The communications world, having long since evolved from a purely TDM environment, to where a large portion of voice traffic is carried over IP networks, is perhaps the most exciting industry to be in today. The reasons are many, but they all boil down to a single focus: the next generation networks that are being deployed today leave room for an almost unimaginable amount of innovation.

 

We’ve already witnessed so much, from the growth of Skype to more than 400 million registered users, to telepresence suites that offer the feel of being in a room with colleagues across continents, to taking pictures of your kids on your phone and immediately posting them to your social networking page to share with all your friends and family, and so on. You get the picture. 

 

Whether you’re looking at business phone systems and applications or mobile devices or personal communications, the capabilities we leverage today were hardly imaginable a few years ago. And who know what the next few hold.

 

But they are all a result of the fundamental concept of Next Generation Networking (NGN), which, in basic terms, means that a single network transports all forms of communication media across IP networks. 

 

One of the greatest advantages of moving to IP Communications is the ability to deliver new services on the application layer, as opposed to having to invest in and deploy new hardware. It has been widely acknowledged that the future of communications lies in applications — and to take it a step further, hosted applications, allowing service providers to deliver their applications using a SaaS model — or, as IntelePeer (News - Alert) prefers to call it, CaaS (Communications as a Service).

 

IntelePeer has focused on enabling providers and businesses to take all of their various forms of communication, and effectively embed them into the other common applications, eliminating time and complexity in establishing communications. Its AppworX platform allows interactive voice, video, SMS, data and other rich media services to be introduced into the applications that are used by businesses and consumers on a daily basis, driving productivity while reducing costs.

 

For its efforts, IntelePeer has been recognized by TMC (News - Alert) by way of naming it a 2009 NGN Leadership Award winner for AppworX.

 

The idea behind AppworX is to build the bridge to connect once disparate transport and access layers with the application layer in a network, allowing rich media communications to be embedded into applications and delivered seamlessly to the user.

 

It’s all about enriching the communications experience.

 

Two of the first applications, for instance, were a Facebook (News - Alert) plug-in to enhance collaboration between Facebook members, and a MS Outlook plug-in that integrates integrate conferencing, collaboration, voice messaging, and SMS functions within the Outlook interface.

 

But the potential uses are limited only to the imagination of the developer community. They can leverage the platform to build rich media communications into any application or service.

 

“We see a lot of opportunities for various hosted applications, which we can communications enable and really extend their reach out to the end user telephony devices that they may be connected to,” said IntelePeer’s vice president of product management and marketing Charles Studt (News - Alert) back when the platform was first launched at ITEXPO West 2008.

The potential of the AppworX platform quickly drew attention, and not long after its debut, IntelePeer raised a cool $18 million in funding, to help not only develop the platform further, but to grow the company’s presence globally, including enhancing its global carrier-grade peering network.

 

“IntelePeer is uniquely positioned to address the need to reduce operational costs with an innovative hosted Voice 2.0 applications platform and carrier-class voice peering infrastructure,” said Bill Harding, managing director, VantagePoint Venture Partners and new member of the IntelePeer board of directors, at the time.

 

The AppworX platform was founded on a belief that communications didn’t need to be limited to the phones on our desks and in our pockets, but should connect those with all other modes of communication. It’s that vision that has rightfully earned it the NGN Leadership Award.