Comverse Acquires Solaiemes to Broaden its Digital Services Portfolio.

Acquisition Further Enhances Comverse’s Value Proposition to Service Providers Seeking to Evolve to Digital Lifestyle Players through RCS, WebRTC and Monetization

Key Takeaways:

• Accelerates Comverse’s Digital Services Portfolio with elements such as WebRTC Gateway, and the Industry’s first GSMA accredited RCS API Gateway
• Expands engineering expertise and talent in the IP Messaging and Digital Services Domains
• Makes Comverse’s Evolved Communication Suite the most comprehensive Digital Services offering in the Industry

WAKEFIELD, Mass., August 5, 2014 – Comverse (NASDAQ: CNSI), a global leader in telecom and enterprise business enablement, announced today its acquisition of Spain-based Solaiemes, an innovator focused on enabling the creation and monetization of Service Providers’ (SPs) digital services.

Solutions from Solaiemes complement the market leading Evolved Communication Suite (ECS) offering from Comverse, and the combined portfolio creates an end-to-end platform for service monetization of IP based digital services.

Quotes:
“Unlike other players in the digital economy, Comverse is unique in its product offering that enables SPs to both deliver and monetize digital experiences.” said Aashu Virmani, VP Product Management and Product Marketing of Digital Services at Comverse. “Solaiemes’ technology strengthens Comverse’s Evolved Communication Suite (ECS) portfolio, which enables SPs to become digital lifestyle players by easily and quickly launching innovative digital services with means to monetize them.”


Supporting Facts:

• Comverse ECS offering won TMC’s 2014 “Product of the Year” award, and the 2014 COMET Innovation award.
• Solaiemes’ RCS API solution has won the GSMA RCS Innovation Award, and is the only GSMA accredited RCS API product certified with Joyn Blackbird.
• The combined products are currently in trials at several Tier-1 service providers.
• You can learn more about Comverse’s Evolved Communication Suite here.
• By 2016, the number of devices supporting WebRTC is expected to exceed 4 billion.
• Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company does not expect the transaction to have a material impact on revenue or profitability for the quarter or fiscal year.

About Comverse
Comverse is a leading global provider of telecom business solutions that enable communication service provider success in the hyper-connected world through service innovation and smart monetization. The company’s proven and innovative product portfolio includes BSS, Policy Management (PCRF) and Enforcement, and Digital Services – all backed by Managed and Professional Services. Comverse’s extensive customer base spans more than 125 countries with solutions successfully delivered to over 450 communication service providers serving more than two billion subscribers. Comverse’s solutions are available in a variety of delivery models, including on-site, cloud, hosted/SaaS and managed services. For more information, visit www.comverse.com.

Statements included or incorporated by reference in this press release may contain “forward-looking statements.” There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statements will be achieved, and actual results could differ materially from forecasts and estimates. Important factors that could affect the company include the risks described in the section entitled “Forward-Looking Statements” Item 1A, “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 16, 2014 or in subsequently filed periodic, current or other reports. The company undertakes no commitment to update or revise forward-looking statements except as required by law.

TadHack 2014 in Madrid summary. Telco APIs matter.

Solaiemes sponsored TadHack 2014 event. Our company product is about telco APIs, and it was "the event". It took place in Madrid the past weekend and among the developer resources we offered RCS API Developer Portal & a WebRTC SDK to be used with Nexmo lines.

It was incredible how several satellite events provided very good entries, and how in 2 days onsite developers coming from different countries coded their hacks.

It was a pity that not many telcos sent people to see "where the money will be" but we are sure next year they will be. Thanks to all the telcos present. We could have good chats and also other tech vendors providing complementary APIs. And thanks to the brave developers who used our RCS API, they are the ones that could be named pioneers :-)

We are sure soon Alan Quayle will be postint his own summary with all the details, the decks used and pointers to the hacks.

Also, we were interviewed briefly about the reasons to participate in TadHack and why the telco APIs will be key.

You can find more pics (until the official gallery will be published by TadHack) in our Facebook Page here.
Hope to be next year at TadHack 2015

TadHack Fuenlabrada satellite event summary.

Solaiemes has partnered with Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (a public university in Madrid) to setup a Telco API workshop for Telecommunications and Computer Science students, as academic extracurricular activity, in the context of TADHack 2014.

The event aimed to give a glimpse into the fascinating world of APIs in general, and Telco APIs in particular, and setup very simple examples using some of the resources available as part of TADHack 2014.
The seminar was very brief, 6 hours in 2 days, it is hard to cover such a broad field, but we indeed tried. A step by step explanation of a RCS-base simple messaging service and deploying a WebRTC dialer application in just a few minutes was part of the seminar. We hope the students got a firm grasp of the importance of telco-related services and APIs, both as a very dynamic technology arena and a potential professional focus for their upcoming entrepreneurial projects or job seeking plans.

