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Find the Location of Any Phone Number with Cloudvox

Rocky — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:00:32 +0000

Despite or perhaps in light of the flattening of the world in global business, did you ever seek the connection between a phone number located on a browser and that phone number’s location? As of today, you can fulfill this curiosity, for FREE, with Cloudvox’s launch of their new Digits API (check it out at digits.cloudvox.com).

Today’s press release describes the details of the new phone API:

Cloudvox’s Digits API provides the city, state, telecom carrier, date of first use and neighborhood associated with a phone number – making it easy to display this data anywhere that a phone number is published online. The bookmarklet allows any Web user to highlight a phone number in their browser, click and learn where that number is located. Using the Web service, anyone can quickly access information about a phone number by appending it to the Web URL; for example, http://digits.cloudvox.com/2066831234 .

Troy Davis, the Director of Cloudvox for Ifbyphone, explained that the impetus for developing this API came in the form of Cloudvox’s customer requests for a simple way to include caller location in their phone apps. After developing this new Digits API, Cloudvox decided to offer the service to everyone – for free.

Why was it so important for Cloudvox’s customers to have access to these simple location tracking services? How can you use the Digits API? After all, why does the location of a phone number matter to you in your business?

If you’re a business…

You can route customer calls to your restaurant chain (or any chain store for that matter…) directly to their nearest location, without having to send them through an entire menu of options.
You can interact with your customers in your IVR menu intelligently, by understanding their location and time zone, and sending them through the appropriate call flow.
You can offer customers the ability to fill in the locations of phone numbers as part of a package of CRM or address book services.
Learn more about Ifbyphone’s phone apps, such as IVR, Voice Broadcasting, Virtual Call Center and Call Tracking. Ifbyphone recently acquired Cloudvox).

If you’re a developer…

You can develop iPhone or iPad apps to target location based advertising. Read PMI’s posts on targeted advertising and the NAI’s (Network Advertising Initiative) recent study that found targeted ads twice as valuable and effective as non-targeted ads.
You can use your imagination to build any located based apps you can think of, without the struggle of having to research the location of every phone number. Cloudvox’s platform is open source and Asterisk based. The Digists REST API can be used from any programming language.

How is the concept of customer location still important to your business, even in today’s era of international business? In the past week, all we needed to do was check out the news about the airports in Europe and volcano news to realize how much people’s live still depend on being in a certain place at a specific time. While we still live in cities, walk into restaurants, wake up and go to sleep in different time zones, and work in offices (some of us…), it’s somewhat refreshing to think in a positive light about the importance of location for us, our businesses and our customers. How can we leverage the importance of location in our marketing – one simple way is through Cloudvox’s new phone number API.

Defictionalized Products: How Marketability Oversteps Its Bounds

Avi — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:42:25 +0000

I’ve been fascinated for quite a few years now by the relationship between reality and fiction. Taking around half a dozen undergrad classes whose subjects were some variation of postmodern literature has a tendency to do that to a guy, I suppose. Marketing happens to be a fertile ground for investigations of this type, mostly because of the industry’s reputation as the type of industry that wouldn’t exactly be opposed to blurring the lines of the truth in order to make a sale (see, for example, Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars, for a prime example of both a catchy title and of the conventional wisdom on the field.)

As you might expect, Rob Walker is all over this type of thing. Stuart Elliot, as regular readers of this blog might have realized, is a common destination for my own reading, so I’m fairly certain I would have stumbled upon this article anyway, but Walker pointed me in the right direction and added a nuance of understanding. But first things first. Here’s Elliot on the increasing popularity of products which are created for the purposes of marketing, and the expression this finds Spanish-language telenovelas:

Such inclusion, known as branded entertainment or branded integration, is becoming increasingly popular as marketers seek to counter the ability of viewers to zip through or zap commercials. Now, the Spanish-language broadcast network Telemundo is expanding the concept by signing licensing deals with manufacturers to develop products that can be integrated into programming like telenovelas — the over-the-top, prime-time soap operas that are a staple of Hispanic TV.

Telemundo already works with advertisers like Clorox, Ford, Subway, T-Mobile and Toyota on branded-entertainment projects that include their products in telenovelas and other shows. The new deals will create products that would not otherwise exist for viewers to buy.

The first products will be jewelry, made by the Richline Group, a unit of Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company, which is to be worn in an episode of the telenovela “El Clon” (“The Clone”) to be broadcast on Telemundo at 8 p.m. on April 22. The jewelry is already available for sale on the Telemundo Web site (telemundo.com).

