- Posted by jfarrar on June 26, 2008
Today, or I should say Yesterday, was a really cool day. Broadsoft officially launched their Xtended Platform, which includes their new RESTful API's called XSI. In my mind this is really awesome for a couple different reasons. From what I know, and what I have researched, there is NO ONE and I mean no one that is doing this in the telecom space. Especially not on the same level and caliber as Broadsoft.
Here you have a carrier-grade VoIP software platform provider who provides VoIP applications to seven of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 largest carriers worldwide. This was measured by recent annual revenue, including Korea Telecom, KPN, SingTel, Sprint, Telefonica de Espana, Telstra, T-Systems, and Verizon.
Now any developer can access their API platform by going to here and creating an account. What will you have access to? Everything a normal Broadsoft user will have access to, however including the ability to program against their API layer.
What kind's of things can you do with this? Well you can do some simple stuff, for instance turn on or off Do-Not-Disturb. On top of that you have the full ability to build applications around the rest of the some 50+ base function calls.
What kind if things could you build?
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A service configuration portal.
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A call control virtual office.
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A click-to-dial appointment system.
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etc.
You basically have free reign to decide what you want to build. This is really going to open up the floodgate of web based voice 2.0 applications.
On another note it seems that there are skeptics out there regarding whether or not it will be successful. It also appears that the author is partial to Sylantro. Unfortunately, I can't say I had a great experience with Sylantro. Additionally, their developer program never caught traction. However, Broadsoft has already starting showcasing third-party solutions inside their marketplace.
I shouldn't even be linking to this negative article but here goes. Enough with all of the negativity. Do you homework as a blogger/editor and actually read about what's going on. I mean this guy Rich says "So-Called RESTful API".
So-called? What the heck do you mean so-called? It either is or it isn't there is not such thing called "So-Called". And I can tell you personally that it's not so-called. IT IS RESTful. Do your homework. Believe me when I say that there will be some mass market applications as time goes on the produce quite a bit of revenue. There will always be naysayers regarding whether or not something will be successful.
I for one am a developer that takes action and knows something good when I see it. Broadsoft has something good going on, don't miss out.
Go to: http://developer.broadsoft.com/ to signup for a developer account
or
Go to: http://marketplace.broadsoft.com/ to learn about applications already built.
UPDATE: Found this cool polling system called slantly, you can check it out above
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- Posted by jfarrar on January 3, 2008
I'm not the greatest when it comes to blogging. I guess it's just difficult to blog when you have so many things going on. I'm going to get better at it, but for the time being it appears there will be months between blogs <g>. Anyhow, I've recently starting reading up again about this new voip component for Flex called ribbit. I had registered way back in October when it was first being released as a beta to only developers. I never really got a chance to integrate it into anything. However, now that I've started reading up on it again and have some ideas to play around with it.
I kind of have a philosophy about developing with new stuff. I first of all like to read all of the documentation (twice) so that I get a good grasp of the classes, methods and properties so I am not constantly having to go back to the reference documentation. Then I like to build some really simple applications that illustrate most of the features of the component/api/platform. After I've developed and integrated most of the simple features and made a few working examples (widgets, simple webforms) it's time to start wireframing and diagraming a much larger scale application.
So enough with the way in which I like to go about development and back to the ribbit platform. This product is absolutely the most innovative technology solution that ties together both the UI and backend to present a pretty and powerful application framework. The best of both worlds. I started out developing in flash then moved to PHP then moved to ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET. I figure it makes sense to return to my favorite framework (flash/flex/actionscript) and develop some cool little applications.
Ribbit just makes a ton of sense when it comes to user friendly applications. Obviously because it allows the developer to focus on the development and the designer to focus on the design and not really have to worrying about cross platform issues. It speeds up development and design time in my opinion by 40%, depending on the complexity of the UI and functionality.
In the end I'm looking at developing some pretty cool applications around the Ribbit platform, but at first I'll just do some simple integrations into familiar platforms that I have developed in before. Looking forward to messing around with the API.
1 comments
- Posted by jfarrar on October 30, 2007
CallControl.NET has had it's first official sale to an undisclosed entity. It's exciting to see it's potential and I'm excited to see how it gets integrated into different solutions. Only time will tell whether or not this is a needed solution in the voip industry. In my personal opinion I feel that it has great potential to take off for several reasons.
- CallControl.NET allows you to integrate the call control functionality of Broadsoft™ into any existing or new .NET windows application.
- Broadsoft™ continues to rank as one of the top fastest growing technology company Here and Here.
Basically, this component will allow a quicker time to market for new applications with the added call control functionality. Additionally, it provides an easy ability to enhance existing applications.
It's really been a busy month and I'm sure as the holiday's approach it won't slow down. However, I'm excited to see what kind of applications will be developed with this component.
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- Posted by jfarrar on October 16, 2007
Well you would think that if you created a cool application that you would get some notice from the company. After numerous attempts to become part of the Broadsoft developer solutions network, I still can't seem to get much response from them. I've talked to quite a few different people there but each time it seems that they are too busy to be able to follow through.
No complaints to them though, they have been helpful, it just seems that the state of their third-party developer application program isn't going so well. I mean Broadsoft is a busy company but harnessing the power of the third-party developer community could cause a great adoption for new client applications and SaaS development.
I've been reading the latest reports and forecasts for the VoIP industry and it's pretty amazing. Currently the latest buzz is about Unified Communications (UC) and everyone is trying to get in on the ability to provide a UC offering. As time goes on though I think that companies like GrandCentral and TalkPlus (who offer SaaS applications with UC features) will become way more popular. In addition there needs to be more web based applications that focus on this kind of functionality.
As a developer Pure-play VoIP interests me to no end, because it provides the ability to harness the power of VoIP in a tangible retail way. Obviously there are thousands of VoIP providers that offer all sorts of different solutions, but Pure-play VoIP just stands out. There will always be carriers, and in reality that is where most of the money is made, but it's the cool applications that can be built off of the carriers that gets me going.
Anyhow, this is mostly just a jumble of my thoughts because I've been kind of absent for awhile working on all sorts of stuff. I'm still trying to see how I can contribute best to this end of the VoIP industry.
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