Xorcom Solution

Xorcom XR2074 PBX with 1 PRI port, 8 FXO ports, and 16 FXS ports; RAID (dual hard drive for redundancy), Rapid Recovery (for backup and restore of the entire PBX), and 110 Yealink T20P SIP phones.

Overview

Chabot Space & Science Center is a non-profit in Oakland, California. The aging NEC PBX’s voicemail processor had begun to fail. During research for replacement voicemail systems, the customer discovered that he could buy an entire new telephone system for the cost of the replacement. Cost is a big challenge for Chabot, especially operating costs, so they narrowed the list of potential systems to those which had no ongoing maintenance/licensing fees. This led to Asterisk-based solutions, of which there were many. Since the customer is also acting as the integrator, he needed a turnkey system that would work right out of the box. A survey of Asterisk-base appliances led Mr. dosRemedios to Xorcom, which he installed, plugged into the analog trunks, and directly made a call!

Customer VoIP Requirements

Chabot Space & Science Center wanted to deploy a completely new 110 station telephone system with voicemail and conferencing to replace their existing NEC PBX (supporting a PRI line, 200 DIDs and 120 extensions). Existing IVR functionality needed to be duplicated and enhanced on the new system. As a non-profit in a troubled economy, any solution had to be very cost effective. Chabot had a very limited capital budget with which to work; and virtually no additional operating budget for the new system.

Proposed VoIP Solution

Extensive research into IP-based systems led Mr. dosRemedios to Asterisk-based systems and he tried a test system, using trixbox CE and two Grandstream handsets. He liked what he was able to do, and so he looked for a turnkey system using Asterisk at its core, and came across Xorcom and the Astribank concept. Because Mr. dosRemedios is the sole support for telephony at Chabot, his greatest concern was getting help configuring the system. So he contacted a local Xorcom reseller and soon realized that he could probably do everything himself. Mr. dosRemedios chose a Xorcom XR2074 PBX with 1 PRI port, 8 FXO ports, and 16 FXS ports; with RAID (dual hard drive for redundancy), Rapid Recovery (for backup and restore of the entire PBX), Yealink T20P handsets, and some premises cabling to fulfill the requirements. Deployment was performed in-house over a period of five weeks.

Result

The PBX installed without a hitch; Mr. dosRemedios connected four landlines to the FXO ports, and a couple of phones to the POE switch and was able to make calls the same day! He’s currently preparing to deploy the remaining 108 phones to run in parallel to the old PBX until the day he can move the PRI over to the Xorcom box.