by Frederik Hermann, Director of Marketing, JAJAH (Dec. 2008)

There are vast opportunities for a ubiquitous integration of voice into our everyday applications, services and devices - but how will service providers get there?

VoIP will play a central role here, but not in the way you might think. From my perspective, VoIP will eventually integrate itself seamlessly into our everyday life, and simply be part of our home entertainment, gaming consoles (home and portable), MP3 players, mobile devices, services and applications that we use everyday. The word “VoIP” will disappear when talking about how we communicate, as it barely matters to most end users - but the underlying technology will continue to grow strong.

Both consumers and businesses are cost-sensitive, especially in tough economic times, but as much as we value services that save us money, most of us aren’t willing to jump through a lot of hoops. Cost savings are important, but mainstream end users want a service to be convenient, reliable and easy to use.

I’m optimistic this will happen, as there is a positive and powerful trend where more communications companies – both service providers and vendors - are opening up access to their underlying technologies for business partners and third party developers. This is paving the way for the kind of value-added voice and communication services that I think matter.

By leveraging access to the backend technology through open API’s, smaller teams and third party developers don’t have to worry about maintaining a global call termination infrastructure; payment engine; user, quality and fraud management; ad network or handling millions of text messages, phone and conference calls. Instead, they can focus on the integrated value-added service itself, which will drive innovation. I see this setting the stage for a promising future of “voice apps” that add value in ways that service providers cannot do today.

For example, with voice apps, I would expect to be able to simply select one of my buddies on a gaming console and talk to them. However, the phone is not the only way for me to do this. I could just as easily talk via a softphone embedded in my console or my TV screen.  With voice apps, though, that is really just the beginning. I could also order a product using click-to-call with my remote control from an ad that I just watched on DirecTV or Hulu. Or, I could select a contact to call in my synched address book through my TV screen.

There are thousands of niche markets and products that voice apps could be used for, and no service provider has the expertise nor the manpower to address them all. Brokers, agents, recruiters, flight controllers, dispatchers, office managers, fleet managers, doctors, international health-care organizations, etc., all face different problems with regards to communications and the tools they use everyday.  With voice apps, the person or team that is most aware of a particular set of challenges now has the tools to solve the problem and make people’s lives easier by eliminating steps, adding convenience or even functionality that hasn’t been thought of or wasn’t possible to implement before.

As service providers, developers and vendors work more closely together, synergies will evolve. IP communication is based on open technologies and constant innovation that needs to be embraced if service providers are to keep pace with ever-changing subscriber demands.

Service providers can turn to their developer community or build hybrid teams to turn ideas into reality with minimal investment and time to market.  The resulting integrated voice applications add value because they are real time and very intuitive – and also open up new possibilities for revenue-generating services.

Open IP communication platforms are on the rise and offer great opportunities to create applications that matter, and retain the loyalty of subscribers. The onus is on all of us – service providers, developers and vendors - to leverage this, foster innovation and make communications easier, more convenient and cost effective than ever before.

Frederik Hermann is Director of Marketing at JAJAH, an Austrian-founded IP communications company offering flexible, next-generation telephony solutions for consumers and businesses now being based in Mountain View, CA. Frederik has been with JAJAH since its very first days and writes his personal blog about the marketing and advertising industry at http://www.frederikhermann.com . For more information please visit http://www.jajah.com