I love Walker’s one-line analysis: “These are products developed specifically to be sold through integration — created to be defictionalized.”

Obviously, I’m a fan of this type of thought from a conceptual perspective. But is it effective marketing?

That, I’m not so sure about. This approach really turns the normal equation on its head: marketing is (maybe was) about communicating value about something, and that value normally is (was?) something independent of its marketability. Here, the value of the Richline jewelry is that it is marketable. I’m not sure that this is a strategy that is sustainable. When the media of marketing change–and it seems certain that they will, if the last ten years are any indication–then there’s nothing that makes this line of jewelry special.

I’m reminded of a great article from a January 2009 The New Yorker called The Cobra: Inside a Movie Marketer’s Playbook, written by Tad Friend. The article, as is to be expected from The New Yorker, may have a higher word count than the entire content of this blog (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration) but it’s worth every minute. Here’s the money quote, about the business of movies:

One of the oldest jokes in the business is that when a studio head takes over he’s given three envelopes, the first of which contains the advice “Fire the head of marketing.” Nowadays, though, former marketers, such as Oren Aviv, at Disney, and Marc Shmuger, at Universal, often run the studios. “Studios now are pimples on the ass of giant conglomerates, ” one studio’s president of production says. “So at green-light meetings it’s a bunch of marketing and sales guys giving you educated guesses about what a property might gross. No one is saying, ‘This director was born to make this movie.’ “

Marketing is great. It really is. I love reading, thinking, and writing about it. But I’m worried that we lose something when a product’s marketability is the main determining factor in the development of the project. Is this something that inevitable? When you’re planning new services or products, what role does marketability play in the planning and implementation processes?

Can SkypeKit Get Your Products Plugged into Skype?

Aiming for Parody

Avi — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:58:39 +0000

Yes, you probably already realized that your marketing campaigns send a strong message about your company. And if not, I hope yesterday’s post made you consider just that point. But did you also know that your old campaigns, just like zombies, never die? And that your advertising can also represent really important ideas about racism, alienation, and alterity? OK, maybe that’s just Night of the Living Dead. But, according to Stuart Elliot of The New York Times, your marketing might really last a while:

MADISON AVENUE is coming up with a digital variation on an Irving Berlin standard: The campaign has ended, but the advertising lingers on.

Thanks to Internet staples like YouTube, Facebook and the special Web sites known as microsites, consumers can still see ads after the completion of the campaigns of which they were part — not unlike satellites that remain in space, visible to the eye, long after they have stopped being tracked.

The ongoing online presence for ads is different from how campaigns conclude in the traditional media, when television commercials and print advertisements cease appearing or billboards and signs in stores are taken down.

For instance, a wacky character named the Subservient Chicken, introduced in April 2004 to help sell a new TenderCrisp chicken sandwich for Burger King, is still on display on a section of the Burger King Web site (bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html).

[snip]

Campaigns now “are not necessarily with a start and end date,” said Marcel LeBrun, chief executive at Radian6, an agency that specializes in social media for clients like Discover, Microsoft Xbox and United Parcel Service.

If marketers are striving to “build and foster a community of advocates,” Mr. LeBrun said, they ought not be like “politicians who go online around election time and then disappear after the election.”

Chalk up another way in which the internet is changing the way marketing works. What’s cool here is that, like Chris Anderson’s concept of the long tail, the internet allows some traditional forms of advertising–basically anything other than billboards and print ads–to find new life in the new medium. It’s not as if you would approach your advertising without considering the consequences, but, yeah, here’s yet more reason to ensure that your campaigns really are getting across an appropriate message.

But here’s where this new life-span of marketing might get really interesting: some campaigns, says Mashable’s Brenna Ehrlich, may be designed specifically to beget parodies, spoofs, and spinoffs. Ehrlich begins her post by bringing to light a new report from Visual Measures which notes that Nike’s recent TV spot which featured a silent Tiger Woods staring into the camera “has prompted the creation of more than 100 spoofs, parodies, mashups, etc. These clips have garnered more than 7.1 million views and 15,000 comments.”

Here’s the original:

Ehrlich points to this Nike ad and Google’s Super Bowl spot to learn what makes an easy-to-spoof spot:

During this year’s Super Bowl, Google took the bold step of actually airing a commercial — on television. The ad, which dealt with a student who falls in love with Paris, instantly prompted jokesters to take to YouTube, where they unleashed a torrent of spin-offs.

