I was doing some research for my work to replace the phones system. I was looking into doing VOIP instead of a standard PBX system. What I found:

VOIP- This cost a lot more then a standard PBX system if I had a company come in and install the phones and if I bought the phones directly from the company. I was looking at about 25k for 46 extensions. That was way too much.

PBX- looking at replacing my old WIN phones and PBX box with a more current version I was looking at 12K for the same amount of phones.

Alternative- While doing research online I found TRIXBOX. TRIXBOX is open source software that runs on Linux. I downloaded an ISO and installed in on a machine. It was very easy to setup following their directions. Once installed I had a web interface that managed the whole system. I have never worked with Linux before I am totally a windows guy but this wasn’t that hard to figure things out. If I had any questions I searched there online forums at trixbox.org and was able to find every answer I was looking for. I did some pricing on phones and found the cheapest phones at www.ipphone-warehouse.com I went with the Aastra 480i and 9333. These where the best phones and had all the features I ever wanted. Here is my break down of costs.

Aastra 480i SIP Phone  $154.99 qty 7              $ 1,084.93

Aastra 9133i SIP Phone $112.99 qty 39            $ 4,406.61

buy pci phone cards for server  $400.00            $ 400.00

                                                             total      $ 6,171.54

It came out to about half of what I was going to pay to replace the system using a company to do everything. Now it does take several hours to setup the Trixbox and you can pay for support if you really want to but I found this to be my best route. The Trixbox and go on any older server or even a desktop. Linux doesn’t need that much power to do its thing.