SOA/Web Services

Vonage’s legal problems this year, along with the recent shutdown of VoIP service provider SunRocket (News - Alert) and subsequent deal with USA Telephone to provide service for stranded subscribers, has left many people scratching their heads over the current state of the consumer Internet telephone service market.

 

Beyond the impact for consumers who subscribe to VoIP services, service providers themselves may be getting a bit nervous over the developments described above. Is the market really so volatile that customers can’t be sure if the service they use will be around tomorrow? Is the market really so volatile that providers can’t be sure they’ll be in business next month or next year?

 

Only time will answer those questions, of course. In the meantime, some companies see the potential for a lucrative operation based on Internet telephony technology in another, related market: business.

 

That is the approach taken by BlueNote Networks (News - Alert), a company that makes and sells software businesses can use to manage Internet telephony and IP communications applications for their employees and customers.

 

 

Sally Bament, vice president of marketing and product management at BlueNote, told TMCnet that the reason company decided to market its products to large enterprises has a lot to do with competition, but price vs. features is also an important dynamic.

 

“One of the reasons why we don't go after the consumer and small business market is because of the number of vendors in that space,” Bament said during a recent phone conversation with TMCnet. “There is a lot of competition, and it’s more about price than features.”

 

Instead of cashing in on the potential of IP communications by running a service provider operation, Bament said BlueNote’s founders instead decided a better route would be to make and license software enterprises can use to manage and control their own Internet-based voice applications.

 

The fact is that, while the VoIP market is competitive—players include not only SunRocket, Vonage and Skype (News - Alert) but also cable companies and other traditional service providers—Bament said there is real power in the idea of leveraging the Internet to give users access to phone services from any location with a broadband connection.

 

BlueNote, in fact, has taken this very concept and applied it to the business market, helping large enterprises reap economic and global reach benefits by managing their own Internet-facing phone systems for use by employees, customers and partners.

 

 

BlueNote takes the concept of Internet-based voice service—and its anywhere/anytime availability—to a new level by helping enterprises easily embed voice into their business applications.

 

“We license software that allows a corporation to extend its existing PBX so users can get access to the same features they use in the office, wherever they are located as long as they have a broadband Internet connection,” Bament explained.

 

The enterprise-class features Bament speaks of are not only a single voicemail box, but also things like conference calling, call forwarding, and call transfer.

 

Combining the flexibility of VoIP with the security and robustness of a corporate phone system, Bament said, is an important development. Many corporations today are being pressured by their employees to subscribe to a service like Vonage because it would give those employees a new and flexible tool to work with.

 

The problem with Vonage and similar services in the corporate environment, though, is that they are inherently not very secure. Bament noted that Vonage is a peer-to-peer service, and as such voice data may pass through corporate PCs serving as nodes on the network.

 

“That obviously is a very uncomfortable thought for any IT director,” she said. “What we've done is put the control, management and security in place so that enterprises can feel secure, when using BlueNotes’s SessionSuite software, that it is being used just for the purpose of doing business.”

 

 

BlueNote offers two server-side products (software enterprises run out of their data centers) and two client-side products (software that employees within an enterprise run on their PCs).

 

The base server product from BlueNote is SessionSuite Enterprise Edition. This software runs on standard Linux servers, and can be deployed on one or many servers. SessionSuite Enterprise provides corporate telephone system features that, instead of being applied to desktop phones, instead are applied to individual users regardless of how they connect to the network. Because the software includes encryption and firewall traversal features, enterprises can feel secure in letting employees access corporate communications services remotely—say, from a hotel room or at a customer site.

 

One step up from Enterprise Edition is SessionSuite SOA Edition. This software has all the capabilities of Enterprise Edition, but adds Web Service APIs. This feature lets enterprise IT developers create customized applications with embedded voice capabilities.

 

The idea with embedded voice is to make it possible for users to initiate calls from within an application. For example, someone using a customer relationship management (CRM) database could highlight the name of a customer, and by clicking a button, initiate a call to that person from a PC with voice capabilities. This functionality is available regardless of whether the CRM application is being used at the office, at home, or in a hotel.

 

Bament noted that, because BlueNote’s SessionSuite software is based on the SIP protocol, it interoperates with any SIP-based phone. These phones are manufactured by companies like Polycom, Cisco and Grandstream. Thus, enterprises do not have to purchase a client product from BlueNote—but BlueNote does offer two client-side solutions.

 

One of these products is SessionSuite Desktop—essentially a softphone. The software runs on a PC, and provides embedded voice functionality from within Microsoft (News - Alert) Office applications like Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. The Internet is leveraged by SessionSuite Desktop as means to connect back to one of BlueNote’s server products.

 

BlueNote’s other client-side product is SessionSuite WebCaller, a browser-based thin client that enables click-to-call functionality from within Web sites. An example can be seen on BlueNote’s own Web site (www.bluenotenetworks.com) on the Contact Us page: when users click the icon that says “Click to Call,” they can initiate a phone call to BlueNote from that Web page.

 

 

In a sense, BlueNote’s focus is on something that Bament called “the consumerization of IT.” She referred to how the capabilities of IP communications are helping to blur the lines between consumer and enterprise voice services. Many companies are now finding they need to create more flexible phone and communications systems to meet the expectations of both employees and customers.

 

This trend can be seen in developments like the acquisition of Skype by eBay (News - Alert) and the relationship between online dating service Web site eHarmony.com and VoIP provider JaJah. In both these cases, companies are leveraging the Internet for voice calling.

 

Bament said the eBay and Skype example is a good one because it shows how a company—in this case, an online auctioneer—is using Internet telephony to enhance its operations and its profits.

 

eBay, Bament noted, takes a cut of each sale closed using its services; the bigger the sale, the biggest the payoff. But, buyers are more likely to purchase big-ticket items like cars if they can talk to the seller on the phone first. Hence eBay’s decision to build Skype’s online phone service into its business. Short of building its own carrier or service provider network, leveraging the Internet for voice was the only way eBay could make this happen.

 

eHarmony’s relationship with JaJah is another example of this dynamic. Users of the eHarmony online dating service can talk to potential dates over the phone using JaJah VoIP without having to reveal their phone number.

Yet another example, this one directly involving BlueNote, is the recently announced deal to provide SessionSuite products to Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The university is using SessionSuite SOA Edition, SessionSuite WebCaller and SessionSuite Desktop to provide voice services and click-to-call IT help desk access to its students and faculty.

 

“These are all examples of how organizations are applying Internet voice services to their businesses,” Bament said. 

 

To learn more about BlueNote’s products, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channel, SOA/Web Services.

 

SOA/WEB SERVICES