Google’s ad made for good parody fodder for reasons very similar to Nike’s spot:

1). It’s an extremely simple ad. All you need is a Google browser — which pretty much everyone has — and some kind of camera. The Nike ad, as Visible Measures points out, is merely a continuous shot of Woods paired with a voiceover.

2). It’s an ad for a big company. People love to take down the giants. If you subbed Google for Dogpile (which is still around for some reason) and Nike for… I dunno… lame knockoffs, then people probably wouldn’t care enough to get out the sling shot.

If Ehrlich is right, it’s fascinating to see these giant corporations give their blessing, as it were, to spoofs and parodies. Most companies these days hold an extremely tight grip on their advertising, their online presence, and their reputations. This, of course, is the trade-off which comes with the type of consumer voice that comes with social media.

Would you rather have additional exposure to your message, even if that message might be the object of ridicule? How do you balance these competing objectives?

No related posts.

Is the iPad for Business Execs? 4 Sources to Get You Thinking

Rocky — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:36 +0000

With all of the recent speculation and curiosity about the ipad, the April 3rd release is beginning to reveal some of the answers.

One of those questions is: how will the ipad pick up in the business world. For business execs who sit at a laptop all day, and already own an iphone for their times on the go, will the ipad bring real added value?

Andy Abramson’s blog post “My ipad Delivery Experience” describes the intense anticipation of one business exec’s ipad arrival. After reading his post, including all of the details of his UPS tracking, I wondered: how many other business execs could relay similar experiences of their own excitement?

For those skeptics of how business execs will perceive the ipad, here’s 4 sources to contemplate:

Apple approaches the business population directly, in their dedicated web page called “ipad in Business.”
Seth Weintraub (on Computerworld) commented on the “ipad in Business” site going live and details the factors that will make the iPad successful in the business world. He includes the following factors: support for Microsoft Exchange, Email/contacts/calendar synching support, security coverage, business apps development, iWork applications, and most importantly, Safari.
Intermedia, the premier provider of communications systems for small to mid sized enterprises and the largest provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange, announced that its services will support the ipad. “Users can now take advantage of the same enterprise-grade Exchange services on the iPad that they expect in the office,” states the press release. Apparently Intermedia believes that the ipad will hit the business world, or they would not be supporting it.
Apple Insider might say “I told you so,” reflecting on their January 2010 article about ipad’s target at business users. The article highlights the enterprise benefits of the iPad over the iPhone, such as the new iWork and Apple’s unified operating system that scales from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad.

Do you disagree? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Truphone’s App Turns iPad into a VoIP Phone

Rocky — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:00:29 +0000

Truphone‘s press release, “Truphone Gives iPad Owners a Voice,” describe the launch of the first VoIP app on the iPad.

“Will this new app work over the iPad’s 3G network?” asks 9To5Mac and Gadget Venue. Whether the VoIP app works over 3G brings up a whole series of question, but first let’s take a look at the press release to understand how the Truphone app works:

The company’s award-winning VoIP application turns the tablet sized device into a mobile phone that offers free or low-cost international calls, as well as advanced Instant Messaging features which integrate a user’s contacts from across multiple IM networks…

The Truphone iPad application offers customers free calling to other Truphone and Google Talk users when connected over Wi-Fi, and international calling to mobile phones and landlines for as low as 3 pence a minute. Truphone also offers an unlimited calling plan and free voicemail.

The application also provides a combined Truphone and IM contacts list showing on-line status and presence, together with an innovative, multi-chat IM interface for AIM, Google Talk, and MSN users – allowing customers to easily stay on top of their contacts list without opening multiple windows.

Let’s return now to the 3G issue.

Gadget Venue assumes that 3G will work:

It has not yet been verified but it is common assumption that you will probably be able to use Truphone to make calls over 3G networks. We believe that you will be able to unless the 3G network provider (AT&T) puts restrictions on the app. The press release does indicate that this will be possible although it’s still not crystal clear just yet…

9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub makes the question even more interesting. He comments on the press release’s vagueness regarding the matter, and then continues with the following food for thought:

…and I’ve followed up with Truphone PR who say they can’t get an answer until after the weekend. If so, this would be a very interesting proposition. Not just for the iPad. What if Apple releases an iPod Touch 3G in September? Why buy an iPhone at that point?

