Archive for the ‘Cloud telephony’ Category

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Welcoming Teleku into the Voxeo family!

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

As you may have read on GigaOm last night, Voxeo Gobbles Up Teleku, we announced that Voxeo acquired Teleku, a cloud communications startup. We have a news page up summarizing the announcement, linking to a FAQ and providing other info:

blogs.voxeo.com/news/teleku/

I sat down with Teleku founder Chris Matthieu to talk about the news:

We are delighted to welcome Chris to the Voxeo family and we’re very much looking forward to what he’ll bring to Tropo and Voxeo Labs. I know he’s already hard at work with the team on some truly disruptive new services! (Stay tuned!)

Personally, I’m also excited for Chris to join us as he brings solid content creation skills in writing blog posts, creating video screencasts and recording audio podcasts. Look for his contributions to begin appearing soon (mostly over on The Tropo Blog).

Welcome, Chris, to the fun and crazy world of being a “Voxeon”!

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Acquisitions, Cloud telephony, Tropo, Voxeo, Voxeo Labs | 4 Comments »

Voxeo Announces VoiceObjects On-Demand, Bringing Easy Voice/IM/SMS Creation to the Cloud

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

 

VoiceObjects On-Demand

Have you wanted to easily create an application that communicates with your customers via voice, SMS/texting, instant messaging, Twitter and more? (what we call  Unified Self-Service) Have you looked at our VoiceObjects product but didn’t have an easy way to deploy the required on-premises server?

Today we are pleased to announce that we are making the ability to create multi-channel self-service applications simpler than ever with the release of VoiceObjects On-Demand.

No more need to have your own VoiceObjects server.  Simply download the desktop client and start building applications!  What you get is:

  1. Instant startup.
  2. Instant expansion.
  3. Zero hardware costs and affordable pay-as-you-go pricing.
  4. Full control over application integration and lifecycle management with no vendor lock-in.
  5. Mission-critical infrastructure including multi-site redundancy, business continuity, and proven scalability.
  6. Direct access to Voxeo’s world-wide hosted VoiceXML IVR platform, deployed in seven sites around the world.
  7. Direct access to Voxeo’s high-quality, inexpensive speech recognition capabilities in 40 languages.
  8. Direct access to other Voxeo features including encrypted call recording and SIP VoIP connectivity.
  9. Connectivity to existing on-premise VoiceXML IVR platforms from Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, Intervoice, and more.
  10. Voxeo’s unmatched 100% uptime SLA including 24×7 support and guaranteed 20 minute responses.

Oh… and did I mention that it is free to get started?

Don’t take my word for it, though, head on over to this page and check it out yourself:

http://www.voxeo.com/vo-ondemand

You can also watch this video introduction:

We’re very excited to have this new service available… and we’re looking forward to seeing what you all build with it!

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud Computing, Cloud telephony, News, Unified Self-Service, VoiceObjects, Voxeo | 1 Comment »

Join us Wednesday, June 30th, at the San Francisco Telephony Meetup

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

SF Telephony Inaugural Meetup - San Francisco Telephony Group (San Francisco, CA) - Meetup.com.jpgWant to meet some of the folks on the bleeding edge of communication? Want to learn about new ways to build communication apps in the cloud? Or about the new technology available for communications and telephony? Or do you just want to meet a great group of people?

As mentioned over on the Tropo Blog, Voxeo is one of the sponsors of the San Francisco Telephony Meetup happening tomorrow, Wednesday, June 30th, at Orange Labs in South San Francisco.

Zhao Lu from Orange Labs and creator of OpenVoice has organized the San Francisco Telephony Meetup and the first meetup has a great agenda:

Gabriel Sidhom CTO, Orange Labs – Introduction

Jason Goecke, VP of Innovation at Voxeo Labs, will talk about Tropo & Moho – An open-source cloud communications platform that helps developers to create multi-channel real-time communications apps from the cloud or on your own open-source instance.

