Surveying interest in Multi-Tenant freePBX

I am trying to gauge interest in a true multi-tenant implementation. I posted a similar request to the trixbox forum since there is a lot of traffic there, so far with out much response so thought I would post it here.

We often see request for multi-tenant abilities in freePBX. If you are one of those people who could seriously benefit from multi-tenant, how much would it be worth to you. I would like to know what you would be willing to pay up front (to help the initial development) as well as to pay towards support contracts to support such a ‘commerical’ release. This would help determine the viability of doing such a project.

When I say multi-tenant I mean true multiple isolated companies with overlapping extensions, etc. Each tenant would effectively have a full freepbx configuration with the same screens and modules they see today, and then the required ultra-admin level configuration that would be required to manage such a setup.

(we’ve had some serious offers, however no single company wants to flip the bill alone for something that several of you would benefit from).

Please post comments in response to my questions to help us gauge this.

philippel

I am still interested in this version.
Multi-Tenant version would need to have some flexibility.
For Condos and Apartments, the master phone number should allow room numbers as well so that it can hook up to the door entry system via dialing just the room numbers. Also allow each tenant to dial the other room numbers by a room number extension.
For Multi-Tenant Businesses, each customer should be completely separate.

We are EXTREMELY interested in this type of version.

Don’t have a personal need for it but please be careful about what capabilities you define as multi-user - I understand what you’re going for, but in the past I’ve heard some people say that giving certain extensions access to only some trunks and not others was a multi-user thing, when in reality it’s something that a parent with kids might use (or someone who has given parents/kids/siblings remote extensions using VoIP adapters for “intercom” purposes, but doesn’t necessarily want those folks making outgoing calls on their commercial VoIP service account).

Having said that, I’m surprised more people haven’t requested a true multi-tenant version (to me, a true multi-tenant version would allow each tenant to use extension numbers in the same numbering space, for example, each tenant could have an extension 1234 and there would be no conflict between tenants). I personally would have no use for such a thing, but I would be very surprised if business and call center operators didn’t find utility in such a thing, particularly for providing hosted VoIP PBX type service, or for supporting multiple locations of a business using the same switch.

You ask what it is worth and it seems nobody has answered that part of the question. I’ll give a $1000.00 bounty to such a version.

I now have a complete PBX set up at my office and will be setting up systems for a few other offices. I want to have all the servers reside at my office here, so I would be very interested in a multi-tenant set up.

Tom Peranteau
IronNet Technologies

Seems this thread has died off some, but this is of great interest to me.

I assume this would be similar to Thirdlane’s MTE.

I would be willing to match bp423 for such a version: $1000 total.

I am also interested in the $1,000 bounty

I’m very interested in an MTE version and also up for $1,000 bounty.

Hi, I have patched FreePBX to support Multi tenant. I’d like to contribute the source code to the community, but it’s one of my company’s project, and I’m no more than an employee… What a pity for that…
My boss intended to sell the product for other companies. Here in my country, you can use Windows Vista for 1$, and no one will ask you about the license (we use crack softwares everyday - what a bad habit!). About FOSS, the same thing happens, many companies take alot from FOSS community and don’t even give back a thing.
I can’t contribute my work for the community, but will try to do my best for this project (I think I take from you alot).
I’m trying to suggest my boss contribute the patch to the main project. Please give me some advice, how should I say about this?
Companies only care about money, not the philosophy of open source. So, I need to know some kind of “profit” our company could get in order to persuade him.
Sorry again for my bad English.

I would like to learn more about the patch you have made.

I have an idea for pushing the multi tenant freepbx program. Setup a donations system for it. When it reaches a certain amount like $5,000 programing can start. When is reaches 10k to 15k freepbx will try to have a finished beta or RC ready. It is time with Asterisk 1.6 support multiple parking lots to have a muiti tenant system for asterisk.

I would post a 1-2K Bounty for this as well. Freepbx has been by far the easiest platform for our customers. The system works.

just tossing my hat in for a 1k bounty bump.
Better late than never?

bounty bump… sounds like a sexy dance move.
hot.

What if I upped my bounty to $10,000?

There are a couple of significant issues that need to be addressed. $10k is probably a start, but it’ll probably be more than that. Here’s some things (and it’s NOT a comprehensive list) that need to be ‘fixed’:

Parking Lots (fixed in 1.6)
Voicemail (needs to be totally re-written, or severely hacked on, at least)
‘Better’ GUI auth - although this may be fixed.

I think what people want is a ‘cpanel’ like solution. They install freepbx, and then give customers access to their own virtual freepbx.

Hard. But I am somewhat tempted…

You (as in ‘the people that want it’) need to outline EXACTLY what you’re expecting from MT.

I can add to the bounty… 1K

yes indeed this feature is very much needed. we love freepbx and it would be great to have multiple freepbx’s running on one machine. at the moment we are planning to do this with xen but the virtualization overhead is not necessary if it can be done in the core code of the pbx.

am wondering the status of this, surely there are enough bounty$$$$ to proceed or is more required?

can someone in the team update on the status of this feature ?

martin

it’s something that is being looked at as part of 3.0.

As far as enough bounties to do this on 2.x, it doesn’t even come close, especially when you consider the ‘default’ rate of people who claim they will pay bounties. (and even if 100% of them payed out, it still comes to a small fraction of what it would cost for 2.x).

Just thinking out loud. Could you not do this with VM’s? Has anyone tried? Either way I would love to see this happen.