Is sipXecs IP PBX right for you?

The sipXecs IP PBX is an open source alternative to commercial private branch exchange (PBX) systems from vendors such as Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Siemens, NEC and others. Vis-a-vis Asterisk sipXecs scales to larger installations, offers more unified communications features and is easier to use. The sipXecs IP PBX is a native SIP based solution that offers all the typical features expected from a PBX, including voicemail, unified messaging, auto-attendant, conferencing, presence and call center capabilities. The sipXecs IP PBX can be deployed on a single server for smaller installations or as a distributed and optionally redundant system for larger deployments. It's Web Services (SOA) based management and configuration system allows centralized management of a distributed system and offers plug & play configuration for all phones and gateways.

Commercial offerings of the sipXecs IP PBX exist under the brand name SCS (Software Communications System) for the mid-enterprise market and SCS for the SMB market. It can be bought from Nortel, Dell, IBM, HP, CDW, Westcon, Shared Technologies and others. Nortel has been contributing to SIPfoundry since 2007.

The sipXecs IP PBX developer community is strong and growing. The sipXecs IP PBX has built kind of a reputation for being easy to use, scalable and of high quality. In addition, sipXecs IP PBX is a unified communications solution, not just an IP PBX. It runs on the Linux operating system, is available for x86 and PowerPC, for 32 bit as well as 64 bit operating systems.

The sipXecs IP PBX project was started in 2004 based on an initial significant code contribution from Pingtel Corp. The first open source release was 2.8 and the first release that provided a functional IP PBX was 3.0 released at the end of 2005. Subsequent releases 3.2, 3.4, 3.6, 3.8 and 3.10 provided significant improvements and many new features. Release 4.0 was made public in May 2009 and is the first release that allows creation of a fully distributed, centrally managed IP PBX system.

The sipXecs IP PBX effort aims at providing a fully capable open source unified communications solution for the mid-enterprise market. The mid-enterprise market ranges from a few hundred users to several ten thousand users, typically located in different buildings, locations or countries. Amazon.com has been an early user of sipXecs worldwide. Currently (2009), Amazon.com uses sipXecs worldwide for over 6,000 employees. sipXecs, of course, can also be used for much smaller deployments. It's easy to setup and use.

Building sipXecs using the openSUSE Build Service and OSC

Bridged Line Appearance (BLA) with sipXecs

sipXecs IP PBX Roadmap

Configuring remote workers cheatsheet

XMPP Integration Prototype

Express Development Environment Setup

SIP Trunking: sipXbridge Overview and Configuration

Installable Localization Packages

AsteriskNOW, SwitchVox, Trixbox Pro and sipXecs - A Comparison

Comparing sipXecs IP PBX with Asterisk

The sipXecs IP PBX Feature List

Conferencing Service for sipXecs

How to configure Speed Dial and BLF Presence

Personal Auto-Attendant

Integration with Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange 2007

HowTo manually configure BLF in a phone

AudioCodes Gateways

sipXecs Single Install CD

How to configure ENUM dialing

How to configure ISN dialing

sipXtools

Start Here to Use sipXecs IP PBX

Better Voice Quality with sipXecs IP PBX

Nortel SR2330 Survivable SIP Gateway

Adding support for managed phones

SipXecs-OpenSBC

SipXecs-OpenSBC Setup Guide for Different Call Scenario

• Nortel SCS vs. sipXecs Comparison
• SCS offering from Nortel
• SCS available through Dell
• Nortel SCS available on IBM Power Systems
• Westcon to distribute Nortel SCS
• Innovational IP Solutions to become a Nortel VAR for SCS
• SIP Trunking with BandTel
• Nilando sipXecs Solutions (Germany)

Mailing Lists: sipX-users, Archive, Gmane

Mailing Lists: sipX-dev, Archive, Gmane

Mailing Lists: sipXecs-commit, Archive

Create a wiki account

Binary Distributions

Bug & Issue Tracker: SIPfoundry Issue Tracker ... but before reporting an issue, see How to report a problem with sipXecs

Useful Links: Useful Links

IRC Channel: you can find some of the developers and users on irc, #sipx on irc.freenode.net. Here is a list of IRC Clients, if you don't have one already.

sipXecs IP PBX for Developers

sipXecs IP PBX Project Server - Source, Dowloads, Buildserver

Express Development Environment Setup

Setting up a development environment on Fedora

Building dependencies - only if your platform is not pre-built

Building from source

Building RPMs

Developer documentation

Developer's Blog: sipXconfig Development Blog

Mirroring sipXecs subversion repository with git

Developer's HOWTO Library

This section gives a high-level overview of the sipXecs project, describes features and functionality, introduces the sipXecs technical architecture and high-lights specific deployment examples.

This section provides specific information on how to install, use and build the sipXecs solution on different Linux distributions and other operating systems.

Need to know how to solve a specific problem? This section includes a collection of HOWTO documents covering a wide range of topics.

The sipXecs Configuration Server (sipXconfig) provides plug & play management of the entire sipXecs solution including end points such as phones and gateways. This section is dedicated to sipXconfig and provides users as well as developers manuals.

Would you like to have a true VoIP Enterprise solution at home? Offer voice and video communications to friends & family? This section provides information on how to deploy sipXecs in your home network.

The sipXecs solution is compatible with any SIP phone, gateway or application. This section provides HOWTO information on how to configure and use different hard phones and softphones.

sipXtapi is the SIP user agent library (SDK) used by AOL for its Triton Instant Messenger client. It provides SIP signalling and media processing for voice and video. This section is dedicated to sipXtapi and the sipXezPhone project.

Index of troubleshooting advice.

Yes, there already is legacy! sipXecs is a fast evolving project and this section includes all the articles that relate to older and no longer supported releases.