Adrian Georgescu, CEO of AG Projects Introduction to SIP2SIP.info
- Free SIP accounts for the masses
- Self-organizing SIP server infrastructure
- Remote provisioning API based on SOAP/XML

Chris Matthieu, the Founder of Teleku.com, will introduce the new cloud communication start-up’s RESTful web service APIs which allow web developers to write sophisticated phone applications using PhoneML, TwiML, or VoiceXML that run on any carrier’s network as well as their own free open-souce telephony stack called Ninja.

Dan Miller (Opus Research, 10min), Opus Research: Intro to Recombinant Communications (RC), what it is and what opportunities it presents to developers, incumbent carriers, wireless enterprise IT/app managers.

James Li/Dominic Lee (Orange Labs) – What else can you do while watching TV

Darren Schreiber (15min): an open-source, distributed cloud platform for putting distributed FreeSWITCH nodes on disparate servers. It’s written in Erlang mostly and utilizes some cool messaging and data storage technologies, including NoSQL.

A handful of Tropo people will be on hand, including Adam Kalsey, Jason Goecke, and John Higgins. RSVP on meetup.com and come join us.

June 30, 2010 at 6:30pm
Orange Labs
801 Gateway Blvd Suite 500
South San Francisco

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud telephony, Events, Tropo, Voxeo, Voxeo Labs | No Comments »

Ringio helps SMBs with call-center-in-the-cloud combining CRM, presence and telephony

Monday, April 19th, 2010

ringiologo.jpgOut at eComm in San Francisco today, Voxeo customer Ringio launched their cloud communications service that gives small and medium businesses the kind of positive customer calling experience you would expect out of a much larger company. I like how this Information Week article explains Ringio:

Just because SMBs can’t afford enterprise-class call center technology doesn’t mean that they don’t have call-center needs every bit as complex as large corporations. Moreover, with smaller customer bases and less entrenched brand recognition, the quality of customer care that SMBs provide, potentially, can have a bigger impact on the bottom line. Bringing the CRM and telephony functionality that enterprises take for granted to SMBs is the premise of the Rich Calling service announced today by Ringio.

Ringio’s news release gives a bit more context for their “Rich Calling Service” and how they see it helping SMBs provide a better customer experience.

I had a chance to interview Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio and in the resulting video you can see in the demo both how easy it is to set up and also what it can do for both the business and customers.

ringio1.jpgFrom a caller perspective, I was:

  • Given a personalized greeting (you can hear that in the video);
  • Promptly connected to someone at the company.

From the company perspective, when my call came in, Sam:

  • Received a screen pop with my contact info, recent calls and conversations and other notes. This allows him to very easily see what I’ve been doing and why I might be calling. (In the age of Twitter, I could see one of the links being to someone’s Twitter page where I could simply look at that to see their recent activity.
  • Was able to perform basic call functions like Hold and Transfer;
  • Was able to see the presence of other people connected to the system and thereby be able to figure out who would be available to take the call;
  • Write notes about the call.

Now, sure, you can do this in other premise CRM systems, but this is all out in the cloud and able to be managed through a web interface or through a mobile interface. Ringio has a nice “tour” page that explains how their service is “Far More Than a Small Business Phone System”.

It’s simple and easy to try out… you just have to go do www.ringio.com and sign up…

And if you want to watch Sam and I talking about the service, here’s the video (where he also talks about how Voxeo’s platform is used by the service):

We congratulate Ringio on their launch and look forward to their success!

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Applications, Cloud telephony, Voxeo | 1 Comment »

Video: Dan York at ITEXPO talking about cloud, security and what’s next

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

At ITEXPO back in January, Eric Linask at TMC interviewed me in what has seemed to become a regular every-six-months routine. In the interview, I discussed:

  • the Cloud Communications Summit and pushing communications out into “the cloud”
  • security issues related to cloud communications
  • what’s next in communications, including multi-channel communications (a part of which we refer to as Unified Self-Service)

The big black vehicle behind me was being raffled off as part of the event promotion… hence why we were there. (Wouldn’t it perhaps have been more interesting if we did the interview inside the vehicle?) Anyway… here’s the video: (and will astute observers notice anything about me that is different from the other videos I’ve done?)

