Voxeo Talks

Part of the culture here at Voxeo is that we like to have a good bit of fun… and we also like to play with new toys There are a good number of us, myself included, who are doing more these days with digital photography… we even have our own internal groupchat where we share tips, talk about gear and point out great photos we’ve seen out on the web.

Recently Andreas Volmer traveled to Orlando from our Cologne, Germany, office and brought with him a Lensbaby Composer lens for Nikon DSLRs. Several of us experimented with it and Andreas sent along this set of photos he took (click on the image to see the full set):

www.flickr.com voxeophoto’s Voxeo – Lensbaby Effects – Feb 2010 photoset

It’s a funky lens in that you can tilt it to change the area where the main focus is. You need to manually focus it, but as you can see in the photos you can get some very interesting effects. Fun stuff!

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What do you do if you generate over 1 terabyte of logging data each day? How do you begin to analyze that volume of data? And how do you make it so that 100,000+ developers can easily access their own individual logging data?

At the “splunk>live” event in Orlando, FL, on March 10, 2010, Voxeo CTO RJ Auburn spoke about how Voxeo uses Splunk to analyze logging data and monitor network operations. He also described how Splunk is integrated into both the “Prophecy Live Search” component of Voxeo’s Prophecy Hosting and also in the management console of Voxeo’s on-premise Prophecy communications platform. RJ’s slides are available on SlideShare and are also viewable here:

If you’d like to try out Voxeo services and experience the ability to rapidly analyze logs yourself, please head on over to www.voxeo.com/free to either sign up for a free developer account on our hosted platform or download a free copy of our Prophecy platform for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

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2010 will be held this Wednesday March 10, 2010 at the Sheraton Safari Hotel and Suites in sunny Orlando, Florida (where Voxeo headquarters is also located).  Splunk lets you search and analyze all your IT infrastructure data from one place in real time. With Splunk, you can troubleshoot application outages, investigate security incidents and more in minutes, not hours or days.  Voxeo’s CTO, RJ Auburn will be doing a customer presentation at this event and you won’t want to miss it!

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A hybrid IVR platform is one that is available as a hosted/cloud-based solution and as an on-premise deployment. Just to be clear, we are not simply talking about two distinct offerings delivered by a single vendor. We mean one platform – offered two ways.   Benefits include the ability to migrate between deployment models at any time or to take advantage of both deployment models at the same time — with no changes whatsoever to your applications. That’s exactly what our partner Tele-Works did to enable Harris Computer Systems to serve a diverse base of utility customers.

Harris Computer Systems provides Customer Information Systems, billing software and other solutions to thousands of utility customers throughout North America. Harris recognized that IVR is a key component to a successful utility’s customer service department, but required a way to serve all of their customers – from the largest to the smallest – with one consistent solution.

Tele-Works provided a Voxeo-powered solution that uniquely supports both hosted and on-premise deployments, as well as inbound and outbound calling, from a single code base. The Tele-Works solution extends across Harris’ complete utility product portfolio, giving thousands of utility customers access to quality IVR at price points that were previously unattainable.  Read the case study here.

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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?)

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Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor is out in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area this week (March 1-4) and he’s opened up part of his time to speak with media, bloggers, etc., about what Voxeo is doing and some big news announcements we have coming up shortly.

His schedule is filling up, but if you are in the Silicon Valley area and would like to meet with him this week, please contact Megan Maxwell to line up a time. Thanks!

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Google I/O is the tech giant’s annual developer conference May 19 and 20. The event includes sessions on how to build applications with Google technologies ranging from Android to App Engine and the Developer Sandbox, a demo pit of companies showing off what they’ve built with Google.

Voxeo will be in the Sandbox, demonstrating our real-time communications platforms with everything from production applications on Google platforms to experimental apps from our toy box.

Voxeo’s collaboration and communication platforms can be tightly integrated with Google technologies. Build and deploy rich multi-modal communications applications on Google App Engine. Organize a conference call within Google Wave, then call in with your phone or participate directly from your browser. Embed collaboration and web meeting spaces into any Google Friend Connect site. Or use Google Talk to interact with your users through any application.

If you’re heading to Google I/O, come by and see us. Or contact Ananda Cheddie if you’re in the area and would like to arrange a private meeting with us.

