Voxeo Acquires Cloud Communications Startup Teleku
Voxeo yesterday acquired Teleku, a Phoenix-based startup enabling Web developers to build voice and text messaging applications. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Teleku provides a platform for Web developers to create voice and text-based applications, including outbound notification and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, real estate talking houses, language translators, driving directions, and games, using common Web programming languages.
Using any Web programming language, developers send XML or JSON instructions to Teleku via the Internet. These instructions tell the Teleku platform how to interact with users, and can use industry-standard VoiceXML, Twilio-proprietary TwiML, or Teleku's PhoneML formats. The Teleku platform then interacts with users via voice calls, text-messaging, or instant messaging. Teleku Voice applications can make use of both automatic speech recognition (ASR) in multiple languages or touch-tone input. Teleku Text-messaging works with any SMS capable phone. Teleku Instant Messaging works with AOL, Cisco Jabber/XMPP, Microsoft MSN, and Yahoo IM clients.
“Basically, Teleku is yet another way to make it easier for developers to build applications,” explains Dan York, director of conversations at Voxeo, which is based in Orlando, Fla. “And Teleku supports multiple XML formats and has a simple Web [application programming interface] that makes it very easy for developers to use.”
Teleku was already a Voxeo customer using Voxeo's real-time cloud infrastructure to deliver services and connect to voice, SIP, Skype, SMS, and IM infrastructure. The acquisition, “provides another way for developers to build applications directly on our platform,” York says. “It was a very logical thing.”
When the acquisition is completed, Teleku will be combined with Voxeo's Tropo service and Teleku founder Chris Matthieu will join the Voxeo Labs team to focus on business development and enterprise adoption of Tropo cloud communications service.
“Chris will work with our Voxeo Labs team to continue to broaden our development offerings. He will be a logical fit within our company,” York says.
"Teleku shows how Voxeo's cloud platform enables extremely rapid design, deployment, and scalability of new services that can respond quickly to changing developer and enterprise requirements," said Teleku founder Chris Matthieu in a statement. "I'm excited to join Voxeo and help accelerate the adoption of the Tropo cloud communications service. Tropo enables both innovative Web developers and enterprise call centers to deliver automated communications applications quickly and easily, and is an amazingly simple platform anyone can use to build multichannel communications apps that leverage voice, SMS, IM, Web, and social channels like Twitter."