You can read a chunk of the article here.

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Left to right (Tim, Dan, Alain, Jesse, Yutaka, Sai, Jason)

On July 11th, the mighty seven pictured above embarked on a bike ride. A 65 mile bike ride. Three of them (Dan, Jason and Tim) drank a little extra Gatorade and took the 100 mile challenge. They all crossed the finished line, and - more importantly - raised $5,015 that will be put towards cancer research.

Congrats fellas!!

And I wanted to give an extra special thanks to Tim who  lent Yutaka his bike (and shoes) so that he could participate in the ride, gliding along on a metal frame that had a set of gears. Something I hear that is important when doing these king of distances.

For more information and to read about their fund raising activities, check out the Team Ribbit Livestrong page. They created this website using the Ribbit platform, providing a voice call blog for people to call in and leave messages, memories, wishes of support and dedications. Even though the ride is over, I am sure the fellas would love to hear your words of encouragement as they are now considering another ride to continue their charity given ways.

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The service, which is already being used by over 100 fixed line and mobile operators in the UK, is now available from anywhere in the world. Customers can connect to BT’s IP Exchange hubs using a different access methods including BT’s high quality MPLS network with points of presence (PoPs) in over 170 countries.

In addition to the termination of voice minutes, the BT Wholesale IP Exchange service provides video and data traffic across a wide range of standards and configurations. BT has recently introduced a pre-pay facility that allows operators to grow their businesses quickly without the need for upfront deposits and is developing a  range of value added services including hubbing and transaction management services.

Customers also benefit from the interface between BT’s Ribbit and the IP Exchange platforms to leverage innovative software development and deliver rapid proof of concept, improved time-to-market and lower development costs for IP based applications.

For more information on the BT IP Exchange, you can contact BT directly.

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L to R: Crick Waters, JP Rangaswami, Clive Selley, Ted Griggs, Colin Windsor

Clive paid us a visit yesterday - shook some hands, kissed some babies - and then shared his vision for the Innovate and Design division and how Ribbit played heavily into this. Can’t go into details (yet), but let’s just say there is some good stuff coming this way for everyone involved.

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Features of BT Onevoice Ribbit:

In the video [embedded in the Converge! Network Digest article], Ted also discusses the Ribbit offerings; carrier class soft switch, platform APIs (REST and Flash), the Ribbit Mobile consumer app, and Ribbit for Salesforce [and Oracle] for the enterprise.

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• Service is aimed at multinational customers looking to realise the benefits converged communications deliver.
• Will significantly lower operational, network and administration costs by keeping voice calls on-net, minimising expensive international calls.
• Onevoice Ribbit v1.0 will provide users with a single direct dial phone number for all incoming and outgoing calls making it easier for customers, suppliers and partners to contact them first time.
• Users will be able to define how calls are routed through the Onevoice VPN to reach them if they are away from their office.
• Calls will be delivered on-net to other sites directly to the Ribbit softphone or via the nearest PSTN breakout point to any number globally, minimising international call costs.
• Users can choose to have multiple device options for making and receiving calls through the Onevoice network offering significant call savings on mobile bills.

The cloud-based service includes a softphone which gives users easy access to a range of advanced call features for calling any BT Onevoice on-net number, according to their corporate dial-plan, in addition to off-net public numbers. Enterprise calls can be originated from a softphone, and all on net numbers and services such as BT Conferencing audio bridges can be accessed at a fraction of the cost of a mobile or hotel phone call.

The user’s ‘One Number’ can also be directed to multiple end points or devices which can easily be moved or changed, so that multiple end points or devices can be reached and even ring simultaneously. Onevoice Ribbit v1.0 offers a portal for users to set up and administer the service for themselves, including the configuration of end-user devices, call forwarding rules, conference speed dials and speed-dial favourites. Users will also be able to view call logs, manage passwords and voicemail including speech-to-text transcriptions. The transcription is sent as text to email or SMS, and the recording is attached to emails so users can listen to the voice mail.

The service will be released to selected customers in beta this summer, with full release expected by the end of this year.

Quote(s):

• Neil Sutton, Vice President, Global Portfolio, BT Global Services, said: “Delivering Ribbit to Onevoice customers enables them to start the journey to unified communications and accelerate the adoption of communications applications to the desktop. Its innovative features also make users lives significantly simpler while enabling the organization to spend less. This announcement shows our commitment to help customers transform their business, drive down costs and help them increase productivity.”
• Erin Smith, managing director, BT Innovate & Design: “Delivering Ribbit to Onevoice customers not only provides connectivity to BT’s global network, it enables them to start the journey to unified communications and accelerate the adoption of communications applications to the desktop. Voice truly becomes just another application, but the innovative features also make users lives significantly simpler while helping the organisation to spend less.”