Thanks to Pedro de las Heras (@pheras) from the URJC TIC department to help setting this up and to Alan Quayle for their encouraging opening remarks to the event.

Additional pics from the event in our Facebook Page photo album

TadHack WebRTC exposure for Nexmo VoIP lines

As you know Solaiemes is sponsoring TadHack event and providing the RCS API portal to allow developers to get familiar with rich chat possibilities to create valuable interactive services.

As Nexmo is offering its VoIP lines for the hackaton we just prepared a "beta" way to use their lines with WebRTC. In this site the developer can introduce the credentials of the Nexmo lines and get the credentials to use that line with the WebRTC SDK. No need additional registration, if you registered in the Nexmo portal you only need to get your WebRTC SDK credentials linked to your line.

There are included a couple of examples including the code source that can be downloaded, a dialer and a clic2call.

We will keep it live for the Hackaton.

Enjoy the hack!

Solaiemes shortlisted for an IMS Industry Awards 2014 in the RCS Package category.

We're delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for an #IMS Industry Awards 2014!

The winners will be announced during the IMS World Forum 2014 next week.

We compete in the Best RCS Package with our RCS Monetization Suite package that includes RCS network API and related monetizable tools that telcos can trial with an unbeatable offering.

For us it is very rewarding to be be competing with public companies and VC backed companies and cross the finger that this could open doors for growth, new customers, partnerships and investors.

Also, Solaiemes will participate and showcase demos in the WebRTC preconference Workshop showcasing how telcos can monetize WebRTC, both, exposing as web its voice, and also using WebRTC to create a myriad of innovative services combining web and telco.

#MWC14 or how RCS is happening without a name.

After the hectic week of #MWC14 and the also hectic post Mobile World Congress week with urgent follow-up's, it's time now to explain our views.

For Solaiemes it was the best MWC ever, more visitors, many meetings with C-level people of telcos and leading vendors, and a lot of unexpected visitors that already knew about our portfolio and interested in include our vision and related portfolio in their future strategy. We can say proudly that had visitors from the 5 continents :-)

This year GSMA did not reserve an specific RCS or joyn area. The RCS acronym is included in the Future Communication space and the commercial brand, joyn, is quietly being removed. Only in a few pods in the Connected City and Future Communication areas RCS use cases were demoed. Does it mean that RCS is being discarded? NO, just the opposite, a lot of telcos are issuing RFP's, and talked openly about plans with us. RCS will happen as messaging evolution, perhaps it does not need new names but providing new experiences and associated use cased based on messaging. Just our vision. Some of the people we talk with expressed our same opinion, we need our own messaging, and SMS is not enough today. It seems that RCS is now in the scope of enlightenment.

Also, we received many visitors interested in how WebRTC can be used by telcos, not only to expose their legacy enablers as voice but to create a myriad of new services. We returned with the batteries full of charge to walk the extra-mile and help to change the telco industry :-)

Apart from the RCS API Gateway for A2P and RCS Web Access, it has been demoed the Personal Manager, an specia RCS AS with additional features for the enterprise market. The idea is solving the overwhelming messaging mess creating personalized filters and autoresponses far more ambitious than the limited white/black lists.

And last but not least we just read a couple of mentions.
We were mentioned in the Frost&Sullivan MWC 2014 Key Takeaways slides by Ronald Gruia.

Also we were mentioned by Andre Rios from Barcinno.com talking about Telco APIs and listing Solaiemes as interesting company together big names as Apigee and Aepona.

Now, it's time to work even harder, this year will be our year!

Unified Communications based on RCS using RCS API & WebRTC.

See the new Unified Comms client based on telco assets. Combining RCS and voice you can create full UC experience in you browser combining messaging and media features. For media WebRTC is used, YES!!!! WebRTC is useful for RCS!



The 2 Solaiemes products needed are Solaiemes RCS Web Solution API and the WebRTC-Telco Gateway. The UX/look&feel can be fully customized to your requirements, do not worry :-)

See you at #MWC14 !

Facebook Private Call App: telco wedding with WebRTC and social networks.

Hi, we recently talked about our WebRTC-Telco Gateway and its SDK enabling new innovative telco services and mash-ups with internet. We included some services, in a demo service portal, to authorize to be reached at your mobile without disclosing your number, one of them was using Facebook Connect.

Now we just built as Facebook app the service. The idea is that you may prefer not to give your phone number to new friends but have an option allowing them to call you at your number. Yes! It is possible, see how.


