eGroupWare, Hylafax and Asterisk - Converging communications with Vitell

Thursday 22 May 2008 at 11:09 am So you want a single platform for all your communication? E-mails, faxes, telephone calls and voicemail? You want project management, CRM, diary, knowledgebase and Wiki? Simple. Vitell can now provide a complete communications infrastructure for your business. Whether workers are local or remote, we are able to provide a solution. Using the Open Source eGroupWare, Hylafax and Asterisk platforms we can work our magic for your business. Call us for more information.

Vitell provides IUCLID5 installation services to the chemical industry

Friday 25 April 2008 at 06:50 am

Vitell is pleased to announce that they are able to provide consultancy and installation services for IUCLID installations.

"IUCLID (International Uniform ChemicaL Information Database) is a software application to capture, store, maintain and exchange data on intrinsic and hazard properties of chemical substances. It is a key software application essential for chemical industry to comply with the new legislation, which entered into force on 1 June 2007. The freely downloadable tool will assist chemical companies globally in fulfilling their obligation to submit data to the Agency under the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) legislation from 1 June 2008." [http://ecbwbiu5.jrc.it/index.php?fuseaction=home.project&type=public]

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Installing Asterisk on CentOS 5.x

Wednesday 12 March 2008 at 09:45 am

Some of our customers would rather do the groundwork themselves - installing and configuring Linux on their own hardware - before we come in and set up their phone system.

For the benefit of those customers, we have written a comprehensive document listing exactly what is required to install Asterisk under the CentOS 5.x Linux distribution. The instructions even show what is necessary to download and install Asterisk, so if you're feeling particularly adventurous........!

Vitell invited to speak at 'Digium | Asterisk World'

Friday 22 February 2008 at 08:56 am

Nick Barnes, Vitell's resident Asterisk guru has been invited to speak at this year's 'Digium | Asterisk World Europe' event held at the RAI Centre, Amsterdam in June this year.

Digium | Asterisk World is the premier open communication event for the channel that encompasses the world of open source platforms and applications in the realm of IP communications. Whether you are a service provider, VAR, systems integrator or someone who is rolling out IP communications internally, Digium | Asterisk World is the place to be.

Nick will be speaking on "Opening Markets with Open Source" and answering the questions:

Why develop on open source and what are the options?

What types of applications are best suited for Asterisk open source development?

Who is implementing and deploying open source solutions?

Digium | Asterisk World is running alongside VON.x Europe, a conference well worth attending if you're intrested in pretty much any voice technology.

See you there!

Telecommuting can be bad. If you don't.

Tuesday 15 January 2008 at 08:34 am Timothy Golden, associate professor in the Lally School of Management & Technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, sampled 240 professional employees from an unnamed medium-sized company to observe how telecommuting affects employees who stay in the office. He 'found that in-office employees took less satisfaction in their jobs and felt less of a relationship and obligation to their company as the number of telecommuting coworkers grew'. In-office employees in his study became disappointed at having fewer and weaker relationships. They also got frustrated at a perceived increase in workload and difficulties that telecommuting can present to finishing projects and building strong working relationships. Read more here. If you'd like to integrate teleworkers into your business, Vitell can help. With a complete range of VoIP solutions and remote access solutions, we can help you make your workforce happier and more productive!

Asterisk security advisory

Wednesday 19 December 2007 at 08:06 am

If you're running Asterisk prior to versions 1.2.26 and 1.4.16 and are using realtime configuration of SIP/IAX users, be aware that a security advisory has been issued:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/security/AST-2007-027.pdf

Essentially, if your SIP or IAX users are defined without a password (e.g. if you're using host based authentication), then IP addresses are not checked against the permit/deny entries.

The quick fix is to start using passwords! The longer fix is to upgrade to Asterisk 1.2.26 or 1.4.16.

Vitell invests in new music

Wednesday 19 December 2007 at 07:49 am Vitell are pleased to announce their investments in the following up and coming musicians:

Asked why Vitell are making these investments, Senior Partner Nicholas Barnes stated "From our charitable work to our support of new Music, Vitell has always offered whatever skills, experience or help we are able to. I strongly believe that the traditional music industry has had its day and that there are many very good musicians who would like to work in a completely different way. www.sellaband.com provides a fantastic way of both finding and investing in new music. In addition, as a telecoms company, we need to supply good quality, customised, music on hold and good relationships with skilled artists can only help us to do this."

Vitell trains [censored]!!

Monday 17 December 2007 at 07:57 am

England, UK: Vitell are pleased to announce that they have been selected to provide Asterisk training to a large UK based telecommunications company. Sorry, but confidentiality reasons prohibit us from mentioning this large, household name company explicitly.

Interested in providing a common standardised platform for their internal infrastucture, this company has decided that Asterisk is the way forward. They hope to replace the existing myriad of hardware and systems with one common platform - Asterisk.

Vitell has provided Asterisk and Advanced Asterisk training for this organisation giving them an understanding of the types of services Asterisk is able to offer and giving examples of the ways Asterisk can be integrated into their existing systems with a view to taking them over.

With another course booked, Vitell is looking forward to spreading the gospel according to Asterisk.

Presentation to Astricon

Friday 28 September 2007 at 11:45 am (Phoenix, Arizona, US): Another year, another Astricon. For the fourth time, Nick Barnes, Vitell's senior consultant, has spoken at Astricon, the premier conference for all things Asterisk related. This year's talk was aimed at potential Asterisk solution providers and aimed to show Vitell's position in the marketplace, our competitors and ways we are able to sell Asterisk solutions and services. The presentation was received well by the attendees and Nick has spent the last day answering questions and talking to those people who enjoyed the session.

Vitell provides services for NCT

Monday 10 September 2007 at 10:32 am

Twice a year, the Solihull branch of the National Childbirth Trust hold an 'As New Sale' to raise funds for the charity. Historically, this has been organised manually with a huge time burden placed on the few organisers. Vitell have provided the charity with a full management suite, including a telephone registration system (using Asterisk and MySQL), a web based registration system (LAMP) and software for the accounting process on the day.

Typically, the sales are visited by about one thousand people buying items from about one hundred sellers - registering the sellers before the event, providing the information packs, personalised labels and other documents and then ensuring they are paid the correct amount after the event was quite a task.

Whilst this may seem to be a small project, Vitell have written the systems such that they can be expanded and applied to other NCT branches. What's more, Vitell have released the complete source code of the application under the Creative Commons "Attribution-Share Alike 2.0" licence.

This year, it's one branch, next year, who knows?