The document discusses enterprise voice mashups. It describes how integrating real-time communications into business processes can make businesses run faster, cheaper, and make customers happier. Voice is presented as a "spice" that can enhance existing business processes and applications, rather than being the primary focus. Various examples of voice mashups are provided, such as automating remote worker forms and scheduling or integrating communications with delivery notifications and rescheduling. The document also covers definitions of mashups, common architectures, examples of health care mashups, and resources for learning more.

2. Enterprise Voice Mashups
 Money and Business Case
Faster, cheaper and happier

 Would you like some Paprika soup?
Or, why we have it backwards.

 So, exactly what is a mashup?
A Vist from the Jargon Police

 Architectures and Solutions
What does it really look like?

 Real World Examples
My favorite health care examples


3. Money and Business Case
 My story…
My name is Thomas, and I’ve been a telephony

developer for 18 years.
 Nearly always, new telephony service offerings
fail in the marketplace
Customer education - don’t know it exists

Customer habituation - won’t change my habits

Expensive to deploy

Vanilla services == commoditization

 There’s little to no integration between the PBX
and the business process
Walled garden vendors make it hard

Our own view points make it hard


4. Let’s do a thought experiment
What happens when you could, at
no real cost, blend in real time
communications with the
business process.

5. Faster
 What happens if you integrate real time
communications in the enterprise?
 Businesses run faster
Find the right person

Eliminate delays in process

Push process outside the firewall

 Real Example
Remote worker automation…

How many forms do remote workers fill in?

Instant, on demand scheduling

What’s the universal interface? The phone

 The business case is intensely unique to the
business

6. Cheaper
 What happens if you integrate real time
communications in the enterprise?
 Businesses are less expensive to run
Eliminates wasted effort

Eliminates on-demand automated work

Increases location independence

 Real Example
United Parcel Service…

When you need a signature, they make a call

When you miss a delivery, you can reschedule

When they need to reroute in an emergency…

 The business case is intensely unique to the
business

7. Happier
 What happens if you integrate real time
communications in the enterprise?
 Customers are happier
Customers like control

Customers like visibility

Customers hate to learn

 Real Example
I’m flying JetBlue today…

My flight is cancelled - send me a text with options

When I call back, know who I am and tell me what I

need to know.
The customer needs no education whatsoever.

 The business case is intensely unique to the
business

8. Would you like some Paprika
Soup?
 We are a bunch of voice engineers, writing voice
applications, sitting in a voice show learning
about … voice
 Voice is obviously important to you…
I even married a speech pathologist.

 What if voice isn’t the most important thing to
your customers?
Guess what… I’ll take the bet that it’s not.

 My contention: voice is not the meat, it’s a spice.
 Due to natural evolutions in technology and
markets, voice became an end unto itself, and
that’s a mistake.

9. To the man with the
hammer…
 Every problem looks like a nail
 To date, we only owned hammers.
Walled gardens of technology

Vertical integrations by vendors and providers

Huge learning curves keep others out

 Other tools have now arrived
Comparatively, PBXs are now free

Comparatively, service providers are no longer

capital intensive
Comparatively, the walls are down not only

with telephones, but with the network

10. What happened? Why now?
 We have a radical lowering of barriers to entry to
telecom development
The investments made in 1997-2007 in telecom and

web technologies
The growth of Web 2.0 culture

 Smaller business cases become supportable
Because it’s so inexpensive to deploy them

 The Long Tail hits telephony
As it hit shopping, music, television, etc.

 Radical changes in strategy required
Small is the new big

Large vendors must strive to be platforms

VAR is no longer a joke. It’s real.

 The advantage is now closeness to customer.

11. The Simplest Example
 Would you like to work at Dunkin Donuts?
 Call them up
They have an automated pre-screen line

Designed by an industrial psychologist

If you can sit at a phone for 30 minutes and take the

quiz… it’s a good sign
 Business case?
High turnover == high overhead

Ten cents a minute < Manager hourly wage

Higher Quality Hires : DD tracks success

 Faster, cheaper, happier
Faster : more interviews, better hires

Cheaper : Less turnover, less manager involvement

Happier : Interviewees get nearly instant feedback


12. The Numbers
Total Mashups : 2312

Total APIs : 511

Mashups Written / Day : 3.5

Last M&A : WeatherBank, Weather.com

Major APIs:

GoogleMaps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube,

VirtualEarth, YahooMaps, eBay, 411Sync,
del.ico.us, Yahoo

13. Exactly what is a mashup?
 Mashups are applications that:
Use Web Integration Technologies

Use more than one data or service providers

Serve a niche audience

 Mashups are a “light weight” model
 Mashups depend upon open standards
But even more so, open conventions

 They aren’t silver bullets.
Hard to see VoiceMail written as a mashup

But I sure could see VoiceMail as part of one


14. Web Integration Technologies
 By convention, mashups use Web Integration
Technologies
 Scripting Front Ends
VoiceXML, JavaScript, AJAX, HTML

 Web Platforms
Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl

 Web Services Component Integration
SOAP, REST for service invocation

XML and JSON for data representation

 Conventions
Mashup developers use common tools, approaches,

languages… clothing.
Nothing is good all the time, including flexibility


15. Independent Data Sources
 Mashups tend to use content from more than one
source
In fact, that’s where the name comes from

 Classic Mashups
Chicago Crime Map, slut-o-meter, wheel of lunch

 Many successful examples
Expedia, Hotwire, Amazon

 Sharing comes from many angles
Functionality, data source, hosting, termination

 Telephony examples?
Use YellowBook to get physical address from inbound

phone number to shop Amazon from phone.
Use a Where applet to drive Google maps display for

dispatcher

16. Niche Solutions
 Mashups have an audience, always
The developer knows the audience

 Very targeted, very personal
Mashup developers tend to be individuals or very small

groups
Solves small problems

Of which there are millions. More than that.

 Interestingly, technically mashup architectures
are insanely scalable
Much more scalable than any other available

More reliable as well

My gut tells me cheaper, too - no evidence yet


17. The Numbers
Developer Team Size : 1-3

Development Time Large : > 1 month

Development Time Small : 1 day

Costs of Web APIs : Free

Costs of Telephony APIs : 2-50 cents

Costs of Tools : Free


18. Architectures and Solutions
 Two Predominant Mashup Architectures
 Web Integrated Telephony Architecture
Three component Architectures

Where Web 2.0 meets Telephony

 Asterisk / Adhearsion
Asterisk based architecture

Where Enterprise 2.0 meets Telephony


19. Real World Examples
 Some real world examples
Focus on health care, could be any vertical

All examples are common to providers

Yet need customization

 Congestive Heart Failure
If you can catch the weight gain…

 Morisky Surveys
Four questions that predict the future

 After Hours Dr’s Office
Use any web service, including people

 Pharmaceutical Patient Diary
Quality of data == Quality of study


20. For more information…
 The Blogosphere
Thomashowe.com

Hinchcliff

O’Reilly Radar

 The Web
Programmableweb.com

Mashable.com

 The geeks
Mashups are as much about society as technology

Mashup Camps

 Your business
Where can you use spice?

Faster - cheaper - happier
