This week in San Diego, California, UC Today has been attending KAZOOcon 2019 to bring you all the latest news and updates for the KAZOO platform from 2600Hz. KAZOO is 2600Hz's open source software platform offering a full suite of communication and collaboration applications that equip developers and engineers with the ability to seamlessly deploy services utilising KAZOO's APIs.
2019's conference, hosted at the Bahia Hotel Resort, is the 6th annual iteration of the conference and gathered KAZOO customers, industry thought leaders, the developer community and communication specialists to discuss and examine the next generation of technologies capable of transforming the communications landscape.
During this year's show UC Today sat down with 2600Hz's CEO & Co-Founder, Darren Schreiber, to run through all of the news and discuss the ever changing communications landscape.
"KAZOOcon gives us that element of human connection."
"It can be easy to get lost in an interface, but our partners and our resellers are selling to real people and real businesses that have problems to solve and being able to connect with them in person gives us a greater understanding of what we need to offer."
News and Updates Galore for KAZOO 5.0
2600Hz took the opportunity, and used this year's KAZOOcon, to announce a huge amount of new features and applications that will strengthen its provision to the global service provider community. In contrast to previous years the new applications discussed at this year's event are already deployed in BETA or production environments, clearly demonstrating 2600Hz's commitment to real world usage rather than hypothetical developments.
Darren Schreiber on stage at KAZOOcon 2019Before we get started on the host of new applications that have been announced there were also a number of administrative updates that add crucial features to the KAZOO platform. The 2600Hz team revealed that a new support tool will be made available as well as the introduction of a professional services team to assist the service provider community with more complex and unusual deployments. In addition there were also announcements of several new applications, in BETA, such as a Service Plan Editor, Invoice Generator and a Tax and Remittance calculation app.
Possibly the most exciting announcement was the unveiling of the new App Exchange. 2600Hz has an incredibly diverse and talented developer community engaged with its platforms and leveraging that for the mutual benefit of all involved makes huge sense. The 2600Hz App Exchange will build on the community of third-party developers who want to build and publish applications for the KAZOO platform.
"There are a lot of people that are really creative in our developer community and with the new App Exchange we can help with some of the mundane logistics, and structure, while they can concentrate on the really cool innovations."
Utilising KAZOO's APIs will allow developers the chance to innovate and build new applications that can cater for any specific aspect of the communications market. The potential for developers and service providers to use their own market expertise to create applications, offers them a critical ability to differentiate their own offerings to customers in an increasingly crowded and competitive market landscape.
The development didn’t stop there with 2600Hz unveiling a raft of new features and applications aimed at end users. A new User Portal is now available and both desktop and mobile applications have now been released. The mobile application is not merely a softphone, utilising SIP, but a fully-fledged mobile client offering users the ability to seamlessly use their mobile devices for business telephony. More mobile app features are in development too including; 'do not disturb', presence monitoring and business SMS/MMS. 2600Hz have also been targeting the contact centre space with its new Call Center Pro application. Using a new UI it will enable more functionality than previously available offering users the possibilities of call handling, queue management and real-time activity feedback with enhanced analytics and dashboard features. There is also a full list of applications now in development pending future release including; Inbound Screen Pops, Screen Share capability, a full Softphone with Video, Video Conferencing and Voicemail transcription.
