RebelVox belongs to the ngConnect Program (sponsored by Alcatel Lucent) which fosters innovation by bringing together leading companies to create rich solutions for future networks like LTE.
We recently contributed a post for the program blog that discusses ways to create more productive communication platforms for enterprises that go well beyond unified communications. Good reading if enterprise productivity is important to you.
At RebelVox we are out everyday telling people about our new communication platform. While that’s one of our key tasks, it is particularly rewarding to inspire others to want to help us tell our story.
Last week, Saad Fazil of Venture Beat, wrote a post detailing how RebelVox enriches the ways people can interact. He points out that some of the value created comes from treating voice communication as data—and that’s exactly right. While there are some other “secret-sauce” components to making a RebelVox application work, working over IP networks and treating voice as data are two very critical components.
The post got picked up for the online version of the New York Times, which we find very exciting. Take a look and see what’s coming in voice communications.
We were lucky to host this summer’s Orange Press Tour of Silicon Valley—even though we’re actually in San Francisco. While they were here our CEO, Tom Katis, was interviewed by Leila Makki of TelecomTV.
Here is a link to the interview which touches upon some of the tactical origins of our concepts. Note that it really is our Tom Katis.
One of the fascinating features of RebelVox is a “perfect rendezvous”. But when we try to explain that to folks, it seems a mysterious term of unrecognizable value. So we always struggle with how to effectively explain.
The classic rendezvous problem is illustrated with the separate systems that support live voice and voice mail. (That they are separate systems is the key to the problem.) It shows up particularly on mobile interactions, partly because on my mobile I can see who is calling me. So you call me, but I don’t get to it before it “rolls over” into the voice mail system. I can see it was you, so I dial you. But you are talking to my voice mail system, and, sure enough, I am rolled into your voice mail system. Because they are different systems, my trying to reach you while you are leaving a message is impossible. AND, I cannot listen while you are creating the message; that stream is no where that I can interact with it until you complete it and I “go and get it.” Live calls and voice mail are different applications that “land” in different places.
I often like to extend this rendezvous context beyond the complexities of live voice and voice mail to consider where my instant messaging, emails, conference calls, and video chats live. All in different applications (managed by different protocols). No wonder we are overwhelmed. Who wants to check all of those different pipes of information for the response to a simple IM I sent? This constrains users to a few applications and to modalities that can maximize the likelihood that my response won’t get lost. If you email, I email you back, even if I’d rather speak. If I leave you a voice mail….well, there is no good way to figure out how to rendezvous with voice mail.
How did this happen? Well, first we had live voice over circuits. Then we tacked on a voice mail system that diverts the connection to a voice mail server. Two systems. Then we found that texting was cool. Another system. Then, from another software and service model, comes email. Great for asynchronous messaging. But another system. Video chat? Another system. Some of these are associated on the desktop in common applications, but they are still separate media paths, and what we would call separate conversations, because, at the core, they can never rendezvous. (On the surface they can sometimes be “forced” into a common stack of messages, but because these various platforms do not share the conversational context, they can’t actually rendezvous.)
What if I could respond to any message received in any media you choose to use with any medium I choose, and they would always rendezvous in the same conversation, the one you and I (or you and I and any number of people) have ongoing? And what if live voice and messaged voice (time shifted voice mails, if you like) also rendezvous in the same single place?
RebelVox supports this very thing. (Of course, that’s why I’m writing the post…)
The RebelVox protocol is totally indifferent to the type of media being transported, that is, we can support any media. We support conversations in which the user always gets to choose, at any given moment, what medium to use—always with the same application and the same messaging context. Except for latency optimization, the protocol doesn’t process live full-duplex voice any differently than voice messages or video streams or text or transcriptions of other streams (”derived streams”). It’s all the same in RebelVox. So any given “conversation” or thread can contain any or all media types totally interwoven. Each participant gets to contribute however they want an any given moment—but it all ends up in the right conversation; so no missed messages. And it really transforms multi-party conversations where anyone can be live at any time they want; but some can choose not to be live, but they’ll never miss any of it. Everyone gets to choose their favorite way and time to interact but are guaranteed that nothing is lost.
The whole rendezvous solution is summed up in the unique RebelVox interaction we call “catch up to live”. CTL enables you to join a live ongoing conversation, message, call, or conference, play it slightly faster if you want, and seamlessly transition into the live call, having missed nothing. You are leaving me a message, I notice, and I “catch up to live”, and then we are on a live call, but I heard it all.
Think about how that transforms the dropped call (just keep talking), the missed rendezvous, or the multliple conference calls that you can’t quite ever get to. Ever consider how cool it would be to pause any live conversation and then slip back in seamlessly without having missing anything?
It’s all about the rendezvous.
