Fonality, a LA-based start-up that sells IP-PBX systems based on open source Asterisk software, to small and medium sized businesses is about to announce that more than 1000 companies with 15,000 employees have bought its PBXtra and are now placing a million calls through the platform.

“It is important to distinguish between free Asterisk downloads and the 1,000 companies that have actually purchased PBXtra to run their business,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality’s founder and CEO. “There is no secret why Fonality is leading the Asterisk market: we’ve extended Asterisk far beyond its base feature set, added tons of stability code and provide our customers with 24-hour support. At Fonality, we spend every day figuring out how to extend Asterisk into a reliable, supportable and feature-rich PBX for businesses.”

A few days ago we wrote about Digium, the company behind Asterisk, and its plans to sell Asterisk-based systems to SMBs, the kind of market that Fonality is targeting. It looks like the two companies might be in direct competition, even though the underpinnings of their products are Asterisk. It is interesting development, and one hopes that the two companies will focus on taking on the giants, rather than going down the road taken by some commercial Linux players.

(Previous Fonality posts.)