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud Computing, Cloud telephony, Conferences, Unified Self-Service, Videos, Voxeo | 1 Comment »

Making voice verification / voice biometrics EASY, for a change…

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

voicewave.pngWhy has voice verification historically been so difficult to implement? In an age of identity theft, when companies are looking for additional ways to secure online transactions, why shouldn’t they be able to use voice? In a time when companies are looking for ways to deliver services to customers faster, why shouldn’t they be able to use voice as a way to secure the delivery of those services?

Whether people call it “voice verification”, “voice authentication” or “voice biometrics”, the common question people ask is “Why does using voice for security have to be so hard?”

It doesn’t.

Today we are pleased to announce a new voice biometrics initiative with four of the leading voice biometrics companies where you can add voice biometrics to a new or existing VoiceXML application TODAY. Through the power of the cloud, your application running on our Prophecy Hosting service can securely communicate with the hosted services of CSIdentity, PerSay, TradeHarbor or Vocalect.

If you go to our new biometrics portal page at:

www.voxeo.com/biometrics

you will find links to “How To” documents from each of the four vendors explaining how you can easily integrate their service into a new or existing VoiceXML application. All of the vendors are also making trial accounts available for interested developers. Try one vendor out… try them all out.

The point is that voice biometrics is very real… today… and you can implement security based on voice today on Voxeo’s platform.

Use voice biometrics as a way to securely automate password resets on your corporate LAN… use it as a way to secure an e-commerce transaction… use it as a way to confirm access to confidential information about an order being processed… use it as a way to secure access to your corporate IVR… use it to secure callers into a private conference call… use it for whatever wacky idea your imagination can come up with…

Use it… play with it… the code is out there! If you already have an account on our Evolution developer portal, you can modify an existing VoiceXML application or create a new one. If you don’t have an account, signing up is free and lets you get started right away creating voice applications, complete with inbound phone numbers, Skype numbers and SIP interconnection, as well as outbound dialing, speech recognition, conferencing and much, much, more…

And when you are ready to make your application go live in a production environment, simply contact us and we can get your app running on the industry’s largest VoiceXML hosting cloud and the only one backed by a 100% uptime service level agreement.

Try it out… voice verification is no longer something “too hard” to do… it’s simple and it’s here today!

Please visit our voice biometrics announcement page to watch video interviews with each of the four partners, to read guest blog posts and to find other information about using voice biometrics on Voxeo’s platform.

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Applications, Cloud telephony, Voxeo, biometrics, voice biometrics | 3 Comments »

Photos from Voxeo panels at ITEXPO / Cloud Communications Summit

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Two weeks ago, Jason Goecke, Jose De Castro and myself (Dan York) were down in Miami Beach, Florida, to speak at ITEXPO and specifically the “Cloud Communications Summit”. Pictures I took at that event of panels we were on are now available in our Flickr stream or by clicking the image below:

ITEXPO-Voxeo-East-2010-flickrset.png

P.S. Thanks to Jason Goecke for taking the pictures of my panel (with my camera), since I couldn’t have easily accomplished that feat and also been on the panel. :-)

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud telephony, Conferences, Photos | No Comments »

Voxeo Speaks #004 – Dan York – Securing Cloud Telephony

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to Play

Securing Cloud Telephony Dan York, CISSP, Director of Conversations ? Voxeo As voice and self-service applications move increasingly into the cloud and to IP communications, what do you need to be concerned about with regard to the security of hosted solutions? If you grow to trust the cloud, how can you be sure it will be there for you? What protections can you put in place? What backup plans can you establish? What questions should you ask potential hosted/cloud vendors? In this session, security professional Dan York will walk you through the basic risk areas of voice-over-IP security, explain how those relate to both hosted and hybrid configurations and leave you with a concrete list of questions to consider in considering hosted/cloud options. Slides available here: http://www.slideshare.net/voxeo/speechtek-2009-securing-cloud-telephony-aug2009

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud telephony, Conferences, Security, SpeechTEK, Videos, Voxeo, Voxeo Speaks | 2 Comments »

