There are many potential applications for WebRTC and for many interoperability is not a requirement. However, this does not mean that there is not a need for interoperability, particularly at the signaling level, for other applications.

Many people have dismissed interoperability as a consideration when using WebRTC – often due to the fact that their favoured use-cases do not require it (and in some cases are even hampered by it). In his session at 2nd WebRTC Summit, Peter Dunkley, Technical Director, at Crocodile RCS, will look at the other side and discuss the case for interoperability and explain how WebRTC can be used to enhance and extend existing services in a way provides benefits to service providers and their customers.

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When we made our 2013 predictions for the realm of APIs, our premise was that API adoption and use was still a relatively nascent area, but one about to explode once smart people figured out its potential. We were certainly spot-on in that regard, but few believed us when we suggested that the API Economy was about to get as vibrant as it did. It may be safe to say that 2013 was the year that APIs really caught the business world’s attention.
In these past 12 months, we’ve seen major acquisitions of API enablement companies, new industry conferences dedicated to the business of APIs, and talk of API management is on the lips of leading business executives. Untold billions of dollars have been transacted, all enabled by APIs, and innovation is making the world an easier place to transact as a result of applications, mash-ups and APIs. As we predicted, the discussion and decision-making about how to use APIs to increase customer and user engagement through channels has moved to now include both the technical and business sides of an organization.

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When deciding on your preferred method of cloud storage, you will inevitably be faced with storage-based and unlimited storage options. While storage-based “pay as you go” pricing might seem like a way to save some dollars now, it’s important to evaluate what it will end up costing in the long run.
Storage-based plans require you to pay for a limited amount of storage space. If you choose this type, you usually determine an appropriate amount of storage for your organization’s current circumstances, knowing that you can buy an additional chunk of storage as your company expands. Organizations will select this route as a short-term cost-saving measure, claiming that it reduces capital expenses since you pay for only the storage amount you immediately need.

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Until recently, when I would talk about “APIs”, I would qualify it by saying “Web APIs”, in order to distinguish from the older meaning of APIs as more the tightly-coupled APIs used in Java, C/C++, or even Visual Basic. If you just said “APIs”, until recently, some people may think you mean APIs like the Windows API (I can remember Charles Petzold’s excellent Windows API book was on my desk back when I was a programmer at an EDI VAN in the 90s).

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As 2013 ended and 2014 began, the cloud prognosticators came out in true form, including AppZero CEO Greg O’Connor. Here are some of the more interesting predictions and surprising areas of agreement.
Hybrid Cloud is the way to go according to Business Today : “This year’s catchwords will be “hybrid cloud,” or the combination of both private and public cloud services. Analyst house Gartner released a report revealing that half of major enterprises will deploy hybrid cloud solutions by 2017.

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OpenText Corporation has announced that it has completed its acquisition of GXS Group, Inc. (GXS), expanding OpenText’s leadership in EIM by combining OpenText’s Information Exchange portfolio with GXS’s cloud-based business-to-business integration services and managed services.
“I am delighted to welcome GXS customers, partners, trading community and employees to OpenText,” said OpenText CEO Mark J. Barrenechea. “We are committed to leading Enterprise Information Management with the market’s best products and cloud-based services. Our combined cloud will now manage over 16 billion transactions per year, approximately 600,000 trading partners and 40,000 customers.”

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Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst, Customer Engagement

At its industry analyst conference in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2014, Aspect proudly discussed its newly refocused business. Two years ago the vendor was working closely with Microsoft and struggling to gain new business in a saturated contact center infrastructure market. However, Aspect begins 2014 with new products, strong financials for 2013, and a positive growth forecast.

The strategic acquisitions it made in 2013 have helped Aspect get back on track. Most significantly, the decision to acquire Voxeo in July 2013 and take on some of its business practices means that the company is now better poised to respond to enterprises’ demands for multichannel capabilities, analytics, and flexibility in deployment options.

The Voxeo acquisition changes everything

The Voxeo acquisition appears to have been the turning point in securing Aspect’s future success. Aspect gained a robust IVR solution, cloud expertize, and new data centers …

The use of in-memory data grids (IMDGs) for scaling application performance has rapidly increased in recent years as firms have seen their application workloads explode. This trend runs across nearly every vertical market, touching online applications for financial services, ecommerce, travel, manufacturing, social media, mobile, and more. At the same time, many firms are also looking to leverage the use of cloud computing to meet the challenge of ever increasing workloads. One of the fundamental promises of the cloud is elastic, transparent, on-demand scalability — a key capability that has become practical with the use of in-memory data grid technology. As such IMDGs are becoming a vital factor in the cloud, just as they have been for on-premise applications.

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ScaleOut Software has announced the availability of ScaleOut StateServer Version 5.1. The latest version includes C++ APIs, additional solutions on Amazon Web Services, a Windows version of ScaleOut hServer, performance improvements in data management, and SSL support for enhanced security.
ScaleOut provides in-memory data grid (IMDG) products with breakthrough performance to the rapidly expanding in-memory computing market. ScaleOut’s products enable applications to seamlessly scale performance to handle increasing workloads and provide real-time analytics.

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Until recently, when I would talk about “APIs”, I would qualify it by saying “Web APIs”, in order to distinguish from the older meaning of APIs as more the tightly-coupled APIs used in Java, C/C++, or even Visual Basic. If you just said “APIs”, until recently, some people may think you mean APIs like the Windows API (I can remember Charles Petzold’s excellent Windows API book was on my desk back when I was a programmer at an EDI VAN in the 90s).

read more