Battle for the Voice Cloud Begins: Ifbyphone Snags Cloudvox.Battle for the Voice Cloud Begins: Ifbyphone Snags Cloudvox.

Bringing Cloudvox into the fold instantly broadens ifbyphone's reach into the fast growing segment of third party built voice applications.

I first met Irv Shapiro in the late fall of 2006. Scouring the wire as I always did for companies doing new things in voice, I came across Ifbyphone--a Chicago based startup at the time touting its hosted IVR platform, among other things. Frankly, I can't remember what their press announcement at the time was about--some voice blogging widget perhaps--but it caught my attention. And a few phone calls and a trip to Chicago later, I found myself with the good fortune of working alongside this visionary entrepreneur for the next 18 months.Irv--an outsider to telephony at the time--was unequivocally convinced that the voice market was headed for explosive growth. This was 2006 though, and so convincing others of the same was no small task. At that time, the notion of moving telephony to the cloud was at best in its infancy. We still called it "hosted" back then and even at that most traditional telephony people--and the VC community--wanted little to do with it.

If anything, the voice community was still immersed in stealing minutes using VoIP. Irv though was focused on building voice applications that would give the SMB new sales and marketing tools with which to both make and save money. He saw the race to zero in VoIP coming but he also saw an SMB market that lacked affordable access to applications that could materially affect their businesses.

Fast-forward to January 2010 and the little Chicago company that could just made the first move in the battle for the voice cloud. Today, Irv Shapiro--CEO of Ifbyphone--announced that they have acquired Cloudvox, an upstart voice application development platform company out of Seattle.

For Irv and his team, it's actually a little of "what's old is new again". Let me explain. Back in early 2008, Ifbyphone launched Phonemashup.com in an effort to open its platform to the development community. The intent was to enable developers to leverage its robust and open platform to build applications of their own, or simplify the process of integrating voice into web apps. Great concept and well received, but ultimately a bit too early. When compared with the growing levels of engagement we witness today, in 2008 the development community wasn't quite ready.

Recognizing this, Ifbyphone stayed focused on packaged voice apps for small business--voice broadcasting, outbound IVR and more--and built itself a niche and stronghold in the direct marketing and advertising space. Companies all over the country and of all sizes now rely on Ifbyphone's platform to generate leads and to talk more with their customers. As Irv likes to say, he has built the company the old fashioned way--with revenue.

Now, several rounds of financing and thousands of customers later, bringing Cloudvox into the fold instantly broadens its reach into the fast growing segment of third party built voice applications.

The voice cloud is indeed alive and well.Bringing Cloudvox into the fold instantly broadens ifbyphone's reach into the fast growing segment of third party built voice applications.