Silicon Valley startup Ribbit launched a new platform that promises to bridge traditional telephony and the Web…
Ribbit, a Silicon Valley startup, promises to open up voice communications to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, announcing a Web-based technology platform that allows developers to create voice applications and services.
The company has built a telephony switch that can connect Web-based phone calls to a variety of phone networks, including voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services like Skype.
“It is a very innovative idea — not only does Ribbit provide developers with a way to easily integrate voice into almost any kind of Web application, they will also provide a platform for testing and selling new services,” said Will Stofega, research manager for VoIP services at IDC.
“Ribbit’s arrival comes at a time when telephony and computing are truly converging,” added Stofega.
Using an open platform to facilitate connections between telephony and the Web, Ribbit is working with a community of more than 600 outside developers who are creating Web-based voice applications that can be used directly in consumer and business markets.
“The world does not need another phone company,” said Ted Griggs, co-founder and CEO at Ribbit, in a statement. “What it needs is new kind of Phone Company, one that liberates voice from its current confines — devices, plans and business models — and more readily integrates into the workflow of our professional and personal lives.”
Ribbit owns a Lucent-tested class 5 softswitch infrastructure and at the heart of Ribbit’s new telephony platform is the “SmartSwitch” — coupled with Flash/Flex-based application programming interfaces that bridges the gap separating the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) from next-generation networks based on VoIP and other advanced communication protocols.
“Ribbit is already showing off the first fruits of its collaboration with various partners.”
“Ribbit has teamed with Salesforce.com to build an application that can be used with Salesforce’s CRM platform, where workers use voicemail applications alongside the rest of customer information.” Beta testing with Salesforce began in October and attracted half a dozen early adopters at the time.
“Through the APIs, developers can add the ability to send and receive calls from a Web application and transcribe a voice message into text.”
Developers can tie voice from any Flash-enabled browser to the public switched telephone network and voice-over-IP networks, according to Ribbit. Additionally, developers get access to a back-office and service-delivery infrastructure with the platform, which means they can build and sell services.
For example, calls placed on mobile phones can be answered over a Web browser, through a Flash widget, or on a VoIP client, Ribbit executives noted. Moreover, calls made over the Web can be answered on the Web, on a regular phone, or through a desktop widget. The Ribbit SmartSwitch makes all this transparent.
Ribbit is marketing itself as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.” But instead of pitching a traditional phone service model, the startup is taking a different approach.
Though Ribbit voice applications will be similar in many respects to what today’s VoIP operators now provide, the company said that users will not be required to download a soft-phone application before they can start placing or receiving calls over the Web. In addition, consumers will have the option of using Ribbit’s AIR iPhone software interface, which mimics the look and features of Apple’s popular iPhone handset.
Ribbit’s platform will even transcribe user voicemail into text messages. And it will offer support for existing Web-based voice services, such as GoogleTalk, MSN, and Skype.
The integration of voice communications into any type of Web applications can lead to a wealth of new business uses. “More and more business services are becoming involved in the Internet,” said Adam Gross, Salesforce’s vice president for developer markets.
“Ribbit is bringing more business class services on the Internet, more than just phone services, but as voice, email, and searchable voice mail, along with the ability to have it all as flexible as other business services. We think that developers should be able to decide how they would like to take advantage of telephony and create applications to use in new contexts," Gross said.
About 30 companies are testing the service, which will cost $25 a month per person and be available to Salesforce.com users in the first quarter.
“Ribbit did not disclose financial terms of its agreement with Salesforce.com.”
Ribbit’s platform differs from classic VoIP or unified communications platforms sold by Cisco, Microsoft and others, Stofega added. “Ribbit leads to new types of applications,” he said. “It implies you can change the nature of voice with new applications and hook them to other applications.”
Chris Berridge, co-founder and principal of New York-based Bluewolf, a top partner of Salesforce.com, said the SaaS benefit of Ribbit is apparent. Voice applications can be shared by workers over the Internet, with a potential for significant value to businesses, he said. “This is important, especially for call centers emails and for Website email.”
“Ribbit is a great example of the new breed of innovative partners that Salesforce.com is working closely with to deliver the potential of the Force.com platform,” said Clarence So, chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com. “Mobile voice in Salesforce workflow is a combination that is sure to bring productivity breakthroughs to many Salesforce customers.”
The company intends to make money by charging directly for its voice service or sharing revenue with partners that use its platform to embed voice services, executives said.
In a demo, company executives showed how its voice component can be operate within a Web page. The phone pad appears as a small window that can be moved.
The company chose to build its platform using Adobe front-end Web technology, even though Adobe, too, is building peer-to-peer voice capabilities into Flash with a product code-named Pacifica.
“Ribbit’s Griggs said Ribbit has built on top of lower-level services with more traditional telephony services, including billing.”
Most companies currently focus on providing lower cost dial tone and prepackaged features, noted Crick Waters, Ribbit’s vice president and cofounder. “Ribbit’s founding premise is that voice is valuable, and particularly valuable when mobile, Web, and fixed communications are merged into and made part of business work flow,” Waters said.
“In general, it has been pretty much accepted that in the future, voice communications will be driven by applications rather than by subscribing to a service,” Keith Nissen, a principal analyst with In-Stat, said in a statement. “With initiatives like Ribbit and Google Android on the mobile side, basically what we are seeing is that there is a lot of momentum behind having open networks and using the Internet to access applications rather than a network service provider.”
Click-to-call buttons in applications, for example, will make it possible to make phone calls directly from inside applications, he added, and those applications will determine how calls are made. A user working in an eBay application, for example, might make a call that goes through Skype, while calls from another application might go through Google, Yahoo or Verizon Wireless, for example.
The future will likely bring a hybrid environment in which everyone has multiple ways of accessing different applications and in which the application determines which mode is used, Nissen predicted.
Early next year, Ribbit will begin offering its platform to consumers, featuring the first innovations from its developer community, as well as sell commercial and enterprise packages to developers selling services that use the Ribbit platform.
“Both the consumer and the enterprise markets will be key areas of focus for Ribbit, the company said.”
“This is a growing trend,” Nissen explained. “It will change the whole way we think about personal communications and communicating in general.”