GENBAND Unveils 2011 GENFuzion Developer Challenge Winners

Top app developers from GENFuzion Developer Community recognized for innovative applications powered by A2 Communications Application Server

Frisco, Texas, August 30, 2011 – GENBAND, a leading developer of IP infrastructure and application solutions, today announced the results of its first GENFuzion™ Developer Challenge, recognizing the top app developers from across several strategic categories, including Lifestyle, Productivity, Mobility and Unified Communications. Designed to expand third party applications powered by the GENBAND A2™ Communications Application Server, the Developer Challenge successfully launched the GENFuzion Developer Community earlier this year.

GENBAND awarded first place honors to Switchpoint Solutions, who developed a queuing alert application for businesses such as restaurants to better manage customer wait times. Cliniconex was named second place winner with their stock tracker alert application, designed to notify stock brokers or stock traders when configurable thresholds have been reached and allowing them to communicate with each other faster to buy or sell stocks. SaskTel’s IDnoodle Department received third place honors for their myCentrex application, an end user web portal and mobile smartphone application that enhances Centrex service customer retention while enabling the service provider business case for TDM to IP Centrex network transformation.

“We are entering a new era in telecommunications, as companies like GENBAND are enabling developers to rapidly supply service providers with compelling and potentially revenue-generating applications,” said Joe McGarvey, Principal Analyst with Current Analysis and GENFuzion Developer Challenge Judge. “The speed with which the developers created such value added and viable applications for service providers was one of the many surprising elements of this challenge. The creativity of the winners represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is to come as a result of tools and resources now available to the service provider development community.”

“The immediate and powerful impact of opening GENBAND APIs to developers and providing them a collaborative testing environment for application development has been extraordinary,” said Mehmet Balos, Chief Marketing Officer at GENBAND. “Our first ever GENFuzion Developer Challenge has unleashed outstanding innovation and proven to be a highly effective accelerator for fostering all types of application development for service providers to leverage. We congratulate the top three winners of our challenge along with several honorable mentions, which are all already connecting with new potential customers as we facilitate go-to-market opportunities through our GENApps Showcase.”

For a complete list and description of the 2011 GENFuzion Developer Challenge winners, categories and awards, clickhere. All contest participant applications and winners are also posted and promoted on the GENBAND GENApps Showcase.

About GENBAND
GENBAND is a global leader of IP infrastructure and service solutions, enabling fixed, mobile and cable service providers around the world to evolve communications networks through IP innovation. The Company offers market-leading Switching, Networking and Service solutions, with products deployed in over 600 customer networks spanning more than 80 countries. GENBAND is headquartered in Frisco, Texas, and has operations in 50 countries. To learn more, visit us on the web at www.genband.com.
GENBAND, the GENBAND logo and icon are trademarks of GENBAND.

Contact:
Kim Lee
GENBAND
+1.972.265.3766
kim.lee@genband.com

A Developer Contest with Real Money Prizes by GENBAND

I spend a lot of time reading up on, and sometimes using various API's available "in the cloud" to develop applications or integrate data into websites. In many cases it is much easier to find access to complex data or functions using an open API from another company than it is to create it from scratch.

One area that I have always had a keen interest in is telecommunications, from my history in the industry I understand well how hard it can be to get access to the large telecommunications companies that hold the large majority of connections (whether wireless or wireline) to customers. It becomes almost impossible to find a way to get a new app in front of these carriers or their customer base if you do not have a long history showing 99.999 percent reliability in your application.

Well, GENBAND has opened up their API's to their A2 communications application server which is used for millions of ports communications services by some of the largest companies in the world.

Knowing that the developer community is different from the more corporate focused large companies they have provided access to their developer program through a development community that has been established, BUT, more importantly has launched (and then extended due to interest) a contest for developers with some really nice size cash prizes.

If you are a developer reading this and want access to a large base of customers take a look at the GENBAND GENFuzion Contest page and program info.

Also, you can see a little intro video here:

That Mobile Internet Thingy Is Going To Be Big Someday

I was just doing my daily perusal of various tech news and ran into a couple articles on Mashable and ReadWriteWeb that really show the changing usage of internet users, both non-techies and the early adopters.

With mobile broadband becoming more ubiquitous everyday and it seems like every device in the world has wi-fi built in this trend of app based access rather than browser based access is going to continue.

