eComm 2009 – Day 2
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
Arthur C. Clark as quoted by Ge Wang, SonicMule cofounder, at eComm.
Today we are hearing quite a bit about cloud telephony which is meant to seamlessly integrate voice over IP and web services. The long story short on this is that your web experience now involves voice communications and messaging.
In simpler terms, your PC embraces telephony services while new phones become web devices.
As an example, let’s say that you are looking for info on a local retailer on the Internet and that you get to talk to someone from that store while checking out their product catalog online, all of that using a desktop or a mobile device. Some solutions go a step further thanks to IVR, interactive voice response systems by which users issue voice commands to get things done and navigate, instead of clicking here and there and getting lost in the process.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO INNOVATE?
I would like to single out Chris Mair’s talk on service innovation, which highlighted the need for:
- enabling opportunities for the ecosystem to innovate
- lowering barriers to product creation
- delivering a clear route to market
Thinking of what it takes to innovate, one of the critical trends is defined as “extreme ease of service creation“. This means is that no actual programing (no coding) is needed to get useful and cool things up and running. UIs (user interfaces) deliver drag and drop features for web designers to easily create mashups and customized services. Services leverage mashups that blend data, content and tools from related and/or unrelated sources to deliver a new application. Overlaying icons showing the location of coffee shops on an online map being one simple example.
IT vs. TELCO? … CEPB vs. UC?
Initially, this requirement (extreme ease of service creation) was driven by developers of enterprise and business applications, most of which are not necessarily experts in telecomm services… the most heard quote at eComm is “enterprise developers are not voice developers”. The fact is that there are many more web developers out there than voice developers and keeping up with the new jargon: Communications Enabled Business Process, CEBP, adds voice to existing applications.
As Thomas McCarthy-Howe puts it: “for CEBP voice is the spice.” He also mentioned that CEBP is not UC, unified communications. After his talk, one would leave the room thinking that CEBP is driven by user requirements while UC seems to be the outcome of technologists working on integrating communication technologies for the sake of it.
In any case, telephony and messaging features can now be embedded in ERP, CRM and HR systems to name a few. Users can engage in a collaboration session to share documents, play announcements, check related messages or just a call with a peer or a customer while handling a given task.
However, the end game is not about enabling different services, but about bringing these tools to the application and the context the user is and, most importantly, doing that on a need basis minimizing the need for user intervention. This is about user centric innovation, aiming to deliver ease of use and a quality experiences. When discussing enterprise applications this translates into productivity.
APPLICATION PROGRAMMABLE INTERFACES
By the way, the most mentioned acronym at eComm is API, application programmable interfaces. They are meant to make developers life easier, being able to tap into a pull of assets and resources that enrich the applications and the user experience. There now appear to be so many disjointed APIs (whether open or proprietary) that developers are struggling with complexity again, a kind of defeating the purpose. So, there are calls for solutions that bring simplicity back in this business and examples of APIs that are independent of the multiple programming languages that exist out there.
OUT OF THE BOX & CREATIVE THINKING
The following has nothing to do with the above, but Ge Wang just delivered one of the most interested talks I’ve ever heard on how to make the best use of and iPhone and a social music application named Ocarina. Note that Smule just received $4M in series B financing. Admittedly, seeing the iPhone become a musical instrument was a good attention grabber. But, what got my attention was the fact that Ocarina has become a shared experience, a social media application which can lead to further innovations in the way we communicate and collaborate.
Links of interest:
“Cloud Telephony” is a term I just heard but did know about the VoIP & messaging relation.
Social Music is something new I just heard too. I am a musician myself (playing one of the Indian instrument) but unable to understand “smule” well. My thought is music is getting much digitized and is loosing its identity of getting emotions out in a natural form.
shagunsathya
March 4, 2009 at 8:22 pm
The number of companies enabling developers to build telephony and messaging apps in the cloud is growing driving innovation in the process.
On your second comment, I would think that, generally speaking, today’s digital world is democratizing knowledge, tools and technologies by making things more accessible to more people in more places.
When looking at the history of the “Industrial Revolution” in Europe, many expressed the same concerns about what would happen to craftmanship and people’s skills. That actually led to the “Arts & Crafts” movement in the late 1800.
consultaglobal
March 12, 2009 at 4:30 am