Here’s the real juice, in simple non-techie terms. The questions of whether Truphone works over 3G, and whether the Septmber iTouch release includes 3G connectivity, raise the same implication. The ability to place VoIP calls over 3G means that users are no longer limited to using the app in places with WiFi. Once the VoIP app works seamlessly on your iTouch or iPad through 3G connectivity you no longer really need an iPhone. Why not just place all of your phone calls through your VoIP apps on your iTouch or iPad?

Any thoughts? How will Apple sustain the need for all three devices? If not, will the iPad cannibalize too much on another device?

Modern Family’s iPad Product Placement

Avi — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:43:25 +0000

Tomorrow, as you’re probably aware, is a big day for Apple. And a big day for Apple means a big day for people who love technology. For tomorrow is iPad release day. The secretive California-based company has, as expected, limited exposure to its newest possibly revolutionary product, with the list of non-employees who’ve handled the thing for more than a few minutes limited to Stephen Colbert at the Grammys and the regular suspects of tech reviewers, including such familiar names as Walt Mossberg and Stephen Fry.

To this illustrious group we can now add: the cast of the ABC sitcom Modern Family.

Mashable has a nice summary of what the episode entailed:

American sitcom Modern Family ran an entire episode about the iPad this week. A character’s birthday is April 3 — the same day the iPad launches — so his wife decides to try and get him an iPad.

The episode begins with an impassioned pitch. “The iPad comes out on my actual birthday. It’s like Steve Jobs and God got together to say, ‘We love you, Phil,’” he says. “It’s a movie theater, a library and a music store all rolled into one awesome pad.”

The show features an actual iPad — not a mockup, but the real thing. His wife brings the iPad home, he blows out the virtual candles in a birthday cake app and then the family gathers around and oohs and ahhs at the device.

For those who want to watch the episode, Hulu is a great way to do so.

I think it’s important to think about this from a couple different angles, which are intimately related. First, did the featuring of a product disrupt the proceedings of the show? Second, is this effective from a marketing perspective?

For the former, TV critic extraordinaire Alan Sepinwall addressed this issue directly:

And as product integration goes, this episode-long plug for the iPad was kind of icky. Yes, Phil has been established as a lover of gadgets, some more useful than others, and if the “Modern Family” writers had tried to – or been allowed to – let some of the other characters question the necessity of the iPad, even as Phil launched a passionate defense, it might have worked better. But devoting the main plot of an episode to Claire desperately trying to get Phil this awesome and super-popular gift, and then climaxing it with the entire cast standing around Phil’s new iPad and oooh’ing and aah’ing? Ick. And I say this as someone whose hand is surgically glued to his iPhone.

(See also, as Sepinwall mentions elsewhere in his review, Emily Nussbaum’s comprehensive take on product placement from last year.)

Sepinwall’s assessment seems to match the general reaction to this episode. It was gimmicky and cute, but not the strongest of the series. But note also Sepinwall’s careful use of language: he calls the Modern Family episode one which featured “product integration.” And, according to the show’s co-creator Christopher Lloyd, there was no product placement. From The Hollywood Reporter:

In fact, there was no product placement. This was widely assumed, and everybody was wrong. We wanted to do a show about Phil getting very excited about a new product and it seemed the perfect one to use, since it was debuting [April 1]. We approached Apple about getting their cooperation (using the product, for example, and they are notoriously secretive about their products prior to their being launched) and they agreed and gave us a few other small concessions. But there were no stipulations as with normal product placement, i.e. we give you X dollars and you have to feature our product such-and-such a way and say such-and-such nice things about it. We are not angels — we have made those agreements with other companies. But that was not the deal with Apple. It was all story-driven.

Does this make a difference in your mind? Even if the show wasn’t compensated in the normal way, it seems certain that Apple wouldn’t have agreed to the deal if its product were to be portrayed in a negative light. One particularly damning image occurs at the 20:30 mark of the episode, as the entirety of the modern family gathers around Phil, all basking in the glow of this new device.

I think the issue of how disruptive the product integration is turns out to be very related to our second question above: if viewers are distracted by the promotion of a product, how is product integration any different than the traditional hard-sell commercials which people now DVR right through? Those commercials, at least, had the courtesy to be honest about their intentions. Now, viewers have no advance warning for when one of their favorite shows might be “sponsored” for a week. The appeal to an industry which, as we’ve seen, is struggling to come up to solutions to the DVR problem is obvious, but product integration might not be any more of a long-term solution, especially if its used in the clumsy ways which Nussbaum outlines in the article linked to above: people are just going to be turned off from those shows which can’t figure out a way balance their financial needs and the trust of their audiences.

