Throughout the incredible journey of the telecom OSS/BSS sector over
the last 10 years, VanillaPlus has remained a reliable source of both key
news but also informative, objective and thought-provoking assessments of
the key trends which have shaped our industry. I am looking forward to
VanillaPlus and their more recent Stream journal continuing to play a key
role in providing valuable insights as we enter one of the most exciting
phases of the telecoms OSS/BSS market evolutions.
Kieran Moynihan
Vice President & CTO Telecoms
IBM Tivoli Division
BT buys Silicon Valley's Ribbit for US$105m
2008-07-30 09:26:50
London, UK. July 29, 2008 - Ribbit has been acquired by UK incumbent telco, BT for $105m. Ribbit is an open platform for multi-protocol communication, that is said by its US creators to "empower a new market of voiceware applications and services". BT's mission with Ribbit is to accelerate voice innovation by enabling developers to bring to market the applications and products that end users need to stay in touch with their friends, family, colleagues and customers.
As communications and computing are quickly coming
together, we are seeing new technologies being invented, new business models forming
and new partnerships being created. Ribbit and BT intend that, through Ribbit's developer community, they will enable the dvelopment of improved voice services.
The Ribbit platform is designed to give developers, integrators and product innovators the opportunity to ride on our platform and leverage its APIs to create new communication solutions for private businesses, global enterprises, vertical markets and the masses.
The platform enables developers to bring
together the richness of voice calling and Web 2.0 experiences. With
Ribbit, voice can become a rich feature that can be added to any
application, on any device. Free from a traditional handset or the
latest mobile phone, voice can now be delivered and received on
multiple devices in multiple locations, across any network. It can be
integrated, monetized and personalized using the Ribbit platform.
Inevitably, Ribbit will be seen in the contect of Google's Android and Apple'siPhone. For some the former is merely a cloak for increasing Google's Advertisement sales, while the latter is tied to the Apple iPhone platform. Although this is an open platform technology, BT's challenge will be to see if it can escape being associated purely with BT's own services.
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