As indicated in previous posts, Voxeo has become a leader in the development and hosting of voice applications. From their website:

Voxeo helps enterprises improve service and lower costs by automating and connecting their most common phone calls with our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions.

Our IVR and VoIP hosting, turnkey platforms, and developer services – powered by VoiceXML and CCXML – are used by over 35,600 companies to create and deploy any telephone application they desire.

Historically Voxeo has provided, at no charge, resources for C++/Java and Web Developers to produce customized IVR applications that are then hosted at their network operations center. Their developer community has grown to over 35,000 participants. As their expertise has grown they have also developed their licensable Prophecy SIP platform for those enterprises that wish to host their own services using Voxeo’s tools.

Until now their voice applications required the use of the VoiceXML standard which placed limitations on their appeal to the broader developer community. Today, an announcement at eComm 2009 removes this limitation; Voxeo will be providing the tools to support the creation of voice applications in five languages: Python Ruby, PHP, Groovy and ecmaScript:

Tropo is an application platform that enables web developers to write communication applications in the languages they already use: Groovy, Ruby, PHP, Python and JavaScript. Tropo is in the cloud, so we manage the headaches of dealing with infrastructure and keeping applications up and running at enterprise-grade. Tropo is simple to deploy, requires no contracts and no up-front setup costs. With Tropo developers can build and deploy voice and telephony applications, or add voice to existing applications.

Via Voxeo’s new Tropo platform built on their existing infrastructure, developers can then deploy their applications on Voxeo’s hosted offerings via their Tropo.com portal. Applications can incorporate inbound calling via PSTN, SIP, Skype and iNum while also providing appropriate connections for outbound calling.

Voxeo’s business models simply runs at a cost of 3 cents per minute for use of the service. There are no setup charges or contracts required; payment is via credit card. CEO Jonathan Taylor claims it takes five minutes to set up and deploy via Tropo.com.

Additionally Voxeo announced that the  developers of Adhearsion, a Ruby-based rapid application development framework, will be making their framework support the Tropo platform.

For developers who want to have a deeper look, check out the Tropo launch site where there are incentives for developer participation. One more relevant Voxeo blog post: Get the Tropo sample applications – via git and Github.

Voxeo’s announcement is a major contributor to the evolution of the Voice 2.0 world, opening up opportunities for a much broader community of developers and integrators.

Over the past ten years Orlando, FL-based Voxeo Corporation has grown to become one of the largest hosts of enterprise Interactive Voice Response (“IVR”) applications, building not only tools for developing and hosting these applications but also a track record of twenty profitable quarters as a self-financed private company.

Historically Voxeo has provided, at no charge, resources for C++/Java and Web Developers to produce customized IVR applications that are then hosted at their network operations center. Their developer community has grown to over 31,000 participants. As their expertise has grown they have also developed their licensable Prophecy SIP platform for those enterprises that wish to host their own services using Voxeo’s tools.

Today Voxeo announced an expansion their development expertise, technology base and user community through the acquisition of Germany-based Voice Objects.

While acquiring ownership of Voice Objects’ technology assets, Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor emphasized in an interview with me yesterday that Voxeo’s first reason for making an acquisition is to acquire the expertise and professionalism of the employees. Contrary to the popular perception of making an acquisition and focusing on the technology assets, Voxeo looks for team players who can fit into Voxeo’s culture and then look at the technology synergies.

As a bonus the Voice Objects acquisition brings to the table as customers a new layer of developers; namely those who routinely develop “self-service” applications for service providers and enterprises as a full time occupation. Jonathan described Voxeo’s current developer resources as having two layers: API-based telephony libraries favored by C++/Java “low level” developers and  XML-based telephony languages using Voxeo’s proprietary but simplified VoiceXML as well as other XML standards for web developers. The acquisition of Voice Ojbects introduces a higher level of object-based telephony tools, employing drag-and-drop and visual rapid development techniques.

Whereas Voxeo’s legacy tools facilitated people-to-people connections, Voice Ojbects’ toolkits facilitate the development of “self-service” applications where no human is involved in delivering or provisioning enterprise or carrier-based services.  It is multimodal in that not only is voice involved but also SMS messaging and video can be brought into the application where appropriate. For example, T-Mobile Czech can easily program changes into their self-service applications reducing development times by an order of magnitude while dynamically addressing market needs.

Taylor described Voice Objects’ toolkits as having three major components: a rich development environment, unified self-service middleware – that connects customer information within an enterprise with customers who desire access to this information via voice, SMS or other modes – and, finally, extensive analytics. The analytics component gathers real customer usage data and provides justification for making application modifications based on user experiences as well as changing local market conditions. To quote Jonathan: “Business owners don’t want to build a bad experience; however, it is challenging and difficult to build applications that work well for customers.”

In closing our interview, Taylor mentioned that Voxeo, recognizing that the best way to recruit talent is through acquisitions of this nature, will be looking at three or four similar acquisitions in 2009 building up a team of “great people who understand the industry well”.

The acquisition of Voice Objects will not change Voxeo’s business model of making their developer resources available at no charge while charging either for hosting of applications or for platform licenses sold to enterprises that wish to host their own applications.

