Through a new partnership with IP PBX solution provider, Fonality, hardware giant Dell is now offering an IP Telephony (IPT) solution for the small enterprise market. While it is joining some serious competition in the small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) VoIP space, Dell will aim to leverage its noted sales strengths in this segment, along with the affordability and manageability offered by Fonality’s Asterisk-based platform.

The Fonality VoIP Phone System – from Dell

The age of IP communications has created a sizeable and obvious market opportunity for leading hardware vendors to enter the enterprise telephony space. Considering that many of today’s leading call control software packages are designed to run on standard operating systems – namely Linux and Windows platforms – commodity hardware represents a cost effective, scalable, and manageable platform for both vendors and enterprises.

As one of the largest global suppliers of desktop and server hardware, and a leading solution provider for the SME market in particular, speculation has frequently placed Dell as a potential entrant to the IP telephony market. As announced in January 2008, Dell has finally revealed plans to offer an IP PBX solution to small enterprises through a partnership with Fonality, targeting organizations of 125 users or less.