Intelepeer, which operates its own global IP-based voice peering network, this week released a new communications “platform-as-a-service” offering to help service providers and application developers add voice capabilities to their applications.
IntelePeer’s AppworX platform is most similar in approach to Ribbit, which provided a Flash-based development environment for building voice-enabled applications and which was recently acquired by BT.

“The BT acquisition generated a lot of interest in the space and set some valuations,” said Charles Studt, vice president of product management and marketing for IntelePeer. But while Ribbit was built around a classic Class 5-oriented softswitch, Intelepeer is focused on letting developers “use whatever networked, connected device they want to use to build their applications,” Studt said. Interestingly, Intelepeer provided voice peering services for Ribbit.

“From day one, our focus has not been on developing consumer services but putting together our platform and enabling other parties to build applications targeting the business-to-consumer experience,” Studt said.

For developers, IntelePeer provides a developer suite – including pre-built apps and widgets -- based on Web standards like PHP, XML and REST and also delivers back-end operations, including OSS, billing and managed capabilities delivered from its network as a service. The goal is to enable developers to add communications capabilities – including such things as click-to-call, call blast, conferencing and find-me/follow me functions – to their applications without having to tap into low level network protocols and APIs, said Studt.

The platform also features IntelePeer’s SuperRegistry service, which provides subscriber management and Telephone Number Mapping (Carrier ENUM) capabilities built into the AppWorx runtime environment. This approach eliminates the need for hardware acquisition, network interoperability testing and extensive, costly customization on the part of the application developer, the company said.