If you have not already heard, today ZiVva annouced the acquisition of Vocalocity. You can read the press release to get a little more information.

This does mark the end to my involvement with Vocalocity. It is a very bitter sweet ending. I would like to thank Jim White of Sutter Hill Ventures, Mike von Grey of Revenue Med, Kelly Conway of eLoyalty, Sig Mosely of Imlay Investments, Said Mohammadioun, Lou Santora and all the other close advisors of the company, employees and investors – and most of all, I would like to thank Mike Dickerson, my partner and loyal friend for 5 tough and rewarding years at Vocalocity. I will forever be indebted to you and all the people that made Vocalocity a success.

At Vocalocity, we had the concept of taking complex and ever changing communications standards such as VoiceXML, CCXML and SIP, to name a few, and making software that completely followed the standard and that was available on an OEM basis to larger customers. To name a few: Microsoft, IBM, Aspect and Siemens. We also strongly believed that standards in the communications world would completely disrupt their proprietary cousins, over time. Time being the operative word. Standards have taken over, but at at rate that is hard to track. SIP has become so mainstream that some of the largest carriers in the world are using it natively. VoiceXML has completely taken over the IVR and next generation interactive voice application space. MRCP is now the de-facto specification for interfacing with a speech server.

However, standards also have competition – not just from big companies like Microsoft who sometimes choose not to follow them (or better, extend and embrace them). For example, Skype is the world’s largest VoIP network – and they don’t use SIP – at least not natively. And you can’t say that’s because they have a legacy application problem – they’re somewhat a new company dispite their size.

Some of the frustration that I always felt as part of my involvement in the standards process is that they move too slow. Slow on purpose, I understand. But sometimes, too slow for any good. Technology is evolving at a breakneck pace – and standards need to evolve on a more practical timeframe, not a timeframe that is suitable for a large research organization. The IETF is quite dramatically different than the W3C in this regard. While the W3C moves like a glacier, the IETF moves like a startup. IETF drafts expire every 6 months, forcing momentum. But causing lots of drafts that sometimes have not much change. On the other hand, how many different SIP extension drafts exist? A lot and that causes some fragmentation.

I don’t claim to have any answers or even plausible suggestions – even after 4 years of standards work. But, it needs to be examined.

To all the former employees of Vocalocity, you’ll always be near and dear to my heart for your hard work, dedication and friendship. I wish everyone the best of luck in the future and hope we can work together again. Please keep in touch.

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