In my case, Modern Family is a show that I watch regularly, though usually on Hulu a day or two after the original air-date. And because I spend way too much time reading the internet, I’d already read about the show’s iPad episode before I got to judge the execution for myself. This is not the way to watch a show. In one sense, Modern Family succeeded because a whole range of marketing and media blogs have been speaking about it all week. But, as strong as this season has been–and it has been very strong–this episode sticks out in my mind as one in which the audience did not come first, even if Lloyd is right that this was not product placement in the traditional sense. It makes me like the show just slightly less than I did before.

What do you think about product placement in your media? Is it a fair way to go, considering the upheaval in traditional advertising? Am I reading the Modern Family episode correctly? Was the iPad episode in good taste? Is an entire episode focused on a product too much? Or, as Lloyd seems to suggest, in our object-driven society, is it perfectly normal for a day to go by in which we think only of products?

Image via The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Phone Marketing Insider’s Greatest Highlights

Rocky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:19 +0000

New ways to leverage phones in marketing your business are constantly evolving, and you want to be on the cutting edge of these technologies. We tend to think of phone systems as an operational aspect of business, separate from the marketing department’s goals. But Phone Marketing Insider’s first 100 posts present the interconnectivity between the world of phones and the world of marketing/sales. Join in the connection between these world by reading PMI, sending us your comments, and thinking about ways to use phones in your marketing strategy.

Here’s some highlights from our first 100 posts…

Cloud Telephony Analysis

For beginners, learning to use Cloud Telephony tools can be intimidating. That’s why we connected you to Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony Screencasts, and Ifbyphone’s video on call tracking. You can learn about basic starting points through posts about Open Source Telephony Resources, Call Tracking as described on Searchengineland, basic call tracking tools that every marketer must know, and how to choose a business VoIP system.

At PMI, we’re excited about the evolution of cloud telephony, which is why we discussed analogies between cloud computing and cloud telephony, and wrapped up our thoughts about the clouds at the end of December. For the mathematicians out there, you’ll find our post Do Cloud Solutions Always Pay to be quite intriguing. With an eye on our readers’ needs, we opened dialogues about On-Demand Payment, Voice Quality of cloud telephony, trends in Cloud Contact Centers, the question of trusting cloud services, and whether companies should have to choose between hosted and on-premise VoIP. At times, case studies best illustrate how to increase business efficiency with phones, such as improving CRM through call centers and social media tracking, increasing phone leads by numbers as high as 42%, and cutting costs by as much as $240k.

Marketing Insights

Sometimes we convey our marketing message more implicitly and other times we use marketing strategy to drive the key lesson of a post, but it’s always there. PMI spices up all the talk about phones with trendy marketing tips related to social media (Facebook’s Game to Lose, Einstein Bros. Gives Away Bagels to Facebook Fans and Why Location Matters Again) and viral videos (Yale Musical Recruiting Video). If you’re working on branding, creating fans and rewarding your customers, check out our hits: Embrace Your Brand Bank Account, Find More Fans, Adidas Rewards Viewers for Views, How the Grammys have Redefined Fanship. When you’re just in the mood to read a new perspective on marketing, send us your thoughts about Marketing in Between the Frames: A Lesson from Seth Godin and Super Bowl 44 Ad Review. For our more intensive readers, we hope you enjoy our posts on pricing, such as Attention SMBs: Beware of Cost Plus Pricing.

Keeping Up with the Hype

For the techies out there, we followed the hype about Google and Apple. Who could have missed Apple’s “rejection” of Google Voice on the iphone, leading up to Google’s subsequent promise (in January) to enter the iphone, albeit through the web browser, and then Google’s release of multitouch on Nexus One in February (is Google now picking a fight)? The story continued to heat up at Mobile World Congress in February, when twenty-four mobile phone operators teamed up to challenge Apple, and PMI was always there following.

News with a Marketing Twist

At PMI, we’re not just reporting the latest news. Plenty of great blogs and news sites cover news about call tracking, voice broadcasts, call centers, VoIP, etc. But we’re doing something different. We’re analyzing ways that businesses can use the latest phone offerings in their marketing strategies.

