Vapps, a software-based provider of audio conferencing systems has added call control features to its Conference Bridge 1000 platform that allows voice-over-broadband and communications service providers to tailor voice conferencing sessions on a customer by customer basis.

The Hoboken, NJ-based company, which has had its SIP-enabled and VoIP-based CB1000 on the market since December of 2003, now provides unique message greetings and call flows for each individual phone number while incorporating new web-based call control features.

“We felt in the first quarter that we had crossed the tipping point where we had done all the feature parity wit incumbent products and looked to begin providing more sticky applications for our conference-calling customers,” said Ben Lilienthal, CEO of Vapps.

One of those sticky features eliminates the need for conference operators and allows internal moderators to run the question and answer session and control other features such as muting and recognizing through a Web-based interface all the participants on a call and their status.

The Linux-based CB1000 delivers reservation-less conference calls on both legacy and IP-based telecom systems. It supports up to 18,000 total conference participants in multiple simultaneous conferences, with the ability to easily scale on a card-by-card basis. It also makes recorded conferences instantly available by both Web and phone access. Using the systems web-based call control capabilities, users can create any combination of call management features, such as lists, mute, and other standard attributes and make them available to customers via n XML-based Web portal.

Vapps began the company 3.5 years ago with the idea of selling systems to conference calling companies, but soon saw that VoBB companies were moving faster. VoBB providers such as Appia Communications, BBTelsys and Excel Conferencing use the CB1000 to provide conferencing to their business customers.

“Our thesis was that conference companies would drive the features that the market requires so we started there. But if a product is good enough for a company that [derives] 100% of its revenue for conferencing, it should be good enough for a service provider whose revenue from conference calling is 5%,” Lilienthal said.

The new call flow capabilities are available today. The Web-based Q&A and other features will be available September 1.