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Yesterday I joined an interesting conversation on VoIP mashups that took place @ Iotum’s Voice Mashups Conference Call.
With “mashup” we refer to an aggregation of services, functionalities and data that, all together, bring a whole new service to the final user. Thomas Howe well explained it at the beginning of the call, with a specific attention to voice mashups.
An important point is about monetization. One of the ways to monetize mashups is not the sale of the mashup itself, but the professional services around it, as Thomas pointed out. Does this remind you something?
When you work with telecom operators or service providers, putting together different vendors’ pieces that provide unique functionalities to the network, you are basically creating a mashup. Yes, a “Telco Mashup”. By all those services, devices, appliances and softwares, you bring new services to the telco’s final users.
How to monetize? A system integrator basically makes money putting together different pieces and making them work together, sometimes adding some new pieces in order to facilitate this activity. Professional services are the main revenue stream for them.
My company has a long experience in developing strange pieces of server softwares in order to transcode, convert protocols and making telco stuff work together. System Integrators use those “things” to get a telco mashup where the value is given by all those pieces working together.
That being said, the layer has changed, but the philosophy behind it is basically the same. It’s not the whole story, of course, but it’s an important part that is evolving thanks to the evolution of web and IP communications.
