Nexmo Launches Voice API with Vonage
Today, communications platform as as service (CPaaS) provider Nexmo has released the second generation of its Voice APIs, the culmination of more than three years of product development, now backed by the power of the Vonage carrier network.
The new APIs promise to enable developers to build modern enterprise communications customized for any app, web site, or voice-based communications system faster and easier than the previous version of the Nexmo APIs, according to the company.
The new APIs will offer call control, conferencing, call recording, text-to-speech with more than 20 languages, and enhanced and nimble programmability. Produced and streamlined with developers from Nexmo's previous generation of the Voice APIs, the new Voice APIs are designed with them in mind.
"Barrier to entry has been lowered," says Nexmo President Tony Jamous. "We have spent over a year talking to our user base to create developer-oriented libraries, sample code, quick-start simplifications."
These improvements are crowned by implementation of Nexmo Com Control Objects, which increase implementation speed considerably. These control objects are coding condensations and shortcuts that will allow developers to implement complex yet common functionalities, such as conferencing and text-to-speech, with very few lines of code and without having to build additional framework.
Nexmo also changed the underlying architecture of the Voice APIs from VoiceXML to JSON, a more lightweight data interchange format for which more and more developers are expressing a preference. The new Voice APIs will also enable integrations with existing business workflow software thanks to the open architecture of the APIs.
"Since what developers build and implement will influence how fast they can deploy, when Nexmo talks about benchmarks for our APIs we like to talk about ‘time to Hello World’ – the quickest a developer can have a basic functionality up and running," Jamous says. "With the new APIs we have cut the time to Hello World from weeks to hours."
Additionally, Nexmo, previously a private company, has recently been acquired by Vonage Holdings, which closed the $230 million deal three months ago. This acquisition brings mutual benefits to both company ecosystems, with Nexmo's products now able to claim the backing power of a carrier-quality network, and Vonage acquiring prime assets to position itself in the increasing CPaaS market. Jamous is excited about putting the high voice quality and low latency of the Vonage carrier network to use in Nexmo products.
CPaaS is already a $400 million dollar industry, and some consulting firms, such as ZK Research, have estimated that it will grow to $8.1 billion in the next three years. Together Vonage and Nexmo hope to better position themselves in the market and compete with companies like Twilio.