Tropo Partners With Apcera and IBM's SoftLayer to Launch Industry's First In-Call Apps Platform

MENLO PARK, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 26, 2015) - Tropo™, the leader in real-time Telco APIs, today announced the availability of Tropo Connect, a platform that enables telcos and 3rd party developers to rapidly integrate traditional communications with popular cloud services and enterprise workflows. Partnering with Apcera and IBM's SoftLayer, Tropo Connect provides the first platform to enable web apps and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to interact with live phone calls and text conversations; placing service providers at the center of a growing ecosystem of developer tools and cloud services.

"IBM is excited to be working with Tropo and Apcera to deliver the first In-Call app platform on top of IBM's SoftLayer," said Mac Devine, vice president and CTO, SND and Innovation Services, IBM Cloud Division. "SoftLayer's full-featured API and sophisticated automation enables real-time media processing with a Telco-grade quality of service."

The In-Call apps platform enables both consumer and business-to-business apps. For example, a sales productivity app could respond to a subscriber's phone calls and extract keywords using advanced speech recognition technology to automatically generate contextual notes in their Customer Relationship Management System (CRM). By allowing web platforms like SalesForce.com to participate in the calling experience, a new market for enhanced services is created, unlocking massive revenue streams for services providers and their partners.

For consumers, use cases include parental controls, driver safety and IoT applications, making the physical world around you respond to everyday communications like never before.

Underpinning this is the Tropo Platform, which is deployed within the networks of several Tier 1 operators, such as AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT and Vodafone. For the first time, this platform it is being offered as fully managed turnkey infrastructure.

With Tropo Connect, product teams within communications service providers (CSPs) can breathe new life into, and generate additional revenue from, existing voice, video and messaging offerings, while gaining a competitive edge against over-the-top (OTT) applications.

"The modern web is built on open programming interfaces (APIs) that communicate with each other seamlessly, giving developers the opportunity to mash up services to create fresh revenue-generating apps for consumers and businesses," said Derek Collison, CEO of Apcera. "Tropo is allowing mobile network operators to gain that same freedom and service agility, without needing to overhaul their network architectures or expose sensitive network information. Apcera is pleased to extend our relationship with Tropo and IBM to deliver real time apps and we look forward to bringing this technology to IBMs global customers."

Services built on Tropo Connect can be deployed using the public, private or hybrid cloud, allowing services to be instantly trialed with live customers and then brought in-house at scale.

"Tropo Connect works with legacy networks, and is IMS-ready and certified for next-gen architectures," said Jose de Castro, founder and CTO at Tropo. "CSPs can start adding value and differentiation to their portfolios today, no matter where they are in their network transformation process, and be ensured that the services are future-proofed going forward."

With Tropo on pace to reach over 1 billion subscribers by the end of 2015, building Tropo applications can mean big business for independent developers seeking to integrate communications with existing tools and cloud services. To support this new class of application, Tropo plans to launch a marketplace that connects developers with CSPs looking for ways to create more compelling experiences for their customers.

To ease regulatory and privacy concerns, Tropo partners with IBM SoftLayer to provide secure global infrastructure and IP connections, and Apcera to provide a policy-driven Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) on which the Tropo application executes and scales.

About Tropo
Tropo lives at the intersection of developers and service providers. We invest in revolutionary ideas and innovate new communications solutions. Tropo products are used by over 200,000 developers and by many of the largest operators, mobile carriers, businesses and service providers around the world. For more information, visit www.tropo.com.