It appears that Voxeo continues to set a benchmark for operating a sustainably profitable business in the Voice 2.0 world. On a broader scale Jonathan has provided an overview of the various levels of developer segmentation and classes of tools available on the market today for creating Voice 2.0 applications.

Other posts on this acquistion:

• Vox Populi “Best Freaking Voice Platform on the Market”.
• Dan York at Voxeo: What the Voice Objects Acquistion by Voxeo means for voice applications developers.
• Michael Dinan, TMCNet: Voxeo Acquires VoiceObjects, Expands Cost-Saving IVR Solutions
• Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch: What’s New In VoIP? Lots with Gizmo, Voxeo and Fonality

Tags: Voxeo, Voice Objects. Jonathan Taylor, acquisitions

When fellow blogger Dan York joined Voxeo Corporation last October, very few of us in the IP-based communications blogging space had heard of this rapidly growing service provider. Over the next few months, sometimes with Dan’s assistance, Voxeo has become a familiar name identified with a self-financed startup, a profitable business and a very large enterprise customer base focused on supporting voice applications through third party development activity. Revenue generation comes solely from their “cloud” hosting and VoIP/SIP communications server software business. Last week, in following up on a couple of press releases, I had the opportunity to interview Voxeo’s CEO, Jonathan Taylor, and to learn much more about their success story.

Fundamentally Voxeo provides hosting environments for telephony applications, whether hosted on their in-house server “cloud” or on a customer’s premise-based servers. Developers write applications to their Prophecy platform creating XML files and SIP connections that are understood by the Prophecy-enabled servers. The Prophecy 9 client used by developers to create and manage these applications is now available for Mac OS X and Linux in addition to their legacy availability for Windows. Originally Voxeo only offered a hosted service but two years ago, in response to customer demand, they also provided the capability to support customers’ premise-based servers. Key elements of their program that have led to their success (and profitability) include:

• No charge for downloading, and use of, their software
• A focus on ease of development and deployment
• Charging customers only when a service is launched and providing business value
• Option to use either Voxeo’s hosting “cloud” or customers’ premise-based servers (usually based on the overall business case for supporting the application)
• Licensing based on a “per port” or “per minute” business model, as appropriate
• Providing Prophecy as a suite of components for SIP implementations
• A platform based entirely on open standards
• Including solutions for supporting conferencing, voice mail, call recording, speech recognition and auto-attendant requirements
• A strong channel and developer focus recognizing the role of third party professional developers as their key to implementing their enterprise customers’ services
• Lowering their customer support requirements through innovation in their software.

Two recent press releases covered:

• Launch of Prophecy 9, providing support for OS X and Linux clients to their platform as well as a new management console that not only reduces the complexity of development and associated deployment costs but also provides increased scalability.
• Acquisition of Beijing, China-based Micromethod, not only complementing Voxeo’s Prophecy suite of modules with their SIP-focused products but also providing a base for expanding Voxeo into serving the Asia-Pacific markets..

When I asked Jonathan about representative applications beyond the flexible yet effective IVR applications they can support, the list of several thousand applications includes:

• Intelligent call routing (using their call control features)
• Voice mashups providing access to, say, email or Google Calendar
• Anonymous calling services
• Facilitating calling services for children’s websites such as Nickelodeon.

Jonathan summed up their application support as providing a “services innovation platform” that operates “at the edge”, bypassing any carrier dependence beyond acting as a pipeline for their services. A final key feature is their provision of a highly accurate billing infrastructure, critical to their ability to support both their own invoicing and receivables management as well as their customers’.

Last Wednesday Voxeo issued a third press release discussing some of their business success with revenue growth of 99.7% (no rounding allowed – who would believe 100%, they say), 18 successive profitable quarters and a very high customer retention rate. Not being a public company they do not need to release any detailed financials. But building and supporting a community of 31,000 developers probably says it all.

In conclusion, Voxeo’s business represents a practical, successful and profitable implementation of Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto, emphasizing that the value-add for voice conversations going forward lies in the applications.

Note 1: Tomorrow morning (August 26) Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor will be the guest for Alec Saunders’ daily Squawkbox conference call. Dan York provides more details on how to participate. If you miss the call, you can hear the recording posted on SaundersLog.com.

Note: Voxeo’s hosted “cloud” also supports connectivity to Skype for inbound calls.

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Voxeo is a hosting service for a variety of voice related business applications including IVR, conferencing services and proprietary enterprise business process applications amongst others. To encourage application development they provide a developer’s site with developer guides. Other applications deployed include auotmated speech recognition, school notification services, package tracking and a front end for voice biometrics authentication. Connections can be made via DID, 800-number with PIN, SIP and Skype. Summary from Supplier : Voxeo helps enterprises improve services and lower costs by automating and connecting their most common phone calls with IV and VoIP solutions.

Main Website : http://www.voxeo.com

Products and Services :

• IVR server hosting
• VoIP platforms hosting services
• Voice Applications
• Prophecy on-premise server license

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Main Category :Service Provider, Enterprise, Small Business