security). Epygi
boxes connect either to the LAN or to the Internet. They have FXO or
ISDN ports for the PSTN and FXS ports for POTS phones. SIP phones are
obvious. On the Internet side they act as a full-blown broadband router
(ADSL, G.SHDSL or Ethernet ports) doing statefull firewall, NAT, VPN
IPSec tunnels etc.
On the VoIP PBX side, if you install the Epygi box behind another NAT
router it has STUN capability and the Outbound Proxy feature (used by
FWD with the Jasomi solution). STUN doesn't always work from behind some
symmetrical NAT routers, but the Jasomi solution works in all cases.
As PBX features, you'll be blown away. There was nothing I could do with
Asterisk that I can't do with this box; with no development work.
Including fancy Voice Mail notification/checking and registration with
multiple SIP services.

Now let me point just a couple of more things that I found very
important:
1. It comes with 3 detailed manuals: installation manual, administration
manual and users manual. The users can drive it from either their phones
or with the web browser (logging as their extension).
2. The product and distribution is designed with the international
market in mind. There is a way to translate the voice prompts into any
language (now available in English, German, French and Spanish). There
is a support/training network which covers most countries. With
Asterisk, I had customers in Europe reluctant to English voice prompts;
not anymore.
3. Pricing? It's great. They have a choice of 5 boxes (including a SIP
Conference Server) with different capabilities and upgrades. The
cheapest RRP is USD595 for a box with 4 extensions and most expensive is
RRP USD4295 for 64 extensions. The reseller/distributor discounts are
pretty good too.

As you can imagine I bought a box, played with it and loved it. Then I
got involved in distribution in regions covered by my business. I now
use Epygi boxes as CPEs. Asterisk server is in collocation sites for
protocol conversion, billing or the other things where constant tweaking
or customer access is not necessary.
As SIP service, I use SipPhone, www.sipphone.com, which has free
unlimited calls to PSTN in Australia and 5 calls, 5 minutes each, every
day in 30 other countries (and growing). Good A-Z rates as well.

If you want to know more either contact Epygi or I can give you details
for who to contact in your area.

Sorry for the long post. I hope you'll benefit from it as much as I did,
Dan.