Digium's Switchvox Gains Traction in K-12 and University Markets

Digium, the Asterisk Company, announced that its unified communications (UC) solution has strong uptake in educational markets. Digium’s Switchvox (News - Alert) UC solutions are being deployed at faster rates in the K-12 and higher education markets.

Switchvox is built on Asterisk, the world's most widely adopted open source communications software. This provides it with a range of powerful features that bring an average cost savings of up to 80 percent over comparable phone systems.

For the educational market, Switchvox provides powerful communications features that support teacher and staff productivity and mobility.

“Switchvox is well received in the education market because it includes, out of the box and at no extra charge, the advanced features that IT staff need to support productivity, at a fraction of the cost of comparable systems,” said Leslie Conway (News - Alert), global vice president of marketing at Digium, in a statement.

The UC solution can be set up and configured quickly. Institutions can also make changes over time, such as assigning new extensions, to the system. They also gain flexibility by avoiding vendor lock-in.

Switchvox has innovative features including support for paging, a predictive dialer that can help alert families of delays and cancelations, and automatic call recording for certain incoming calls or ability to keep others private.

The system also helps educational institutions save money and gain flexibility by avoiding vendor lock-in. Customers can choose voice over IP (VoIP) or analog lines and any IP phones.

Some of the educational institutions that have deployed Switchvox in recent months include The Earth Institute, Columbia University (New York, N.Y.), Summit Public Schools (Redwood City, Calif.), University of Puerto Rico (San Juan, P.R.), S-Trip (Toronto, Ont.), School Improvement Network (Midvale, Utah), and Southeast Kansas Education Service Center (Topeka, Kan.)

Recently, Digium (News - Alert) announced new capabilities for Switchvox SMB. Some of the new features include support for mobility, improved administrator interface and expanded application programming interfaces (APIs), company officials said.