BT snares Silicon Valley phone firm
PrintYak yak, Ribbit Ribbit
Posted in Mobile, 29th July 2008 08:58 GMT
Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer: 30-day free trial
BT is buying phone firm Ribbit for $105m, months before the Silicon Valley outfit's service is even scheduled to launch to consumers.
Ribbit makes a development platform which eases creating or adding voice applications - for instance it has added voice to salesforce.com's programs.
The company uses open APIs and has attracted a big community of developers. It hopes to release a consumer version of its product later this year.
Michael Boustridge, president of BT Americas, said: "The Ribbit platform makes 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 purchase will strengthen BT's software development programme. Ribbit will keep its existing management.
The company is only two years old and was owned by founders, staff and private equity firms. BT's buyout comes just eight months after investors pumped another $10m into the company.
Service level monitoring and management
Systems management simplified
Total cost of ownership of Dell, HP and IBM blade solutions
Out-of-box comparison between Dell, HP, and IBM blade servers
Optimizing the data center for cost and efficiency