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We were very pleased this morning to have a visit by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to Voxeo’s corporate headquarters in downtown Orlando. Just yesterday in his “State of the City” address (which you can watch on video at that link), Mayor Dyer mentioned Voxeo as one of the “job creators of tomorrow” and an example of the high tech companies based in Orlando.

Here are two pictures of the visit with Mayor Buddy Dyer on the left and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the right:

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With the recent announcement of our acquisition of ClackPoint, we had a number of folks ask what were the “eight acquisitions” we mentioned in the news release. So to answer that question, here is a quick list (click the titles to view the news releases):

ClackPoint, January 2010

ClackPoint is the leading real-time multi-media collaboration platform. Over 100,000 people each month use ClackPoint’s online voice, video and text virtual conference rooms to connect and collaborate with colleagues, friends, and social networks. Attendees can access ClackPoint’s virtual conference rooms using any telephone, SIP VoIP device and service, Skype phone and IM clients, and ClackPoint’s own Flash-based phone and IM web client. Additionally, ClackPoint’s easy API enables developers and enterprises to add these capabilities to new and existing applications. ClackPoint also provides pre-built “widgets” that work with existing applications and platforms including Google Wave. You can read more about ClackPoint and try it out for free at www.voxeo.com/clackpointfaq.

Motorola VoiceXML Browser, October 2009

We acquired Motorola’s VoiceXML browser business, including full and exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser. Additionally, all existing OEM customers of Motorola’s VoiceXML browser are now Voxeo customers. We created a FAQ about the acquisition to help explain what this means.

Adhearsion, July 2009

We acquired the team behind the Adhearsion project and with that created the Silicon Valley-based Voxeo Labs R&D and developer-focused team. Adhearsion is an open-source communications framework that is powered by Ruby and running on top of Asterisk open-source PBX. It is used by over 5,000 developers today.

IMified, May 2009

We acquired IMified, the world’s largest hosted instant messaging application development and deployment platform. IMified enables IM bots that work with AOL, Cisco/Jabber, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and post-acquisition added support for Twitter and Facebook. With IMified we delivered more of what we call Unified Self-Service where you can create one application in our hosted environment and have it interact with people across multiple channels including voice, SMS, IM and social channels. You can try out IMified for free at www.imified.com.

VoiceObjects, December 2008

With VoiceObjects, we acquired the leading self-service application development and analytics solution and established our Voxeo Germany office in Cologne with 30+ employees. VoiceObjects is a service creation environment based on the Eclipse integrated development environment that allows you to rapidly design and deploy applications that work with Voxeo’s Prophecy platform as well as about 30 other IVR platforms. As part of the acquisition, we acquired hundreds of customers including Adobe, Citibank, Hershey, IKEA, Kellogg, Postbank, SAP, Swisscom, T-Mobile, Vodafon and Volkswagen. You can try out VoiceObjects for free at developers.voiceobjects.com.

Micromethod, August 2008

With Micromethod we gained a SIP-based communication and collaboration solution and also established our office in Beijing, China. Products include the SIPMethod development platform based on JSR-289 SIP Servlets and other standards; the SIPoint product that includes a SIP registrar, location, redirect, proxy, instant messaging, XCAP and presence services; and the Horizon session border controller (SBC) and SIP firewall. Customers include a number of large video and wireless vendors. You can try Micromethod products for free at www.micromethod.com/free.

VoiceReady, July 2006

With VoiceReady, we acquired a web-based graphical design and reporting solutions for the rapid delivery and management of VoiceXML and VoIP-based telephony applications. We relaunched the solution as Voxeo Designer, the do-it-yourself voice application creation tool that is available in both our Prophecy Hosting or on-premise Prophecy software.

Vocomo, October 2005

Vocomo was a provider of an open-standards based IVR platform. With the acquisition Voxeo acquired over 100 enterprise customers.

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Telenet Contact Center Solutions are immediatly available as on-premise or hosted SaaS using Voxeo Prophecy and VoiceObjects platform.

Telenet will deliver its solutions on Voxeo´s Prophecy and VoiceObjects Unified Self-Service platforms using Voxeo on-demand hosting, on-premise software or in hybrid combinations of both. These options allow Telenet customers for both unexpectedly high call volumes and for disaster recovery.

Read the full story

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