Presentation given to Virginia Tech Corporate Reserach Center IT Special Interest Group in April 2012. Brief intro of the evolution of computer telephony, introduction to Twilio cloud telephony API, and brief case studies

1. Presented to VTCRC IT SIG
Jim Schweitzer
April 11, 2012

2. • Computer Telephony Primer
• How Cloud Telephony Works
• Examples and Case Studies
• Demo 1 - Website Click to Call
• Demo 2 - Build an SMS and Call Flow in Real Time

3. • The world about 10 years ago we
used to know it:
o Provision your own phone lines
 negotiate with carriers
 Analog? T1?
o Special hardware - Dialogic,
Aculab, Brooktrout
o Write code, sometimes in
propriatary languages (CTADE)
o Port licenses - Dongles!

5. • Next wave - VoiceXML and Voice over IP
• VoIP started to allow us to eliminate specialty hardware, at
least in our servers
o Public VoIP providers with good QOS still rare
o May have phone lines connected to PBX, and VoIP
behind the switch
• VoiceXML is a document based approach like HTML
o Language independent XML, although in practice most
VoiceXML is generated in WYSIWYG editors
o Requires specialty "Voice Browser" software - can be
hosted or premise based.
o Still typically priced per port

7. • You host your own application server
o Cloud provider processes phone traffic only
• Cloud provider's system requests data from your apps - up
to you to proved the web services.
o Twilio - twiml
o Tropo - json
• Pay as you go - no licences!
• Do whatever you want behind the scenes!
• Cloud does not mean infinite

8. • Voice API
o Inbound
o Outbound
• SMS
o Receive and respond
• Client
o Web-based Voice over IP
o iOS library

10. • Startup Web and Mobile Real Estate Company
• Agents care more about phone leads than web leads
• Phone Numbers had previously not been tracked
o Trulia’s call tracking solution automatically gives each
agent a unique number on the fly.
• Trulia’s twilio-powered click-to-call app instantly connects
the agent and the prospect on a live call.
o If the prospect doesn’t include their phone number or the
agent is busy, Trulia sends the agent a text message with
the prospect’s information.

11. • Zendesk - popular support ticket platform - introduced
Zendesk Voice in 2011
• Integrated Call Center into existing Zendesk platform
• Transcribes conversations and attaches them to support
tickets
• Customers can listen to past phone calls in their customer
portal

12. Click to Call - Web widget using Flash
OpenVBX - quick way to get started - Open Source Virtual PBX
application