Ambitions remain high as BT's Ribbit goes 2.0

Version 2.0 of the application adds landline voice and instant messaging communications to the mix, further making the Ribbit for Salesforce.com application the hub of a salesperson’s communications, said Greg Goldfarb, Ribbit’s general manager of enterprise applications.

“What we’ve done is unify mobile and landline messages and calls within Salesforce,” Goldfarb said, adding that the integration also includes Skype and Google Talk VoIP calling as well. “It brings basic unified communications capabilities to the Salesforce platform.”

That point is important, said Goldfarb, because although unified communications is all the rage these days as a concept, making it work in the real world is a different story. “This is a pragmatic example of how you can let a customer integrate a communications portal [into a highly-used application] without forcing them to deploy a whole unified communications stack,” he said. “

Ribbit is adding the new landline voice capabilities to the platform without changing the price of the application -- $35 per month per user for baseline service. Additional capabilities, like speech-to-text translation of messages and outbound calling, are extra.

In addition to the new 2.0 version, Ribbit announced a slate of reseller and referral partners for the offering, including Avankia, Bluewolf, CenterStance, Elated Consulting, Kailea Networks, Mansa Systems, Mavens Consulting, Model Metrics, Real Intelligence, Rehder Talent Logistics, and SimpleSignal.