Voxeo Acquires IMified

Voxeo Corporation, the leading provider of standards-focused Unified Communications and Self-Service platforms, today announced it has acquired IMified, the world's largest hosted instant messaging application development and deployment platform. IMified offers a hosted platform that enables the delivery of automated Instant Messaging (IM) services--also known as IM agents or IM bots--that work with leading instant messaging platforms from AOL, Cisco/Jabber, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Over 7,500 developers use IMified's platform to develop and deliver IM bots supporting customer service inquiries, package tracking, emergency notifications, interactive games, customer surveys, identity verification, and access to Google calendars, Twitter messages and more.

The acquisition of IMified is part of Voxeo's strategy to enable Unified Self-Service and live Unified Communications applications that work across voice, video, SMS, USSD, IM and the mobile web. As consumer preferences drive interaction trends, IM has become a preferred communication mode, moving outside the personal realm to include business interactions. Businesses have found IM to be a low-cost, in-demand method to facilitate both customer-facing and internal communications. On average, an IM interaction is 1/10 the cost of Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and 1/100 the cost of a live agent phone calls.

Traditionally, building and hosting IM agents has been a complex and time-consuming task. Proprietary instant messaging protocols make it difficult to support multiple IM networks. Attempts at standards-based instant messaging have led to two different IM technologies, SIP and XMPP. The technologies available to connect to these proprietary and standard platforms often require complex integration and ongoing enhancements. IMified takes the headache out of developing IM applications by enabling enterprises and developers to use a simple, continuously improved, Platform as a Service (PaaS) API to communicate with any IM network or platform. IMified functions allow applications to send and receive instant messages and determine the presence, or availability, of IM users. With IMified, instant messaging capabilities can easily be added to existing applications or used to build entirely new communication and self-service solutions.

According to Bern Elliot, analyst at Gartner, Inc., "IM is a key, and increasingly ubiquitous, real-time communication channel. It is critical that enterprises consider IM as they build out their next-generation communications channels. IM offers a simple way to increase customer satisfaction, while simultaneously cutting costs and increasing employee productivity."

"Instant Messaging is a natural extension to voice self-service and is an important piece of any company's unified communication strategy," said Jonathan Taylor, Voxeo's President and CEO. "IMified significantly expands Voxeo's unified communications offerings with the worlds largest IM application platform and most experienced development team. We look forward to working with the IMified team to launch several exciting new IM features, platforms and services in 2009 and beyond."

There will be no changes to the terms of service for existing IMified customers and developers. All IMified employees have joined Voxeo. Anyone can build and deploy applications for free using IMified at http://www.imified.com/voxeo.

About Voxeo

Voxeo makes Unified Communications and Self-Service applications easy to build and deploy. The company's common sense approach isn't rocket science: Create exceptionally great products. Make them exceedingly easy to try, buy and use. Deliver them with extreme support. This approach has made Voxeo the leading choice for enterprises and developers that prefer powerful simplicity where expensive complexity once reigned. More than 37,000 customers - including half of the Fortune 100 - use Voxeo's SIP-powered products and services to deliver innovative IVR, VoIP, outbound notification and unified communications solutions. All of Voxeo's products and services are available for free development and trial use at http://www.voxeo.com/free.

Voxeo is an employee-owned company with headquarters in Orlando, Beijing, Cologne and London. Voxeo's Prophecy IVR Platform includes the worlds only 100% certified compliant VoiceXML browser. Voxeo's Prophecy IVR Hosting service is the largest in the world and the only one backed by a 100% uptime guarantee. For more information visit http://www.voxeo.com.

Author Information

Megan Maxwell
Voxeo Corporation

Under brian rullan acapulco February 6th, 2011

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