George has recently joined Tropo as VP Marketing. He brings a wealth of marketing and product management experience from BSkyB, his own start-up Spontly, Velti, T-Mobile and Ericsson. One of his first decisions on the job was sponsoring TADS (Telecom Application Developer Summit). I asked George some questions around TADS, I’m doing this with all the TADS sponsors, to understand the rich diversity of desires driving interest in TADS, a grassroots initiative by people committed to creating a profitable and sustainable telecom application developer ecosystem.
AQ: What excites you about TADS?
GK: TADS is unique, it’s the only event targeting telecom app developers and telcos. The agenda is addressing the key challenges of the telecoms industry today; the industry can see the cross-fertilization across ecosystems TADS is making possible.
Tropo has over 190k telecom application developers in our community; it’s a great resource for innovation. The telecom industry has yet to fully harness this innovation power, and I believe TADS will accelerate making this happen.
TADS is unique because it’s both an event and an initiative. That means TADS has industry impacting objectives, the telecom application developer manifesto; it’s squarely focused on creating a sustainable and profitable telecom application ecosystem.
And finally, choosing Asia as the location of the first event shows that TADS is ahead of the curve in its thinking. We (Tropo) are very active in Asia, it’s a hot market for telecom application innovation. Our event with Globe was a great success. Therefore, I have good reasons to believe that TADS’ first event will be very successful in Asia.
AQ: Why did you choose to sponsor TADS?
GK: The advisory board is impressive; it’s across the industry from technology innovators, those leading the telcos, and leading telecom application developers. The diversity of the board reflects the diversity we need to bring together and create a viable telecom application developer ecosystem.
There are a few people that can bring the diverse developer, telco and technology ecosystems together; and create an environment where you’re simply excited to be part of it. You (Alan Quayle) understand the market; looking at the Telecom app developer segmentation you use, no one else has put it as elegantly:
Building communications apps on their own platform built from open source projects
Building communications apps n a third party’s communications platform
Building communications apps directly for the telco’s network
AQ: What are the important topics you want to discuss about TADS?
GK: Tropo has two industry recognized experts Jose de Castro our CTO and Dan Burnett our Chief Scientist who will demonstrate at the Developer Summit just how easy it is to use and create exciting new services using Tropo and Tropo WebRTC. Developers can add communications features to an app with just a few lines of code, and seeing Jose through the command line on his laptop create new communication services that simply work is awe-inspiring.
For the Telco Summit we’re keen to share our experiences of businesses running on Telecom API. Share some of our go-to-market ideas in telecom APIs to help telcos create new business models that will generate incremental revenues. As when telcos are making money with telecom applications, then so are telecom application developers. We’ve got to work together to make this ecosystem happen.
AQ: What does Tropo do?
GK: Tropo is a platform that brings together telecom application developers with telecom service providers. We help developers to create unique customer experiences by adding new communication capabilities in a very efficient and simple way using our Tropo API platform.
We invest in revolutionary communications solutions that create new revenue opportunities for the telecom ecosystem.
Today, Tropo products including Communications API and in-call Communications App Platform are used by over 190,000 developers. We also team up with leading business partners including some of the largest telcos, mobile carriers, and enterprises around the world.
AQ: Why should Telecom Application Developers come to TADS?
GK: I believe TADS is a very special event, all the best communication application technologies will be there for developers to learn from the people building them. They will be able to share with other developers, technologists and telcos ideas, experiences and best practices. There will be live demos including live coding from Jose de Castro to demonstrate how simple it is to integrate real time communications in web and mobile applications.
By bringing developers from around the world, with all the leading telecom application technologies, and the leading telcos focused on telecom application innovation something special is going to happen.
AQ: Why should Telcos come to TADS?
GK: I believe that TADS presents a first class opportunity for service providers and telcos to share with developers their plans and engage in conversations to exploit business opportunities between telcos and developers.
This is a grassroots initiative from the people building the telecom application industry to create a sustainable and profitable telecom application ecosystem; Any telco that wants to benefit from the telecom application developers ecosystem should participate in this event if they don’t want to deprive themselves of valuable insights and connecting with world-class experts.
AQ: Why the recent name change from Voxeo Labs to Tropo?
GK: The company has officially changed its name to Tropo Inc., completing a spin-out process that began over a year ago from Voxeo Corporation, which (Voxeo corp) was recently acquired by Aspect. The company started 5 years ago as the research and development arm of Voxeo Corporation. We have been operating as an independent entity under the name Voxeo Labs Inc since December of 2012. The time was right to strike our own path, and recognize that Tropo is both the core of our business and our new name. As about the name Tropo, it came after our flagship product Tropo which has been very successful and is well known among our developers community.
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