Archive for the ‘BT’ Category

Welcome Kevin Marks to BT/Ribbit!

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | located in BT, Inside Ribbit | 2 Comments »

BT is pleased to announce that Kevin Marks has joined as Vice President of Web Services, reporting to JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Service Design. Kevin will be focused on open communications and the “open web”, working with the Ribbit team at our headquarters here in Mountain View. Awesome.

Before joining BT, Kevin was Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google, bringing external developers and internal engineers together to make a better web. He promoted OAuth and OpenID, helped converge Portable Contacts with OpenSocial, and explained how the Open Stack fits together. Over the last 20 years, he has alternated between giant companies and founding start-ups - BBC, The UK MultiMedia Corporation, Apple QuickTime, Technorati, Google and now BT. The common thread has been working out how people, computers and media can complement each other, and solving the engineering and social problems where they meet. He is one of the driving forces behind microformats.org and an advisor to the Open Rights Group.

Quotes:

• JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Service Design at BT: “To date, telecommunications have typically been walled off, limiting the possibilities for innovation and choice for consumers and the enterprise. Kevin has a long history of pursuing open standards and an open approach to communications. With the innovative Ribbit platform, BT shares this approach and the goal to fundamentally change communications through web and telephony services. We’re honored to bring Kevin on to help BT further build on its vision for the open global telecommunications company.
• Kevin Marks, Vice President of Web Services at BT: Working with BT is an opportunity to connect the solid engineering culture of BT with the open web standards culture of Silicon Valley, and Ribbit is a great place to do that. Connecting the mobile and web worlds through an open platform, and making sense of them through social software and open initiatives is an exciting prospect. I look forward to working with BT and Ribbit to help further their vision of open global communications.
• Ted Griggs, CEO at Ribbit: ”From the beginning, our goal at Ribbit was to enable people to completely rethink the way they communicate - bridging their mobile and online lives. We’re growing a vibrant developer community that is harnessing the power of the platform in ways never before seen, and in ways not possible on other platforms - but the surface has only just been scratched. We expect that Kevin’s vision for the Open Web and deep connection with developer communities through his work with Apple, Google, and Technorati will play a great part in realizing our goal.”

The Ribbit communications platform supports a global community of 15,000-plus application developers designing voiceware applications for consumers and enterprise. Through the Ribbit-BT partnership, developers gain unprecedented access to a global telecom infrastructure. And, unlike platforms such as Apple or Google Android, applications built on Ribbit are not locked to a specific carrier, device, protocol or operating system - an industry first.

Join us in welcoming Kevin to the team!

Tags: BT, kevin marks, new hire, open communications, Ribbit, web services

Ribbit: Integrating with BT

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | located in BT, Platform, SmartSwitch | No Comments »

As we settle in to our colorful new digs, there’s more on our minds than integrating the Ribbit and BT design themes. We’re seeing a clear course for bringing our platform more fully into alignment with all that BT has established, with the first steps in our partnership taking us all futher along on a path we believe in.

That’s great for us—and it’s even more fulfilling when outside observers look in on us and also “get” the connection. Read what Jon Arnold, Principal of J Arnold & Associates, says in his recent IP Communications post.

“Ribbit sees voice as one feature in the data network rather than being THE application that the business is built around. They could see that BT has moved away from that model and was thinking more as a software and services company rather than a phone company.”

His in-depth thoughts are worth a read for anyone interested in learning more about the redefinition of telephony and data services. Thanks to Jon for good insights on the Ribbit-BT partnership. We look forward to working with our developers as our shared vision takes shape.

Tags: BT, Developers, Partnership, Ribbit

Ribbit + BT. The Future of Communication Starts Today.

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 | located in BT, Platform | 2 Comments »

Today we’re sharing the great news that Ribbit has been acquired by BT one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services. This marks the most important day yet in Ribbit’s history. As part of BT will be able to more quickly extend our vision beyond Silicon Valley and bring our products and technology to the entire world. We couldn’t be more excited than to announce this new partnership.

Why would we agree to be acquired so soon after our December, 2007 launch? The answer is easy. In these seven busy months, we’ve learned from our customers and partners that our market opportunities are bigger than we had imagined and that aligning with a large-scale partner was the most direct route to building the Ribbit vision.

BT expressed an early interest in Ribbit and we’ve spent months getting to know one another. The teams at both Ribbit and BT deeply believe that our collaboration will serve our developers, the people who use our products and services, our partners and even the global communications industry. We like the idea of “rethinking communications” with a partner as strategic and visionary as BT. You can read more about that direction here. We will be sharing more details on this partnership, and introducing you to some key people on the BT team, here on this blog in the next few days—so please stay tuned.

Please join in our enthusiasm and excitement for this new partnership, and accept our thanks for the support you have shown to Ribbit so far. Both the Ribbit and BT teams promise to do all in our power to bring you the communications solutions you’ll need and want as this exciting space continues to evolve.

The best is yet to come!

Ted Griggs, Co-Founder and CEO

Tags: British Telecom, BT, communication, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, ted griggs, Voice, voip