This informal article covers the very immediate future of VoipNow. While the picture is not complete now, we will update closer to the release date with more information. This article is organized as a FAQ.

Why don’t you publish roadmaps?

We do not publish roadmaps because each major release of VoipNow is a generation change. Generation changes come with strategic improvements that involve a lot of IP. Revealing such IP far before executing it might affect our business, therefore we prefer to keep it undisclosed. Many customers know a lot about the 4PSA developments and they are consulted during our development processes.

How long does it take to come up with a major version of VoipNow?

The generation change happens every three years. While during a generation lifetime we provide accelerated improvements for the first 24 months following the major version release, for the second part of the lifetime most resources go to the new generation product development. VoipNow is used in mission critical environments and we have many requirements to fulfill. The change of generation must be relatively straightforward for our customers, even if internally major things happened.

What is a generation, exactly?

VoipNow is a platform. When we release a new generation, we create the means to better serve customers for the next years. Generation changes are common in the software industry — some are lighter, others are more dramatic. We use Agile in our development process and in order to release a major new version, we execute many sprints. This means that we have dozens of internal releases until one goes public.

What’s the next major version of VoipNow?

The next major version is VoipNow 3. VoipNow 3 is the most important release since VoipNow born in 2006.
VoipNow 3 will have two editions, VoipNow Service Provider Edition and VoipNow Business Edition. This separation was necessary in order to better serve end-users. VoipNow Service Provider Edition will come first, the Business Edition will come later. There will be a direct upgrade path from VoipNow Professional to Service Provider edition assuming that you have service provider licensing. With business licensing VoipNow Business Edition is your upgrade path.

VoipNow Professional will become EOL and will be maintained for one year. We will assist all customers upgrading to VoipNow Service Provider or Business editions.

What’s new in VoipNow 3?

The platform is common for both SP and Business editions, so most functionality is shared between them. However, Business Edition is a simplification that might not include some functionality in SP (we will cover it in a future post).

• Cloud Distributed model – the most important change is an architecture one. VoipNow 3 is now fully distributed, integrating our proprietary cloud technology. This allows the system to grow and shrink dynamically, using resources from a pool of virtual servers/instances, such as Amazon EC2, Virtuozzo, VMware, Xen, etc.
• Cloud Storage – recordings, voicemails, faxes and other files produced by customers can be stored in a cloud storage system compatible with Amazon S3 protocol. Local filesystem is still supported.
• Improved Account Model – In VoipNow 3 we have the following account levels: Owner (Admin), Service Provider, Organization, User, Extension. The Extension is a resource of the User, this means that a user can have multiple extensions. Previously it was a one to one relationship between the user and her/his device.
• Extension Virtualization – extensions no longer depend on the physical device, it is possible to have a certain feature set on any extension device connected to VoipNow, assuming that a secret is known.
• New APIs and Support for Apps – it will be possible to create Apps that use Unified Communication channels. The entire support for Apps was redesigned. APIs are OpenSocial compatible.

These are not the only changes – there are over 120 total – but these are the only ones we reveal before the public release, which will happen most likely at the end of Q2 2012. And yes, VoipNow is not the only UC product we are releasing in 2012, it’s just the one covered in this article.