With this approach, both telcos and social networks can partner and offer premium services for new communication experiences with an added value, in the example, to be reachen at your mobile normally without disclosing your number.

More services coming soon!

WebRTC-Telco Monetization Webinar slides and poll analysis.

Thanks to all the attendants to our webinar about WebRTC-Telco Monetization and the feedback provided with the initial polls and a short final survey. You all can access to the slides here:



Also, we would like to share the initial poll results. Some key points:

• Most of the attendants consider that WebRTC is a technology that telcos may use.


• Almost half of responses consider "internal politics" the cause of telcos not using WebRTC.


• The telco applications of WebRTC are broad and not a clear preference about the focus.


• The poll suggests the convenience of starting to use WebRTC by Telcos asap, and in case of waiting for "something", the most relevant issue to be solved is the lack of WebRTC support in mobile/tablet platform, not Internet Explorer. It seems that the lack of support of WebRTC by IE is not a concern.

Feel free to contact us or provide additional feedback, by email, linkedin or just visiting our booth at #MWC14.

New Webinar: WebRTC Telco Monetization. WebRTC as Telco opportunity. Tuesday, Feb, 11th.

After the experience of our first webinar about RCS monetization and the positive feedback received we were encouraged to repeat :-)

Several RCS Monetization attendants confirmed that they changed their mind regarding RCS business opportunity or the how the deployment strategy shoud be prepared.

We think it is a good idea to prepare a new one covering the monetization strategy of WebRTC by telcos.

Our aim is to dismantle "mantras" regarding WebRTC as it is only a challenger technology for telcos and not a technology that telcos can use to enhance its communication services portfolio.

YES! WebRTC offers telcos a lot of potential and we want to explain how WebRTC will benefit telcos and how new telco services WebRTC based could get Monetized.

Please, join the WebRTC Telco Monetization. WebRTC as Telco opportunity on Tuesday 11th, February. 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1446721263229590018
  

New minisites explaining our RCS API + VAS Platforms & WebRTC portfolios.

We created a couple of months ago a "back to school" style mini-site to explain the concept of RCS as a Platfom and detail our products related.

Past 2 weeks we created 2 additional mini-sites with "boards" to explain additional pieces of our portfolio.

To explain the WebRTC for Telcos approach the new minisite explains our WebRTC portfolio showing the webphones and RCS web clients and also the SDK to create easily services, all of them based in our WebRTC-Telco Gateway product.

Also we included the powerful concept of the "WebRTC Telcos Services portal with a demo of portal with innovative services.

And finally, a third minisite explains our vision of "chats in your apps / in-chat services". How group chat becomes thanks to the RCS API in something cooler and more useful.

We envision the group chat as something dynamic, where "chat based bots" can be included temporarily to provide fun (chat based games) or productivity (recorder, translator, group access to a travel agent, etc).
You can see the web "Apps in your Chats"

We are working to also refurbish our corporate site www.solaiemes.com :-) Hope to be on time for the coming Mobile World Congress, we need to make clear what we have to help telcos to keep a relevant role.

2013 recap and...Happy New Year 2014!

We want to wish all of you but specially to our customers, partners, followers, fans and prospects :-) a happy new year.



2013 Recap:
2013 was a challenging year for us. Finally the carriers are taking seriously that they need a messaging alternative, that SMS is great but right now, a multimedia messaging using all the possibilities of the smartphone devices and the speed of 3G and 4G networks are needed.

Also, the new messaging market with free/very cheap alternatives forces service providers to think about how to monetize, and they are realizing that the potential is in the VAS, using the API. We were pioneers in this vision and were awarded by the GSMA 2 years ago, now we see our competitors repeating our pitch.

We can say we have API GW being trialed succesfully in 4 tier-1 telcos and expect some of them going to commercial models. While competitors are trying to replicate our vision we are thinking in the next layer of value, specific servers for messaging monetization as RCS Store, RCS Developer Portal and RCS Ad Server to introduce first time the contextual advertising using the chat as media.
Also we are reinventing the group chat with the "apps in your chats" concept. Telcos are in the crossroad between becoming pipe or instead to become "real service providers" offering new services that could add revenue, our goal is to help them to stay relevant and keep a role in future communications.

Also this year 2013 was the year of WebRTC and we started to create our own technology, initially to complete the RCS API GW and put voice and RCS videoshare on the internet browser without plugings but finally we extended to a full WebRTC-Telco GW with an SDK enabling the development of innovative new Telco and Telco bridging OTT services. We can say we are already competing in tier-1 telcos RFQs with this product too.

