IntelePeer joins voice 2.0 parade

Perhaps most intriguingly, IntelePeer is boasting some big-name partners at launch, including Microsoft and Cisco Systems (via its WebEx division). Intelepeer has also built a reference application, dubbed VoicePoke, which is live on Facebook today, integrating social networking and click-to-call capabilities.

With WebEx, Cisco is using IntelePeer to build voice emergency notification into its Web-based collaboration platform. Microsoft, meanwhile, has worked with IntelePeer and third party media and content providers to voice-enable applications built using Microsoft’s Live Services application stack. For instance, consider a music-focused social network in which an artist could pull together an on-demand voice conference call with 20 fans, said Joseph Hofstader, architect, Microsoft Communications Sector group, in an interview. That’s the kind of voice-driven applications that Intelepeer can enable, he said.

“They’ve got a very simple, REST-based API that is easily accessible for providing telephony services,” Hofstader said. “Compared to other platforms I’m aware of, it does a very good job of abstracting the complexities of providing telephony services.”

While many global service providers are attempting to build similar, componentized, API-level access to their telephony features, Intelepeer said it has been talking with some carriers about working together, IntelePeer’s Studt said. But for now, IntelePeer’s initial five AppWorx customers are all from the application side, he said.