Web 2.0 Featured Article

IntelePeer Offers Pre-Built Apps

By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor

IntelePeer has launched a suite of new pre-built applications that Web services or developers can use to add communications features to existing applications. Among the new applications is the capability to set up conference calls directly from Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook. The app includes find-me-follow-me functionality that defines how people can be reached at any given time.

 

Another application allows users to initiate one-click calls, text messages or share media with friends using presence information and user contact lists.

 

Yet a third application provides a simple way to send a voice or text messages on a "blast" basis for business, group or emergency communications.

 

IntelePeer (News - Alert) also has created an application that sets up an emergency notification service for businesses or institutions, to connect teams instantly when a pre-defined emergency situation occurs.

 

The moves are steps along a continuum. In an earlier phase of development, the effort to communications-enable business processes tended to focus on how a single communications platform could be grafted to other software in use, says John Hart, IntelePeer SVP, business development and marketing.

 

"The way we see communications-enabled business processes, the way you apply cloud computing resources to applications is communications as a service," Hart says. Up to this point, lots of energy has gone into integrating enterprise applications with some specific communications platforms.

 

"We tend to look at CaaS at a different level, as something you want to use across an organization, and not unique to any single vendor platform," Hart says.

 

In a first phase of communications-enabled processes, people matched customer relationship management or enterprise resources planning systems to phone systems in use at a single enterprise.

 

The issue now is how to achieve similar effectiveness across platforms, or despite platforms, in a mixed-breed environment, Hart says.

 

There is one obvious implication. "You do it using the Web," Hart says. "You Web enable those applications."

 

There are some implications on the supply side as well. Software becomes something sold as a service, not a seat license. Applications become less monolithic; less dependent on upfront investments in big iron.

Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi