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Consumers have readily adopted hosted applications for unified communication. We believe a mobile application marketplace is no longer considered a fad, but a must-have platform for providing marketing and services to, not only “on-the-go” individuals, but the majority of consumers[1]. Moving forward from Web 2.0, we believe enterprises have likewise begun to acknowledge the importance of flexibility, speed of innovation, and availability of niche hosted services[2]. From the announcement of Amazon’s App Store, Force.com, and the addition of many others, the “buzz” has been centered on the inevitable adoption of hosted enterprise applications[3].
CIO.com’s Todd R. Weiss aptly names his new blog “Deciphering Enterprise Apps”. Rather than covering confirmed application adoption trends, Weiss seeks to examine “the successes, the failures, the trials and the experiences” of “installing, configuring, running and maintaining the critical applications that run your enterprises”. The critical question then, it seems to us, is not whether services offer to and use hosted applications for both businesses and consumers, but how best to do so.
As one of the first to offer custom hosted application services through the BroadSoft XtendedTM program, BroadSoft’s customers have leveraged a competitive edge through custom-branded Application Storefronts and in-demand applications through annual programs such as the Xtended Incubator Program.
What have we seen thus far?
- Increased availability of hosted Xtended Marketplace applications, with expectations for significant growth in the portfolio of available applications by mid-2012.
- Continued custom application innovation for customers and end-users through annual developer incentives and a growing base of 4,600+ Xtended developers who continue to contribute new long-tail application services[4].
- The launch of our first four pilot Marketplace service providers in 2011. Read customer quotes and application descriptions here: http://bit.ly/pM0wC7, http://bit.ly/p4BD1T.
Web applications, such as the Sales Force Connector and the Mobiso Speech Enabled Dialer, have garnered strong interest from the start of Xtended. As one example, our customers have related the success of the Salesforce Connector to its ability to transform CRM usability in communication services. By allowing businesses to quickly access advanced voice and call control features from within their Salesforce.com account, enterprises organize and communicate with internal and external contacts more efficiently. Through the desktop, the Salesforce Connector has allowed enterprise customers to:
- Display an incoming caller’s contact record information
- Find the appropriate user to forward a contact to
- Retrieve call and communication history for key prospects
- And more: see the Sales Force Connector in the Xtended Marketplace
We believe applications such as these continue to drive demand for hosted services offerings.
As enterprises rely more on mobility services, hosted mobile applications, such as the “RemoteOffice” application, quickly begin to pick up the popularity we saw with early web applications. Mobile hosted applications incubated through the Xtended Incubator program in 2011 (for example the iPad Front Office Assistant, iPad Receptionist, and BuzzMe, an iPhone based group notification app) will offer a full-range of advanced hosted communication services to the mobile business and consumer end-customers. BroadSoft is excited to watch hosted applications take full advantage of hosted voice features not available through traditional phone services. You can view an early prototype of a receptionist tablet application here: http://www.youtube.com/broadsoftclips#p/u/31/kec_R54uqfo.
Those involved in the Xtended program from the early stages have benefited from educational and awareness driven initiatives that have generated visibility and demand for both web and mobile hosted applications. Moving forward, we believe the BroadSoft ecosystem will benefit from the expected increase in hosted web and mobile enterprise applications, the entrance of additional BroadSoft hosted marketplaces, and the resulting drive of additional niche applications and services. As hosted enterprise applications continue to replace IT services, BroadSoft will likewise continue to report best-practice trends and innovations in marketplace and application offerings for our service providers and their end customers. Success, however, is constrained by your willingness to become a part of the project. Offering benefits such as hosted store fronts with minimal capex, BroadSoft Xtended ensures service providers can now expand with us without the growing pains. Learn more here: http://bit.ly/xtendedmarketplaceserviceprovider.
[1] See one study here: http://bit.ly/keDlHz.
[2] Read select growth numbers here: http://bit.ly/nFk2R3, http://bit.ly/nFk2R3, http://bit.ly/pMVduf.
[3] See insight: http://bit.ly/oRGdb1; http://zd.net/rbn5ka.
[4] For an explanation of Long Tail Marketing, see: http://bit.ly/oiSfzm
There Is No Better Time to be a Developer!
Everywhere you look, the barriers to revenue for developers are dropping. Free developer sites, free tools, eCommerce ecosystems and willing, yet discriminating, end-users abound. This dramatic change has been brought about by three major drivers:
- Mobility and the new App economy led by Apple
- Web 2.0 and its lasting principles of Web as Platform and the power of user-generated content which has evolved into the social networking revolution
- Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS), as well as the evolution of accessible, scalable infrastructure.
So, where are the challenges? Application developers face two in particular: access to survival capital as they incubate their ideas and building the right “thing.” These challenges are accentuated in the telecommunications industry with its proprietary APIs, high barriers to entry and lack of direct interaction between end-users and app creators, due to an almost opaque chain of vendors and carriers between them.
We decided to take these problems head on through our Xtended Program. Following on the heels of our BroadSoft Marketplace program that creates a new, frictionless, eCommerce distribution channel for all our developers, we have also announced the Xtended App Incubator (http://developer.broadsoft.com/xai) to motivate developers to start their application ideas and more importantly: build the right “thing. “
The Xtended App Incubator provides seed funding ranging from $3K-$10K for great teams creating great apps that our customers want. Yes, we went out and asked our customers to vote for their most wanted Apps. Developers with the right skills who apply to build a “wanted” app idea are being screened to make sure they are a good fit for developing the app and also understand our terms. Selected developers will be provided with funding immediately to start building the app.
A number of ecosystems currently exist that “talk the talk” about supporting developers and many more that preach “listening to the customer.” With the Xtended App Incubator, BroadSoft acts on both, while laying the foundation for an ecosystem that is more transparent, more symbiotic and we hope ultimately much more adept at addressing the industry challenges we collectively face.
It’s day two of our seventh annual users‘ conference, Connections 2009, and today we raise the curtain on an initiative we’ve been trying to keep under wraps for some time now – the monetization phase of our Xtended program.
The Xtended initiative was launched in 2008 to open up the BroadWorks platform to third-party innovation and the Web 2.0 in particular. We picked the best practices of Web 2.0 – open standards, RESTful APIs, forums, and an online presence for our community in the form of a developer portal and marketplace for them to post their creations. Today, with a developer community of 2,000 strong, we take another big step forward – adding ecommerce functionality to the Xtended marketplace. Now, any BroadSoft-powered operator (more than 450 worldwide by the way) can distribute third-party apps, sourced from the Xtended developer community, in their own custom-branded online store.
Think of it like the Apple App Store for IP Communications apps with a twist. Every BroadWorks-powered service provider can pick and choose from the eCommerce-enabled marketplace and create their own mini app store. This is a big deal not just for service providers that have a new revenue-generating channel, but for consumers and businesses who will have fast, easy access to a diverse array of solutions online and available for download in one click. Plus third-party developers in the Xtended community stand to benefit with online stores where they can shop their apps to more than half-a-billion people.
Several BroadSoft-powered service providers including Comporium, SimpleSignal, Telesphere and WorldxChange will be launching their apps stores in early 2010. And when they do, a number of developers will be at the ready to hit upload including:
- Spinvox, which offers a ‘Voicemail to Text’ app
- JoeDeveloper whose Quickset Pro application manages a host of call functions such as Sequential Ring, Speed Dial and Remote Office
- Mobile Max’s Enterprise Edition a unified communications client that allows access to all call functions – Do Not Disturb, Call Forward – from a mobile handset
Of course, we think this is game changing – but don’t take our word for it. See for yourself here.
Michael Tessler
Scott Hoffpauir
Leslie Ferry
Alex Doyle
Curtis Hartmann
Shirish Andhare
Paul Adams