Media:

• BT Onevoice Ribbit is a powerful unified communications solution for the enterprise
• BT Onevoice Ribbit 1.0 Features List
• How Ribbit Works
• What is Ribbit (video)

More about BT Onevoice:

• BT Onevoice allows customers for the first time to buy a fully converged, of-the-shelf, integrated voice and data service under a single bill, contract and SLA. BT Onevoice Mobile Access is an easy method to reduce international mobile spend.
• BT’s Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solutions include a combination of traditional voice services, next generation voice services including VoIP and IPT, BT professional services and support of key vendor platforms such as Cisco, Nortel and Microsoft managed services. BT also offers full integration of Cisco UCC with key software platforms such as MS and IBM applications to offer a comprehensive UCC portfolio.
• BT Global Services solutions directly address the needs of Global Enterprise customers in both local site based deployments of customer premise equipment, and also to reflect the growing demand in “cloud” based hosted solutions. Both premises equipment-based and hosted solutions are supporting leading vendors in UCC and are both underpinned by BT’s voice solutions, integration skills and global networking capabilities.

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Jason Lane, Tim Potranandana, Yutaka Hosoai, Sai Kalaga, Dan Seyer, and Jesse Williams are checking the air in their tires and planning to ride in the 65 mile Livestrong Challenge taking place in San Jose on July 12th. Jason and Tim raised cancer fighting money for the Livestrong Foundation last year in a 50 mile ride and I am glad to see them taking this on again this year.

Tim and Jason did a 35 mile training ride in about two hours on Wednesday from San Bruno to Mountain View. Today they did another 35 miles and are feeling stronger. In fact, they beat their time by 7 minutes already. Good job fellas. My legs feel like jelly just typing this.

Team Ribbit is hoping to raise $5,000 and are well on their way…but absolutely could use your help. You don’t have to ride to participate (unless you really want to). You can pick someone on their team (preferably the person with the lowest donations) and send that money on over. $5 minimum, but every single dollar counts.

Adding to the fundraising cause, they are hosting a bake sale in the Ribbit office next Tuesday (800 West El Camino Real, Suite 250 in Mountain View) with brownies, muffins and more.  In return they are asking a minimum of $5-$10 towards their fundraising efforts and they will take cash, credit cards, travelers checks, and maybe even an IOU or two if you’re good for it. Ok, forget the IOU, bring cash. It is king here.

I hope you will help support Team Ribbit and donate to the Livestrong Foundation. Let’s do our part to help kick cancer’s bum.

Updated: Added team members and increased donation goal.

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Says Griggs, “We want to be the platform for enabling communications in these applications on the Web. Architecturally, we are unique in the industry by having what I would call a carrier-certified softswitching infrastructure. What sets us apart from the marketplace is we truly are the mashup of the Silicon Valley’s first phone company perspective with a carrier infrastructure underneath it.”

You can read the full article here.

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Ribbit, a BT company that delivers communication services that innovate and transform the way we interact, has been recognized as the overall winner in the Service Provision category for the first-ever BritWeek UKTI Business Innovation Awards. This program highlights the achievements of businesses with joint operations in the UK and California.

The awards honor companies for achievements in innovation before an audience of elite international players, as well as the wider California business community.  Winners were judged by a panel of renowned experts, including entrepreneur engineer Sir James Dyson and BBC Technology Correspondent Maggie Shiels.

During an awards dinner held Tuesday night in Beverly Hills, Ribbit was recognized for its dedication to moving communications forward with innovative technologies, such as its Google Wave conferencing gadget.  BritWeek recognized Ribbit’s work with its open, cloud-based environment for communications in which third party developers can take advantage of voice with little or no prior knowledge of telephony.

Backed by BT, Ribbit is uniquely positioned to offer developers carrier-grade reliability, security and scalability.  Ribbit’s commercially available applications – Ribbit Mobile and Ribbit for CRM – showcase the power of the open API Ribbit platform.  Ribbit Mobile gives consumers and business professionals a 21^st century solution for managing calls, messages and phones all in one place, while Ribbit for CRM extends the value of industry-leading CRM software, such as Salesforce, by integrating mobile voice communications, SMS, email and voice-to-text transcriptions with customer records.

Quotes:

• Fiona Francois, HM Consul and Director (West Coast USA) UK Trade & Investment.: “Ribbit’s platform is the next generation of communication technology, and UKTI is proud to recognize this outstanding achievement in innovation by a member of the California-United Kingdom business community.”
• Crick Waters, co-founder and executive vice president of business development and strategy at Ribbit: “In the past voice and data existed in largely separate online and offline worlds where incompatible technologies and business models severely limited even basic voice services. Our goal has always been to bring new experiences, interactions, products and business models to life for people all over the world, something we’re seeing come to fruition through the support of BT.”
• James Dibbo, board member of Ribbit and Chief Financial Officer, BT Global Services, Multi National Customers: “Innovation has long been at the heart of BT’s vision to help people make their lives and businesses better with products and services tailored to their needs and easier to use. BritWeek’s recognition of BT Ribbit’s work further validates our priority and focus to meet our customers’ needs today and innovating to meet their requirement for tomorrow.”

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The winners will be revealed on Tuesday, May 4th 2010. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

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