Voxeo Labs Announces Telco Communications PaaS
Voxeo Labs this week released Ameche, a communications platform as a service (cPaaS) delivering applications that work with existing calls and existing mobile numbers.
Ameche helps both carriers and developers grow voice, video, messaging, and value-added service revenues, a market valued at more than $1 trillion. Ameche provides the application programming interfaces (APIs), tools, hosting environment, and revenue models for a new generation of network-based communications applications.
The Ameche platform enhances the mobile communications experience by enabling developers to mash-up real-time conversations with cloud services like SalesForce, Yammer, LinkedIn, and Google Apps. Ameche applications can be made available via a wide variety of channels, including direct carrier portals for consumers and businesses, carrier partners and direct sales, Facebook, SalesForce AppExchange, Android's Play Store, and Apple's App Store.
Ameche combines the best of the Web and telecoms to create services for any mobile customer using any mobile device. Ameche's "Apps in Your Calls" model lets carriers and developers enhance existing mobile numbers and phone calls.
"Ameche is revolutionary: It makes your phone service programmable, whether you're using a smartphone, a tablet, a browser, your TV, or even a fixed-line phone," said Jason Goecke, president and CEO of Voxeo Labs, in a statement. "With Ameche, my phone calls and text conversations work alongside the cloud services I use every day."
Built using the Node.js dynamic runtime, developed and sponsored by Joyent, and PaaS technology similar to Heroku and Google App Engine, Ameche extends IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and legacy mobile networks with Web-friendly APIs. These API's enable new services to be deployed by carrier marketing teams, system integrators, and value-added resellers, and hundreds of thousands of non-carrier developers. Because they live in the network, Ameche's apps work on any connected device, including Rich Communication Suite (RCS) or "Joyn" clients, HTML5 WebRTC clients, Voxeo Labs' own Phono clients, smartphones, and even the most basic feature phones
Example uses cases include the following:
- Social Call Status: Stay in sync with real-time Yammer updates or privately post your call activity to Facebook to keep all of your social conversations in one place.
- Context-based Call Routing: With presence and location-based routing, calls are delivered to the most convenient device. This can be an add-on to existing One Number services or for customers who use the operator's IP-based Web or mobile app clients.
- In-Call Voice Assistant: Using speech recognition technology, users can activate call recordings or create voice memos that are later transcribed and uploaded to Evernote. The power, and hands-free convenience, of voice opens the door to a new class on in-call applications.
- Go to market: Launch basic consumer services as part of "Don't text and driving" campaigns and upsell the new features for a small monthly fee.
- SalesForce.com Integration: Gain better insight into your customer relationships by automatically logging customer call activity and message history. Using public APIs, Ameche links phone calls and text conversations with a variety of customer relationship management (CRM) services like SalesForce.com. Also, with Ameche's real-time call triggers, key information like order status and payment history can appear instantly on a tablet or mobile app.
"Ameche moves telephony-as-a-service from the edge to the core of the phone network, enabling powerful integrations with apps running on cloud platforms such as Force.com and Heroku," said Pat Patterson, principal developer evangelist at salesforce.com, in the statement.
Ameche is the newest offering from Voxeo Labs, the company behind Tropo and Phono, and represents the latest in a suite of closely integrated carrier-centric products. Voxeo Labs, along with its parent, Voxeo, has built an ecosystem of more than 250,000 app developers who have launched and supported more than 100,000 businesses and apps. In the coming months, Voxeo will release updated versions of Tropo and Phono that work seamlessly with the Ameche platform.
Ameche is in pre-release trial for deployments at some of the largest mobile carriers in the world and will be openly available to developers and consumers next year.