But 2013 is coming to and end and we have some goals we could not match. We were unable to raise a growth VC round (1.2-2 M€) we need to move the company to the next stage by attending and converting many of the presales opportunities we are finding. In spite of the change of mind of some telcos, now keen on working with small companies, to compete in others with need some muscle. Being a tech company based in Spain is not easy at all and sometimes even playing at home is complicated :-(

Solaiemes took off but this coming 2014 we expect to get onboard a new investor that could add the fuel needed to reach the cruising height or a strong tech company with complementary portfolio as partner for go to market.

In the short-term we expect all of you visiting our booth at Mobile World Congress 2014.

Happy New Year 2014
the Solaiemes team

WebRTC is the new telcos gold. See how!

We have been following the debate WebRTC vs Telco and our position is that WebRTC is a very useful tool for telcos. WebRTC makes easy to expose their communication assets reaching the internet browsers as endpoints and also with the proper SDK as a key instrument to innovate creating new services that could be monetized.

We created a demo of WebRTC Telco Service portal, allowing telcos to sell not only voice minutes for outgoing calls but also creating a new business model. A possible new revenue could come from selling incoming minutes while allowing people to call you browser using alphanumeric codes or just being authorized using Facebook Connect. This is a way to protect the privacy of your phone number while allowing others to call you. YES, it means telcos taking advantage from internet companies stuff as well.



Our WebRTC-Telco GW product has now an SDK allowing to develope telco-WebRTC services easily. We have designed 3 services and create a Service Portal that telcos can deploy today as are UNI and can be connected to whatever IMS or VoIP server.

To create a funny and customizable user interface based on widgets we used Gridster.js  a framework from Ducksboard.

Rich Communication 2013 event. Our view.

We attended the Rich Communication conference in Berlin last week. Juan, our co-founder participated in the WebRTC workshop chaired by Alan Quayle, you can find the slides here. We participated in 2 pannels discussing how RCS deployments were going and the potential of the API to go beyong the person to person messaging case.

Regarding the WebRTC vs RCS, it was explained how WebRTC is a technology that broadens the telco communication reach for services as voice and RCS media (videoshare and IP Videocall). We made live demos involving WebRTC to provide media in RCS clients, also to create Webphones.

During the 2 days of conference along the many keynotes and panels it was clear that RCS is happening, in different ways but happening. The industry is just intruducing the A/B testing for RCS, some telcos are testing with "joyn" common brand and others are introducing RCS as natural evolution of SMS/MMS. RCS UI is combining RCS chat/file transfer and using SMS/MMS when the other party is not RCS enabled. It was the case of the service explained by Vodafone & Wit.

Also, it is interesting to see potential dual deployments on-net + OTT RCS to try to expand the RCS user base until latecomers will be launching. It was the case of Sprint in the US.

Another of the hot topics discussed was the IMS vs non-IMS deployments. As Brent from Newpace said during his presentations, the last editions of the events the presence of the big NEVs trying to sell the "big IMS concept" was overwhelming and this year the RCS hosted solution vendors took charge of the show.

API, API, API....network API...YES! Not only us but several vendors and telcos emphasized the role of the API and the need to open RCS communication to B2C and other person to "something" experiences. Deutsche Telekom & Orange talked about the Paris to Berling hackaton.
The winner in Berlin was Yeppt and we all saw the video of how a web based service can use joyn to add additional channel for their users to interact with their service.

Other speakers as Naren from DT stated the important role of RCS API with examples of human-service instant messaging interaction.

Some telcos with not yet deployed RCS talk about their plans, how they are issuing RFQs, how they plan to use RCS not only as messaging tool but replacing/improving the A2P business they made along the years with the SMS. We see that our vision is shared with telcos (and we fear that now also with competitors).

In our opinion this was the best edition of the event. There was not taboo to talk openly about OTT competitiors as Whatsapp and analyze the opportunities as B2C comms that Whatsapp is not promoting yet. This a very good opportunity for telcos to take the lead there.

Finally, we are starting a newsletter, please join our mailing list here

UPDATE: find a full review of the event by Alan Quayle here .

Solaiemes WebRTC-Telco Gateway. Telco voice (including PSTN) easily ubiquitous.

Solaiemes works hard to help telcos to adapt to the new competitive scenario. We see WebRTC as huge opportunity for telcos as they finally are not depending on 3rd parties and their roadmaps to deliver "physical end-points". Also, we continue relying on UNI (user to network interface) approach to avoid painful integrations with the telco cores. Connecting to the SBC is the perfect way, plug&play, works inmediately and allows cloud deployment when needed.


