3CX Phone System v5.1 with tunnel feature available!

We finally got it ready – 3CX Phone System V5.1. A lot of hard work of the 3CX team went into that one, and I think it shows. We have made numerous improvements and fixes, and introduced the much awaited 3CX Tunnel feature. The 3CX Tunnel allows for remote extensions and branch offices to be connected via a single TCP port.

You no longer need to open a range of ports for RDP and SIP traffic but you can tunnel it all over a single, configurable port. That means you can use port 80 (if you are not using a web server in your office location) and be sure that remote extensions can connect from anywhere, even if they are in hotel or airport wifi networks which sometimes block higher ports in order to block VOIP traffic.

The 3CX tunnels regular SIP traffic, which means that you can use popular SIP hardware phones as remote extensions. They simply use the 3CX tunnel as an outbound proxy. See a configuration guide here. This in contrast to other tunneling protocols such as IAX which require the remote party to implement the IAX protocol and thus limit the devices/software that you can use. Download 3CX Phone System V5.1 here.

Google strikes with unbeatable hosted anti spam and anti virus product

I recently wrote about the excellent Google domains product. Well, now its possible to use just the security 'component' of Google domains and combine it with any mail server. For only $3 a year per user, you can outsource your entire anti spam and anti virus to Google. For a 50 user company, that’s only $150 per year!

Unbeatable, knowing how good Google anti spam and anti virus is and how much work managing spam and virus can be. Exchange and Lotus users no longer need to buy and manage expensive add on products.

So whilst Microsoft is busy burning 44 billion dollars (Only dollars, true), Google is busy gaining access to that vast and profitable Exchange Server customer base. Check out Googles offering here

Mr Ballmer! Two times zero still makes zero....!

These financial ‘analysts’ make me laugh some times. Microsoft’s intended purchase of Yahoo is supposed to ‘loosen Googles grip on ads’, ‘rock the foundation of online search’, to name just a few of the quotes I have seen. Truth of the matter is that both Yahoo and Microsoft have negligible market share in online ads, and for a very good reason: Their platforms are both very bad and have very little presence. No one uses the Yahoo or Microsoft search engine – only first time internet users that use IE's default and basically don’t know what they are doing. Not a great target market. The Adwords platform is light years ahead of Yahoo or Microsoft, has the *entire* market and is backed up by excellent support from a basically excellent company. Just how two losers uniting is supposed to beat Google is beyond me. Or am I missing something? Microsoft is $44 billion down and has just doubled its online market share to Zero. Mr Ballmer, you won’t beat Google on search and ads. Make Windows and Office better, and you might have a fighting chance to survive the Google onslaught and avoid that smart little Apple right behind you morphing into a Windows, Office and ultimately Microsoft killer.