One thing that will continue as well is a deeper integration of communications (group messaging, VoIP, etc) directly into the apps. Social=Communications and having SMS and voice directly in the apps on our mobile phones will only increase stickiness as we will not have to exit an app to go communicate what we are experiencing in the app.

The two articles that are linked to above show that consumers are spending more time on mobile apps than they are browsing the web now. That is a first.

What is driving this? Well recently the combined shipment of smartphone and tablet sales surpassed those of desktops and notebooks. This drives app usage as many people just click on a branded app rather than going to a browser. This growth will continue as wireless penetration continues.

With rural broadband growing by the day, and wireless being one of the most common ways to access these areas this affects not only metro areas but smaller regions as well.

One very interesting statistic is that the growth year over year is 91 percent for mobile app usage, and the general consumer is just now starting to understand the value of smart phones and tablets. In todays world it will not be enough to just target consumers with a great website, now it is going to take a mix of web, social media, and apps if you want to catch your customer each step of the way. I would venture to say many younger consumers will default to mobile apps before they even head to a browser.

Check out the articles linked to in the top paragraph. Interesting reads on both accounts.

Foursquare.com and Why Local Business Should Pay Attention

I have been using Foursquare for sometime now and have recently started to see quite a few more people start to join the fast growing social/location based game/app/service. With most of my attention being focused on local search for local businesses and local online advertising on Missouri.me, apps like Foursquare pique my interest and I like to watch their evolution and the way people use them as they evolve.

It is important to not necessarily watch how the early adopters use them since they tend to be power users and their day to day usage will be much different than the mass of users that come in later and are less techie. When I see my wife using Foursquare everyday I start to see how people will really use the service and the power that small businesses will have if they use the service to help draw people into their doors.

The past month (with one of the examples happening today) I have witnessed a couple examples of what will start to happen as the general consumer starts to come online with apps such as this. There is no need to go through all the hype around Foursquare and all the huge projections since all of that has been reported on virtually every tech site in existence so I would prefer to talk real world examples of how it draws people in.

First example is a restaurant in the town Localtek is based in, Spokes is the name of the restaurant, this is a place that I visit on occasion when friends are there. Recently while I was checking into locations on Foursquare I noticed there was a "Special Here" banner at the top of the Foursquare iPhone app. If you click it you could see that Spokes was offering half price burgers to the person that is the Foursquare mayor of Spokes (Foursquare has the concept of Mayor for the person who checks into a location most frequently plus a few other requirements).

So what happens? I start to go to Spokes now because it is a competition to try to get the mayorship, it should be noted I do not even necassarily eat burgers when I go there but based on the competitive factor I start to go so I can check-in. I am sure the special will change at times so why not go for the mayorship so I get future specials.

A little special like that and I show up, and I am sure others have as well. And when people show up to eat at a restaurant they typically bring more people. It all starts to add up. This is a simple example, but this is in a town of less than 20 thousand people. This is not a large city with a huge base of technology focused people. This is rural Missouri and people are taking advantage of this. There is a base of right around 2 million users on Foursquare and I am already having to fight for mayorships.

Now you start to think about local coffee shops offering half price coffees or other specials for mayors, or maybe a restaurant offering something to people who are mayors elsewhere to try to get them to come to their restaurant instead of the other and you start to see some of the power.

Another example is something that happened just today, my wife, daughter and I were in a mall and they were running into "chick" stores so I was browsing a bit. I happened to notice another "Special" banner and it was for a small watch kiosk. You could unlock the special by checking in.

So what happens, I go check out the watch kiosk and since I checked in I got a free watch cleaning. Small stuff but now my wife and daughter start browsing. As you can imagine other consumers will do this same thing and this will drive additional purchases since people show up for the free watch cleaning. What an easy and great way to drive people to stop at a kiosk most people would just walk on by.

These are just a couple examples but as you can see this is something local businesses will have to watch and pay attention too. With apps on both the iPhone and Google Android based phones based on location launching everyday and those with disposable income being the ones most likely to have them it is no longer possible for a business that has been around for dozens of years to ignore the shift happening to local online and in the mobile world.

Foursquare is just one example. Watch as many more come to market as people figure out new and unique ways to tap this new technology. For those of us in the tech world it may not seem new but until recently there was not a true way for local businesses to be able to tap into this marketing channel.