We can say we tested the platform in several live telco environments, and it worked with no integration at all needed. Just provisionate in the platform the user credentials and voice become ubiquitous. We published videodemos in previous posts: webphone and RCS webphone.

Solaiemes participated in the TelcoAPI workshop at SDP Summit.

Solaiemes had the opportunity to attend the SDP Global Summit organized by Informa Telecoms  & Media the past 17-20th September in Rome.

It was an interesting event with telcos and vendors explaining their approaches to the "service delivery". Topics as how close API exposure & telco core have to be in the architecture and long tail versos internal/enterprise users to be the target were discussed.

Our opinion is that telco exposure may be done in a way that could be deployed easily, and with no/little integration tasks. We know big vendors sometimes like the complexity as a form of lock-in but we embrace UNI-exposure (user to network interface, API behaving as telco-client/end-point). It is the way we are doing for RCS API exposure and also for WebRTC-Telco exposure.

We are including our slides from the TelcoAPI post-conference Workshop chaired by Alan Quayle where we could share the stage with great companies as Tropo, Telestax & Apidaze. We talked about RCS API as opportunity for telcos in the B2C communications space.


Alan Quayle just published about the SDP Summit review and the TelcoAPI Workshop with his own slides and the slides from participants in the SDP Summit and the workshop.

We particularly recommend the slides 36-64 of the his presentation, priceless as it is described with funny slides why the old-telco mindset could make telcos irrelevant soon. It would make no sense, many vendors, established ones and young blood ones are trying to help them to stay relevant and competitive players in the new communication services field.

WebRTC Phone. Fix phone is not anymore something tied to a wire.

Following our previous post where we show a full communicator based on WebRTC including voice, video, and RCS/joyn features we received some questions from customers & prospects about if it could be used only to extent the reach of traditional PSTN or VoIP numbers with a simple UX.

The answer is YES, OF COURSE. We prepared a simpler WebRTC Phone supporting voice call, phonebook (NAB, network address book) and the call register. Have a look please:




(*) Note: it is difficult to record the live audio from demos :-(, but we can say and show the audio-quality is better that it could seem listening the video :-)  You can request a demo.

Google Chrome becomes a real phone with Solaiemes WebRTC.

Solaiemes is using WebRTC to build a compelling solution to help telcos to deliver ubiquitously their communication services. Now, we have created for Google Chrome (the most advanced WebRTC browser) a web-phone that enables a PSTN line (it could be also a mobile line or VoIP) to be accessed everywhere just with a browser.
You can see how you can dial a number and make a simple call, or you can be reached by a mobile joyn capable number and enjoy the features of RCS/joyn as video-share.




Fix carriers are no restricted anymore to offer communications tied to a physical wire, VoIP telcos are now free to offer their services tied to softphones to be installed or VoIP physical phones, mobile numbers will be also available from a web browser. The communications revolution is just starting and telcos must defend its role by delighting their customers.

Solaiemes to demonstrate enabling PSTN+joyn ubiquity using WebRTC in IMS World Forum.

We will be demoing at IMS World Forum 2013 (organized by Informa TM) how telcos can take the benefits of to new technologies RCS messaging and WebRTC to access to media components of devices to revamp the value of PSTN (and also mobile) lines. We would like to show how Unified Communications could be built just a mash-up of standards and APIs.

The pre-conference WebRTC Wosrshop will be conducted on Monday 22nd and will be conducted by Alan Quayle (telco analyst & owner of Alan Quayle Business & Service Development) and Jose de Castro (Voxeo Labs CTO).  You can see the list of companies and demos participating in these posts in the Alan's blog http://alanquayle.com/2013/02/webrtc-at-the-ims-world-forum/ and a further update http://alanquayle.com/2013/04/update-apidaze-io-quobis-and-telestax-join-the-webrtc-pre-conference-at-the-ims-world-forum/

We would like to say thanks for the opportunity to demo how to apply our technology to the telco world and share event with companies we know as Voxeo Labs, Telestax, Quobis, etc and meet there other amazing companies.

We will be also attending the full event and available for networking. If you also attending and want to know more about that and what we are doing for joyn/RCS and WebRTC email us to schedule a meeting.

joyn voice & videoshare between iPad WebRTC client and mobile client

In Solaiemes we are trying to help telcos to make available their communication services ubiquitously, and WebRTC philosophy fits with our aim.
In this demo you can see a iPad joyn WebRTC client based on our joyn API and LiveServe media server running using the browser "Bowser" by Ericsson Labs for iOS (the Apple mobile/tablet OS).


For this proof of concept we linked a real PSTN number to the joyn WebRTC client. A voice call is done between WebRTC and mobile app accredited client (by Silta-Neusoft).