Cool VoIP Apps

I posted a few days back on adding Voice to Apps, in response to Andy Abramson's post on the same topic, and I said that there have to be better examples of Voice/Data application integration than those called out in the Brad Reed Network World article. 

So, it is time to start poking around to find those better apps. 

I think the best new apps focus on making people more productive at things they already do.

Om Malik has a new post, Is That Voice In Your App, on his blog, in which he writes about Fonality acquiring a reseller of SugarCRM, and integrating the FonalityCRM product with their PBXtra product to do an IP-based version of typical CRM-call center functions like click-to-call and screen pops.  This kind of thing might sound like old school, but there is a proven and well-established market for it, and Internet tools keep making the solutions better. 

Paul Sweeney reports progress on integrating interactive voice messaging with a logistics system.

RobWebb blogs that Iperia is creating infrastructure for "trackable calls," where each ad has a unique phone number and you can track the clickstream to determine ad effectiveness.

Of course, it is often overlooked, but hosted IP PBX services like the one offered by Unity Business Networks are making great progress with selling voice as a service based on the Broadsoft platform.  Broadsoft keeps adding more features to their Broadworks hosted PBX, and customers keep getting the benefits, without having to upgrade (or babysit) a customer premise PBX.  These kinds of services aren't new, but like the CRM applications discussed in this post, there is an established market for these services and they are seeing considerable traction in the market. 

Omfut blogs about voice apps connected to the Facebook social networking phenomenon, and finds that none of the VoIP widgets there are getting much traction.  Companies making Facebook VoIP widgets include Jaxtr, Jangl, Rebtel, Grand Central, Yackpack, Talkster, Getabuz, Iotum, Skype, Snapvine, Babytel, Yeigo, and TringMe.  Lots of options, but none of them dominating!

This is just a small taste of what is going on in the VoIP world...it would be impossible to cover it all in one post.  More to come!

Comments

[Chris M]

It's great to see Yeigo being mentioned amongst the mobile VoIP applications.

Great article!