Sylantro adds catalog, dashboard to voice apps play

At its user conference in Las Vegas this week, voice-over-IP and apps vendor Sylantro Systems detailed additions to its platform to make it easier for service providers to offer new voice-oriented apps to their end users – along with partnership deals with Amazon and BT’s Ribbit.

Sylantro’s announcements centered on its Multiplay Application Feature Server, for delivering IP-based voice applications, as well as its Synapps Web services platform, designed to let providers and third-party build Web services that can take advantage of voice features. Sylantro first announced its voice “mashup” strategy more than a year ago, along with a developer program to help third-party and service provider developers build such applications.

Getting service providers to deploy such services – not to mention generating subscriber interest in them -- hasn’t been easy. But Sylantro’s latest additions to its platform – a new applications catalog (seeded with 50 voice applications, including small applets and full-blown applications) along with a dashboard for managing deployment of those apps – are in line with the vendor’s long-term vision for how voice applications will take off, said Shirish Andhare, Sylantro’s vice president of marketing.

“This is not a marketplace where end users in theory could pick something, click and deploy it,” Andhare said. “We don’t believe service providers are there yet, especially the large ones. Our community is carefully nurtured; there needs to be a lot of hand-holding, and we need to be very certain about what goes on the network.”

The Synapps Catalog is available as part of the vendor’s online developer ecosystem, Synapps Central. It features CRM, desktop productivity, mobility and collaboration applications from a long list of third-party vendors, including Aastra, Aricent, CanvasM, Cistera Networks, CTI Group, Excendia, GotVoice, HP, Infosys, Inova IT, LG-Nortel, PhoneFromHere.com, Polycom, Quova, Ribbit, Snom, VoIPLogic and others.