BroadSoft (News - Alert) Inc., a provider of VoIP applications to the telecommunications industry, has reportedly introduced a new e-commerce-enabled marketplace through which end-users can directly browse and easily purchase communications applications online.
The operators banking upon BroadSoft support will now be able to offer a custom-branded application store populated with their selection of market ready, third-party applications. BroadSoft’s Xtended program will provide these applications.
Through the BroadSoft Marketplace, telecommunications operators and application developers will now have new recurring revenue opportunities available to them. They will also be able to fulfill the growing demand for services and applications that seamlessly integrate voice with Web 2.0, mobility and social networking.
The BroadSoft Marketplace is currently in beta phase, and early adopters have started drawing towards it from its global customer base. Some of the operators who will introduce the application stores by first quarter of 2010 include Comporium, SimpleSignal (News - Alert), Telesphere and WorldxChange.
Developers will support a simple “onboard once – monetize everywhere” integration model that will help them in leveraging the Marketplace for creating and monetizing communications applications. Further, by making one time investment in onboarding their applications to the Marketplace, the developers will gain access to the subscriber bases of BroadSoft’s global customers reaching over 500 million subscribers.
The company is going to offer a more integrated communications experience for businesses and consumers by focusing on applications that deliver value, solve real-life challenges and meet the lifestyle needs of users.
An initial set of applications and services to be offered through the marketplace comprise of a range of solutions, such as SpinVox (News - Alert) Voicemail-to-Text, which is a monthly subscription-based service that converts voicemail messages to text and forwards them to a user’s email inbox.
The second application is Quickset Pro from JoeDeveloper, a downloadable application based on Adobe Air technology that manages a host of BroadWorks call functions, such as Sequential Ring, Speed Dial and Remote Office. Mobile Max Enterprise Edition is a yet another solution to be offered through the marketplace, which is a downloadable mobile unified communications or ‘UC’ client that allows routing of mobile calls through BroadWorks and access to key call functions, e.g., Do Not Disturb, Call Forward, from a mobile handset.
In a release, Leslie Ferry, vice president, marketing, BroadSoft, said this is a significant milestone in the IP communications industry. He said the launch of the BroadSoft Marketplace completes the final phase of company’s three-pronged strategy for Xtended program, which includes technology, community and commerce. Ferry added that starting with RESTful Web services to attract the mainstream developer, BroadSoft created a vibrant community of developers, which can now be sustained through commerce through the Marketplace.
He noted that now service providers can immediately capitalize on and monetize the creative innovation of this developer community, while delivering value-added communications applications to their subscribers.
In July, BroadSoft had declared that it was furnishing IP voice technology for Samsung (News - Alert) Networks Inc.’s residential 070 VoIP service, WyzHome, which was launched in October 2008. Later, the company jointly announced with Microsoft their plans to
launch a robust partner ecosystem and additional capabilities to their joint hosted unified communications solution.