News and product releases on PMI included the following companies: Ifbyphone (New Virtual Call Center), Twilio (Platform for Phone Call APIs), Twalkin (New Voice Broadcasts for Twitter), Cloudvox (Open Source API), Vivox (Voice Chat on Facebook), Angel (Notify NYC IVR Program), Google (TV ad tracking), Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Vocalocity (Voicemail Transcription, new CEOWain Kellum), CallFire (Cloud Call Center goes International), Windstream (New VoIP Service), Digium (Announcement ofAstricon, Phone Makeover Contest for SMBs), Snom (Expands VoIP for Open Source), Convergys (Interactive Voice Portal), Verizon (Partners with Skype), Google Voice (Real Time Translation), CallFire (Remote Control Voice Broadcasting) and Ribbit (VTT-sa™ Next-Generation Voice to Text Application).

Marketing Reports/ Studies about Phones

Marketing reports provide a broader perspective on one’s market, customers, competitors and general business environment.In our first 100 posts, we highlighted reports about phone services including: Ascent Group’s “IVR Improvement Strategies 2010″, Nuance’s study finding customers in favor of automated telephone services, VoiceNation’s survey reporting the low number of businesses with emergency voice plans and DMG Consulting’s report about the predicted rise in the outbound dialing market.

Phone Apps

With daily new releases of phone apps, we sort out our favorites when it comes to marketing, advertising and sales. That’s why we included posts on Five9′s new salesforce app, Skype’s click to cool toolbar for salesforce, icall- the first VoIP app that Apple approved over 3G, Socialibrium’s CRM Blackberry app,Pocket Dictate’s iphone app and Siri’s iphone Personal Assistant.

We hope you enjoyed our 100 post Review.

Spread the word and help us build a community of readers at the crossroad between phones, marketing, advertising and sales.

End of the Year Thoughts about Cloud Computing… and Cloud Telephony

Rocky — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:00:40 +0000

In anticipation of the New Year, I found a great article on Infoworld, reflecting on this past year’s five biggest questions on cloud computing.

InfoWorld’s “Five Big Questions on Cloud Computing” include:

What defines a cloud service; is there such a thing as a private cloud; will cloud services replace the Microsoft Desktop; do cloud services mean the end of IT as we know it; and does the cloud really enable anything new.

To add a little interest to this article on cloud computing, let’s take their definition of cloud computing, and analyze it in light of Ifbyphone’s service cloud telephony service, to illustrate the similarities between cloud computing and cloud telephony.

What defines a cloud service?

Self-service- The entire Ifbyphone service can be configured on a user-friendly web interface.
Commodity pricing- Ifbyphone offers pay per use packages starting at just $24.95/month plus usage.
Transparent Scalability- Ifbyphone’s service is scalable to allow businesses to seamlessly upgrade according to business growth and newly desired features.
Shared infrastructure- This is a main factor that keeps the cost structure of cloud services, both computing and telephony, so reasonable. Check out Irv’s Blog,”Thoughts about Clouds,” written by Ifbyphone’s CEO, to learn about the comparison of the developments of shared infrastructure in today’s cloud computing and telephony.
Machine addressability- Just as most cloud computing services provide APIs to enable customers to address their custom needs, so too Ifbyphone’s cloud telephony APIs enable developers to customize applications beyond the suite of standard building blocks. Read more about app-focused Telcos on Irv’s Blog.

Now that you’re familiar with the definition similarities, I’ll leave the next three “big questions” for you to contemplate…

Is there such a thing as a private cloud?

Will cloud services replace the Microsoft desktop?

Do cloud services mean the end of IT as we know it?

When it comes to the article’s fifth, and last, question,

Does the cloud really enable anything new?

I would answer it in light of cloud telephony with an emphatic “yes”!

Here’s a great quote from the end of the article:

But the most exciting potential of the cloud is as a platform for Internet-based services that deliver entirely new capabilities fast without the upfront costs. Businesses that latch on to new services with strategic benefit and integrate them into their existing processes and infrastructure will enjoy a big advantage in the coming decade.

One may debate whether the advancements of cloud based IVR simply enhance those of PBX boxes and cut costs, or whether they are truly innovative. But when it comes to Ifbyphone’s Dynamic Numbers, Google Integration, and Smart Click to Call, these cloud telephony services definitely offer revolutionary capabilities for marketers.