Enterprise Voice Mashups

Money and Business Case Faster, cheaper and happier

Would you like some Paprika soup? Or, why we have it backwards.

So, exactly what is a mashup? A Vist from the Jargon Police

Architectures and Solutions What does it really look like?

Real World Examples My favorite health care examples

Money and Business Case

My story… My name is Thomas, and I’ve been a telephony

developer for 18 years.

Nearly always, new telephony service offeringsfail in the marketplace Customer education - don’t know it exists Customer habituation - won’t change my habits Expensive to deploy Vanilla services == commoditization

There’s little to no integration between the PBXand the business process Walled garden vendors make it hard Our own view points make it hard

Let’s do a thought experiment

What happens when you could, atno real cost, blend in real time

communications with thebusiness process.

Faster

What happens if you integrate real timecommunications in the enterprise?

Businesses run faster Find the right person Eliminate delays in process Push process outside the firewall

Real Example Remote worker automation… How many forms do remote workers fill in? Instant, on demand scheduling What’s the universal interface? The phone

The business case is intensely unique to thebusiness

Cheaper

What happens if you integrate real timecommunications in the enterprise?

Businesses are less expensive to run Eliminates wasted effort Eliminates on-demand automated work Increases location independence

Real Example United Parcel Service… When you need a signature, they make a call When you miss a delivery, you can reschedule When they need to reroute in an emergency…

The business case is intensely unique to thebusiness

Happier

What happens if you integrate real timecommunications in the enterprise?

Customers are happier Customers like control Customers like visibility Customers hate to learn

Real Example I’m flying JetBlue today… My flight is cancelled - send me a text with options When I call back, know who I am and tell me what I

need to know. The customer needs no education whatsoever.

The business case is intensely unique to thebusiness

Would you like some PaprikaSoup?

We are a bunch of voice engineers, writing voiceapplications, sitting in a voice show learningabout … voice

Voice is obviously important to you… I even married a speech pathologist.

What if voice isn’t the most important thing toyour customers? Guess what… I’ll take the bet that it’s not.

My contention: voice is not the meat, it’s a spice. Due to natural evolutions in technology and

markets, voice became an end unto itself, andthat’s a mistake.

To the man with thehammer…

Every problem looks like a nail To date, we only owned hammers.

Walled gardens of technology Vertical integrations by vendors and providers Huge learning curves keep others out

Other tools have now arrived Comparatively, PBXs are now free Comparatively, service providers are no longer

capital intensive Comparatively, the walls are down not only

with telephones, but with the network

What happened? Why now?

We have a radical lowering of barriers to entry totelecom development The investments made in 1997-2007 in telecom and

web technologies The growth of Web 2.0 culture

Smaller business cases become supportable Because it’s so inexpensive to deploy them

The Long Tail hits telephony As it hit shopping, music, television, etc.

Radical changes in strategy required Small is the new big Large vendors must strive to be platforms VAR is no longer a joke. It’s real.

The advantage is now closeness to customer.

The Simplest Example

Would you like to work at Dunkin Donuts? Call them up

They have an automated pre-screen line Designed by an industrial psychologist If you can sit at a phone for 30 minutes and take the

quiz… it’s a good sign

Business case? High turnover == high overhead Ten cents a minute < Manager hourly wage Higher Quality Hires : DD tracks success

Faster, cheaper, happier Faster : more interviews, better hires Cheaper : Less turnover, less manager involvement Happier : Interviewees get nearly instant feedback

The Numbers

Total Mashups : 2312 Total APIs : 511 Mashups Written / Day : 3.5 Last M&A : WeatherBank, Weather.com Major APIs:

GoogleMaps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube,VirtualEarth, YahooMaps, eBay, 411Sync,del.ico.us, Yahoo

Exactly what is a mashup?

Mashups are applications that: Use Web Integration Technologies Use more than one data or service providers Serve a niche audience

Mashups are a “light weight” model Mashups depend upon open standards

But even more so, open conventions

They aren’t silver bullets. Hard to see VoiceMail written as a mashup But I sure could see VoiceMail as part of one

Web Integration Technologies

By convention, mashups use Web IntegrationTechnologies

Scripting Front Ends VoiceXML, JavaScript, AJAX, HTML

Web Platforms Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl

Web Services Component Integration SOAP, REST for service invocation XML and JSON for data representation

Conventions Mashup developers use common tools, approaches,

languages… clothing. Nothing is good all the time, including flexibility

Independent Data Sources

Mashups tend to use content from more than onesource In fact, that’s where the name comes from

Classic Mashups Chicago Crime Map, slut-o-meter, wheel of lunch

Many successful examples Expedia, Hotwire, Amazon

Sharing comes from many angles Functionality, data source, hosting, termination

Telephony examples? Use YellowBook to get physical address from inbound

phone number to shop Amazon from phone. Use a Where applet to drive Google maps display for

dispatcher

Niche Solutions

Mashups have an audience, always The developer knows the audience

Very targeted, very personal Mashup developers tend to be individuals or very small

groups Solves small problems Of which there are millions. More than that.

Interestingly, technically mashup architecturesare insanely scalable Much more scalable than any other available More reliable as well My gut tells me cheaper, too - no evidence yet

The Numbers

Developer Team Size : 1-3 Development Time Large : > 1 month Development Time Small : 1 day Costs of Web APIs : Free Costs of Telephony APIs : 2-50 cents Costs of Tools : Free

Architectures and Solutions

Two Predominant Mashup Architectures Web Integrated Telephony Architecture

Three component Architectures Where Web 2.0 meets Telephony

Asterisk / Adhearsion Asterisk based architecture Where Enterprise 2.0 meets Telephony

Real World Examples

Some real world examples Focus on health care, could be any vertical All examples are common to providers Yet need customization

Congestive Heart Failure If you can catch the weight gain…

Morisky Surveys Four questions that predict the future

After Hours Dr’s Office Use any web service, including people

Pharmaceutical Patient Diary Quality of data == Quality of study

For more information…

The Blogosphere Thomashowe.com Hinchcliff O’Reilly Radar

The Web Programmableweb.com Mashable.com

The geeks Mashups are as much about society as technology Mashup Camps

Your business Where can you use spice? Faster - cheaper - happier