BT leaps in to Voice 2.0

Telco giant to acquire telephony tools maker Ribbit

BT is to acquire Silicon Valley-based voice application vendor, the Ribbit Corporation, for £53 million, in an effort to fast-track its development of new telephony applications and services.

BT Americas president Michael Boustridge said Ribbit's platform will make it, "simpler, cheaper and faster to build communications functionality into applications, enabling developers to introduce new revenue-generating voice services in hours, rather than weeks."

“The communications industry is entering a new phase. Closed networks are becoming open platforms and developers are now driving innovation," added Ted Griggs, chief executive, Ribbit.

Ribbit's technology is intended to help developers add voice and automation features to web applications. Customers include software-as-a-service pioneer Salesforce.com.

Rob Bamforth, Quocirca's principal analyst for communication, collaboration and convergence said that the market for platforms to integrate communications with enterprise applications was still in its infancy. But it is clear "it's going to be open software winning out over proprietary hardware," he added.

BT's acquisition of Ribbit was part of "a continuing recognition that services not plumbing is where the future differentiation lies," said Bamforth.