The recent acquisition of communications API provider Ribbit by BT has caused quite a stir within the VoIP industry. Much of the commentary concerns the $105 Million price tag for the pre-revenue start-up (Thomas Howe explains why the deal makes sense for BT on the Telco 2.0 blog).
Another interesting aspect, however, is how this deal casts Adobe's Flash player and AIR SDK to the forefront as an enabler of communications applications. In essence, Ribbit's appeal is that it allows web developers to create communications enabled business process (CEBP) apps without having to know anything about SIP or the underlying protocols related to VoIP. To do this, Ribbit leveraged Adobe's cross-platform AIR runtime environment to provide a desktop programming environment that is familiar to most web developers.
It is no secret that Adobe has had its eye on communications developers for a while now. It went so far as to announce a project that would embed a SIP stack directly into the Flash code in September 2007. Named Pacifica, the project appears to have been stillborn however, as very little information or anything else has emerged since then (the official Pacifica blog is rather sparse). And, while several other start-ups have created softphones using AIR (the AIR showcase is here) and Communigate uses AIR for its very impressive Pronto unified communications suite, to my knowledge, no major service enterprise has yet built a voice app on it (SIP or otherwise).
With Ribbit's newfound prominence however, that will change. I won't go so far as to say that developers will flock to Ribbit and BT to 'communications enable' their desktop apps. But, I will venture to say that Adobe and AIR will be on the short list of all future CEBP projects as a result of Ribbit's success. Who knows, maybe this will even pump some life back into Pacifica.
Another interesting aspect, however, is how this deal casts Adobe's Flash player and AIR SDK to the forefront as an enabler of communications applications. In essence, Ribbit's appeal is that it allows web developers to create communications enabled business process (CEBP) apps without having to know anything about SIP or the underlying protocols related to VoIP. To do this, Ribbit leveraged Adobe's cross-platform AIR runtime environment to provide a desktop programming environment that is familiar to most web developers.
It is no secret that Adobe has had its eye on communications developers for a while now. It went so far as to announce a project that would embed a SIP stack directly into the Flash code in September 2007. Named Pacifica, the project appears to have been stillborn however, as very little information or anything else has emerged since then (the official Pacifica blog is rather sparse). And, while several other start-ups have created softphones using AIR (the AIR showcase is here) and Communigate uses AIR for its very impressive Pronto unified communications suite, to my knowledge, no major service enterprise has yet built a voice app on it (SIP or otherwise).
With Ribbit's newfound prominence however, that will change. I won't go so far as to say that developers will flock to Ribbit and BT to 'communications enable' their desktop apps. But, I will venture to say that Adobe and AIR will be on the short list of all future CEBP projects as a result of Ribbit's success. Who knows, maybe this will even pump some life back into Pacifica.
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