VON: LignUp, Level 3 speed VoIP apps

SAN JOSE--Software maker LignUp has teamed with Level 3 Communications to speed the development of VoIP applications by combining VoIP transport with applications server capabilities and making the whole thing free to developers.

The offer coincides with the rollout of LignUp’s new beta CodeLign developer program. Developers who participate in that program will get credit for 600 free minutes of Internet phone service from Level 3 to build and test new VoIP-enabled applications, Web services, mashups and portals. In addition, because LignUp is working with Amazon Web Services to use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), developers can then get very cheap access to computing resources to run their apps, said KevinNethercott, founder, president and chief operations officer of LignUp.

“We want to make it as quick and easy as possible for developers to add voice to their applications,” Nethercott said. “With this program, a developer can come onto our site and download our Web services into any application and ring a phone in minutes. We are hosting our platform on Amazon, so once they create the applications, they can go to Amazon and say, ‘I want a computer,’ and have this up and running in no time.”

Developers pay only for a LignUp license when they make their service commercial, Nethercott said.

LignUp developed CodeLign to help encourage innovation in voice-enabling Web. 2.0 portals and Web services by lowering the time involved and the cost, he added. The company’s LignUp Communications Application Server uses service-oriented architecture to provide call control, media control, presense, PBX functionality, voice mail and unified messaging capabilities which developers can use in their applications.

“We want to get to the enterprise developer,” Nethercott said. “What we are exposing is the Web Services capabilities to make a call, hold, offhold, hang up, record a message, broadcast text to speech, and broadcast pre-recorded messages.”

The services these capabilities enable can be something as simple as a soccer coach notifying team members of a cancelled practice by entering the requisite phone numbers, recording a message and launching simultaneous phone calls, but most new applications are actually likely to be old applications with voice added, he said.

“People have invested in their own killer apps,” Nethercott said, and many of these are specific to their business. “Their employees live in that environment, they have customized it, spent millions on it, and now what it needs is a voice. We can enable them to add those voice capabilities.”

The beta launch of CodeLign culminates LignUp’s effort within the past year to develop a SOA applications programming interface for virtually every possible PBX feature, he said.

“We can give developers total granular control of all call control and all media control,” Nethercott said. “We also created what we call VoIPlets, which we wrap two or three things up together to create a slightly higher function.”

In addition, LignUp can give developers access to scripting language if more customization is needed.

By hosting its platform on Amazon EC2, LignUp can scale its development platform quickly but keep computing costs low, he said. The combination of LignUp, Level 3 and Amazon gives developers everything they need to get started quickly and at low risk, he said.