Soak up Some Sunshine with Voxeo at IT Expo in SOBE

Monday, January 18th, 2010

A few of Voxeo’s finest will be soaking up some sunshine in SOBE (SOuth BEach), Miami on January 20 – 22, 2010.  Jose de Castro Chief Architect Voxeo Labs, Director of Conversations Dan York, as well as VP of Innovation Jason Goecke will be participating at IT Expo East and the inaugural one day workshop called The Cloud Communications Show held at the Miami Beach Convention Center.  Their sessions are:

Dan York

The Cloud Communications Show: 1/20/2010

“Cloud Telephony for the Enterprise”

This session discusses tradeoffs in deploying communications applications behind the firewall, with a hosted partner or through elastic mechanisms such as Amazon’s EC2.

Other speakers planned for this session are Troy Davis, CEO of CloudVox, and Evan Cooke, Co-Founder and CTO of Twilio.  Thomas Howe will moderate the session.

Jason Goecke

The Cloud Communications Show: 1/20/2010

“Introduction to Voice Mashups: An introduction to the concept and architecture of using voice as part of modern web-based applications.”

Concrete voice mashup examples will be demonstrated, along with the business cases that support them.

Jason Goecke will be speaking, other speakers planned for this session are David Troy, Founder of Roundhouse Technologies, Jay Phillips, Founder of Adhearsion, and Joe Developer.  Thomas Howe will moderate the session.

Jose de Castro

IT Expo Conference: 1/21/2010, 2:00-2:45pm

“Value in the Clouds: The Evolution of the Telephone Industry”

With tremendous pressure on businesses and telephone companies of all sizes to generate new revenue without new capital or operational spending, hosted application opportunities are moving to the forefront of the communications arena. To fully leverage current opportunities in this fast-paced market, market participants need to first understand past and current computing models as well as the evolution of service providers beyond owning networks and selling basic voice offering. This session will discuss the evolution of the telco to more than merely a dial tone provider, the different telco models in existence today, and the new revenue potential of today’s telecom market.

Participating companies include Voxeo, Ifbyphone and CallFire.

Voxeo Corporation

If you are planning to attend IT Expo East in Miami or are in the area and would like to coordinate a meeting with Jose, Dan and/or Jason drop us a note!

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Cloud telephony, Conferences, Voxeo | 2 Comments »

Join us for a free webinar today “Speech Solutions: Hosted Versus On-Premises” – 2pm US Eastern

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

stmwebinar.jpgInterested in learning about the advantages of hosted speech solutions versus on-premise solutions? Or why you should or shouldn’t have to choose? Want to understand the pros and cons of pushing voice applications out “into the cloud”? If so, please join us today at 2pm US Eastern time for a free webinar hosted by Speech Tech Magazine and including speakers from Voxeo, Angel.com, Contact Solutions and Nuance Communications. To sign up, please go to this URL:

http://www.speechtechmag.com/webinars/roundtable/12nov2009/vox2

Industry analyst Daniel Hong from Ovum (formerly Datamonitor and author of Datamonitor’s IVR short list report) will start the session with a market overview and the whole event is hosted by Speech Tech Magazine’s David Myron. Key questions to be discussed include:

  • How the incentives built into a hosted agreement impact the customer’s long-term results;
  • How the arrangement should be set up for you to realize maximum savings;
  • The capabilities to look for when selecting a provider;
  • The role of monitoring, reporting, and tuning;
  • The role of caller behavior analysis;
  • The impact of service-level agreements on performance, availability, and caller experience;
  • The limitations when handling different interaction types, such as touch-tone, mobile, speech, and authentication/verification; and
  • Integration with customer and third-party data/solutions to meet unique call requirements.

It should be an interesting collection of viewpoints given the mix of vendors. Again, it’s free, so please feel free to sign up and join us at 2pm US Eastern, 11am US Pacific. The session will also be archived for later viewing.

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

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Posted in Applications, Cloud telephony, Voxeo, Webinars, ivr, prophecy, speech | 5 Comments »

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