BlackFin's wickedly good Voice Exchange telephony service
Stop all the clocks for a moment and have a read of this.
I recently met up with Dan and Jay of emerging telephony service, BlackFin. They’ve been in stealth mode for some time but were kind enough to show me the demonstration for their virtual exchange service a few months ago.
Within seconds of watching their introductory video, I was blown away. Phenomenal. I was requested to keep it to myself until they had created the next version and got further along their maturation curve.
Essentially, BlackFin’s VX (“voice exchange”) service enables you to create and manage a telephone service via a brilliantly conceived flash interface. So, for example, if you call 0845 130 5838, you’ll get the main line for my new company, DCMI. But if we want to change that from being answered by our receptionists, we have to wait 24 hours for the network to ‘do something’ so we can redirect it to… Well, … Another landline number.
What if I want to have the number redirect to my mobile between 6pm and 630pm? Can’t do it. What if I want incoming calls to ring simultaneously on my colleague Hetty’s mobile, her landline and my mobile? ‘Canny be dun,’ as they say in Scotland. Or if I want to create a welcome message and stick it up — but just for today, asking people to press ‘2’ if they’re calling about our press announcement or ‘3’ to speak to accounts. Nope. We can’t do this.
There are some services out there that KIND-OF allow you to do this. Sort of. Maybe. But not quite. There are plenty of ‘personal number’ services that, with the aid of a web form, allow you to change the redirect of your number on the fly. But that’s it. In fact I remember buying a rather expensive ‘virtual PBX’ style service from YAC (“You’re always connected”) which was so difficult to screw about with that we ended up just paying for it for 3 months then dumping it. I apparently would let you configure ‘press 1 for’ sort of services, but I couldn’t be arsed. It really was nothing short of telephony programming. Ridiculous. I can’t quite believe we bought it actually.
So having explored a lot of potential services out there, when I caught sight of what BlackFin are able to do — live updates and live deployment of telephone numbers, IVR services and so on… I was floored, and very, very excited for them. Their technology will, deployed right, change the marketplace. I’m convinced of that.
They’re running the only live implementation of Voice Exchange as a virtual PBX — their first products being virtual in nature. But that’s only one implementation of the technology. It wipes the floor with a whole array of personal number redirection services and very much consigns anyone offering PBX style services to the dustbin of history. ‘Redirect your 0845 number within 24 hours’ exclaim some of them. Oooh dear. Wait until the market sees this.
Exclusive, baby!
Here’s the rub. I’ve got an exclusive! Talking to Dan and Jay on Friday, they agreed to allow me to post a link to one of their really old video overviews. As they’re still very much in stealth, they wouldn’t allow me to publish their latest mind-blowing video overview. The latest stuff is absolutely wicked but I can’t give further information.
I can see Google delivering a service such as this and giving every subscriber a voice number which works directly with their Google Talk username — but which can also be upgraded to let desktop nomads (like myself) configure virtual pbx services. Anyway. Just an idea.
BlackFin are currently privately held, self-financed and their founders Dan & Jay are two of the biggest telephony-geeks I’ve met. They’re on the hunt for funding — although with a few huge telecoms companies (and I do mean huge) circling, I’m not quite sure if they’ll need it.
You can see the old video, for a limited time, here: http://www.blackfin.co.uk/demo/. Have a look, it really is rather smart. I saw it working live on Friday. You know my favourite bit of the whole thing, apart from the simplicity of it all? Those little stringy things for connecting elements. 😉
If you’d like an introduction, mail at ewan@smstextnews.com or call them direct on 0800 047 0380 (ask for Dan).
