AT&T Goes TropoStyle

The big UC news this week did come from Vegas, but not from the main CES event. It came from a smaller conference within CES known as the AT&T Developer Summit. AT&T announced a new Call Management API that allows developers to program in their preferred language (such as JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, and Groovy) to extend communications features to applications.

The underlying technology is powered by Tropo, a product of Voxeo Labs. This marks the first time a major U.S. carrier embedded Tropo in its developer toolkit, but the second big win for Tropo. Deutsche Telekom also partnered with Tropo last year with a similar solution.

"AT&T's decision to integrate the Tropo API into their Call Management API proves their deep commitment to developers, by giving them access to the richest set of communication APIs from any telecom service provider," said Voxeo Labs President Jason Goecke.

The API allows developers to integrate various modalities of unified communications and/or social networking directly with AT&T phone numbers and services. It makes the AT&T mobile number very flexible, it can ring tablets, a connected car, laptop, or other devices. AT&T's developer program has about 30,000 developers; just less than half were added in 2012.

As a major added bonus, the solution natively supports WebRTC. This means applications can offer communications features without requiring a download to WebRTC-enabled clients like Chrome. The Tropo API is directly available from Tropo, but there are many benefits of using it through AT&T. For one, it can be used with AT&T telephone numbers and other services. AT&T is adding Tropo to its own developer library which includes other tools and services. Many enterprises will be more confident of building apps that utilize tools backed and supported by a Fortune 500 public company over a private venture-funded technology firm.

"AT&T has broken through the barriers on how to think about APIs that has limited Telecom APIs to date: no standards, more APIs are better, let the ecosystem define the APIs, work with the best, engage developers on their terms, and dare to fail," said Alan Quayle, an independent telecom analyst.

A big promise of UC includes CEBP, or communications enabled business processes. Many, if not all, major UC premises-equipment vendors offer APIs to allow rich communication integrations. What AT&T and Tropo are offering is a means to CEBP in a cloudy mobile-first world. Additional API improvements include an expanded speech API to support translation and transcription in multiple languages, and a new revenue-sharing in-app advertising platform.

AT&T announced three new platforms (initiatives) for its developers. Digital Life offers solutions for home automation and home security that is 100 percent wireless - accessible from smartphones and tablets. Ralph de la Vega, President & CEO of AT&T Mobility, invited John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, on-stage to present the shared vision which utilizes AT&T wireless services with a Cisco-designed wireless home keypad. Digital Life will soon expand nationwide. AT&T is also optimistic about the future of mobile payments and intends to leverage the estimated 40 million NFC-enabled devices in 2013 with enhanced tools. The Connected Car is another major initiative that will provide maps, entertainment and rich communications.

Related Links:
Call Management API
Make Real Phone calls from your browser.
AT&T Developer Summit
AT&T Developer Summit Keynote