After a year not much is really new at BT and Ribbit other than some shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic, despite the title changes and some granting of authority in new places, my sources tell me that BT is still trying to figure out how to get the Ribbit assets into the channels beyond what was already there, specifically Silicon Valley based companies like SalesForce.com, Oracle and Google (via the Wave Beta.)
For new ideas to succeed inside of BT requires sponsorship of the sales concept within some part of the company, and right now, other than with the group the company falls under, a recasted BT Design, not much is really new other than some titles from what I can see.
This is also not an empty category, as other companies are out there cutting into the market with actual sales, like client IfByPhone, Voxeo (with Voice XML and the purchase of Adhearsion), CloudVox as well as the companies Om pointed to--notably Twilio.
What BT needs is some outside thinking (like most big companies) which comes from the consulting and integrator ranks that can work around the internal process of getting things done, so adoption occurs. When that happens Ribbit's chances of success will go up, but for now, it's just a big purchase of things already on the drawing board, that were bought, not built. Ergo why BT should go outside again to buy, not try to build sales and adoption.
Hi Andy,
Great post. Isn't it a great time to be in this space?
Cheers,
-jeff
Twilio.com
Posted by: Twilio | November 02, 2009 at 01:29 PM