So last weekend finally had some time to work with a Askozia Desktop Appliance.
It actually arrived much earlier but without a Power Supply. Initially I though, "this is strange; I didn't know this supported PoE". (Power Over Ethernet). It turns out it didn't and there was a shipping mistake. After contacting the vendor, they sent me the required Power Supply.
Overall I think the product is quite nice. It has a very nice User Interface that is quite easy to use. Simple configurations are indeed very easy to set-up.
My feeling is that, as with any GUI, it usually trades user-friendly with expressiveness. So while I could configure most of the things I wanted from the UI, it did not support my home network topology fully.
Initially, I had a DMZ vs Home-LAN configuration, with the Askozia box in the DMZ. Because the separation between the DMZ and the Home-LAN was through the router, it considered all the IP phones (in the Home-LAN) on the other side of the NAT, so things did not work properly.
...