Twilio’s Biggest Partnership: AT&T Will Resell Its Cloud Telecom Apps And API

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/26/twilio-att-advanced-communications-suite/

by playhard • 14 years ago

137 30 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

sachingulaya• 14 years ago

Congratulations. It's been a pleasure developing on top of twilio.

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Thank you very much. fistbump

blrgeek• 14 years ago

Excellent news - congrats to the Twilio team!

New Telecom meet Oldest Telecom. Only one can survive :)

Twilio is in a space where few HN engineers dare to tread. More such companies will show why 'Software is eating the world'

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Much obliged. hattip

chrisacky• 14 years ago

Good partnership for Twilio, but don't forget that most developers are passionate about Twilio because of the perceived distance that it had from AT&T and other carriers.

If you jump into bed with AT&T eventually some of their stink will rub off. But, you have to hope that this works in the flip side too, and Twilio has a positive impact on how AT&T operates.

This is only a reseller partnership anyway, so you have to imagine that the partnership is going to be beneficial for both entities... On the one side Twilio opens up it's services to thousands++ of AT&T businesses and developers, and AT&T have the hopes of getting a piece of the "cloud", which they clearly have lost touch with by charging 10 cent transactions on SMS..

BarnabasLAL• 14 years ago

Agree, awesome news for Twilio. Congrats Jeff and team.

Disagree that passion for Twilio comes from distance to traditional telecom. That has not been my personal experience, anyway. Can anyone imagine that Twilio operates in a vacuum without any need for telecom dealings? If anything, Twilio insulates us from interfacing with the big bad telecoms, and allows us peons to benefit from their legwork for a reasonable, predictable, per-transaction fee.

I doubt a blue whale flinches when a krill gives it the finger (proboscis? antennae? whatever appendage krill use as a rude gesture).

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Thank you very much - we're pretty stoked about it.

For me at least, I think the passion you see inside Twilio comes from without more than it comes from within. Every damn day we are running into people who are doing meaningful, extraordinary work with the stuff we build.

Hard not to get genuinely excited about that. Glad to hear it shows when you meet us.

jessedhillon• 14 years ago

I completely disagree with your comment about perceived distance from ATT.

When I was using Twilio to write a telephony-capable web app, my main motivation was that Twilio made it dead simple to get from zero to phone calls. No sales people, no digging through stale brochure sites, no "fill out this form and someone will call you" enterprise sales process -- just provide a credit card, get an API key, read the docs. They totally empowered me as a developer to jump right into an area which traditionally takes a lot of inside knowledge to navigate.

I've met some Twilio folks before, and I went to their hackathon/startup weekend event a while back -- the sense I get is that they are strong on culture and have solid, core definitions about who they are. I understand the "stink will rub off" concern, and that is definitely something which has happened to other startups, but the Twilio team has earned my trust and I would continue recommending them.

dangrossman• 14 years ago

Twilio's got to be one of my favorite companies in the world.

Their product was truly awe-some in the original sense when I first found it -- making real phone calls from code without a modem! For pennies! Their API was one of the best documented and versioned, with almost no learning curveand great code samples. They showed up everywhere my favorite companies showed up, from AppSumo startup bundles a few years ago, to StartupSchwag t-shirts and stickers, to the developer contests I entered where they gave away awesome prizes.

And they grew up, added features at a blistering pace for a company at the intersection of old industry and new, without (as far as I can tell) ever forgetting about the little developer. Their outreach and support is still excellent.

So, congratulations on the partnership, I don't know anyone at the company personally yet I'm personally happy for you all, because I know you deserve the success.

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

High praise Dan. Deeply humbled.

sunsu• 14 years ago

What do they mean by "resell its cloud telecom apps"? I run a Twilio driven product (BetterVoicemail.com) that we've been selling to enterprise customers. Is my product an example of one of these "apps" that AT&T will resell?

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

If that counts as one of Twilio's cloud telecom apps, my grocery store owns still owns my last night's dinner.

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Always great to hear from you Lyle. We think this is a big deal for you and all the other developers in the Twilio family.

Looking forward to seeing you at Twiliocon to rap more.

latortuga• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm overreacting to this but this seems like a real disappointment for Twilio customers. We, the developers that use Twilio, are the people who have made Twilio a success, by building businesses that do things like "...survey tools, ad-hoc workgroup messaging and calling, appointment reminder services..."

How is this good for me as a customer of Twilio if they've decided to now compete with me? Why should I scale up my business with Twilio if they're just going to partner with a huge company to offer their own version?

I have loved you for a long time, Twilio, and this really sours me.

untog• 14 years ago

I have a theory, but I'm willing to have it be completely torn apart: never base your product around one single API.

If that's all you're doing, then you are often performing a core function of the API provider, whether they provide it yet or not. API stuff should really be ancillary to what you're really doing. Unless you want to get bought out by said API provider.

hntester123• 14 years ago

That's an interesting theory. I suspect it is likely to be applicable in many, if not most cases.

Related anecdote: a person contacted me a year ago and asked if I'd be interested in being a co-founder of his startup that would be using $(major_social_networking_service)'s API (as it's main source of information, for doing something that piggybacked on that service's user profiles). After thinking about for a while, I said I didn't want to get into that, and also cautioned him about the risks of relying on another company's API as the basis of the startup, as they could change the rules at any time and that might break his business model.

Interestingly, we've seen events (in the tech news) since then that showed the risks of that approach.

Your theory seems like a more generalized version of my thoughts, and I like it.

sologoub• 14 years ago

Twilio, and other companies like it, have drastically reduced the barrier to entry into these markets. The direct result of that is much greater competition. 20 years ago, having a call routing engine could be a company's "secret sauce" all by itself because it was relatively difficult to route calls. Today, call routing is a commodity. If you sell a commodity service, you either hope to differentiate by branding (think Apple) or compete on price (typically on lower total cost of ownership, which includes price, ease of use, support, etc.).

Twilio partnering with AT&T only ensures that your commodity features will be that much more reliable, because there is a greater revenue stream backing them. The product you build either has to be differentiated (unique in some way), or cheaper (remember, AT&T is not in the business of giving away things and has specific guidelines on margins acceptable to them).

patio11• 14 years ago

How is this good for me as a customer of Twilio if they've decided to now compete with me?

A competitor to Appointment Reminder? There were plenty to start with, one more doesn't worry me. That competitor is AT&T? Crikey, that's actually good news. It's like someone designed an enormously scalable, ridiculously efficient machine for sending pissed people with money to Google to search for me.

If Twilio bizdev guys are listening, the only other thing on my Christmas list is convincing the Department of Education to award a contract to SAIC to develop free bingo card creation software and put it on the desktop of every teacher in America. (That would 10x my sales overnight.)

wikwocket• 14 years ago

Good reminder that small warm-blooded mammals shouldn't necessarily fear gigantic dinosaurs. And that competition can be a good thing, if only for market validation.

I can totally see how a large company providing a general/basic service could be a big help to someone who provides a specialized, customized service in that space. It's free advertising for the space as a whole... you could almost view it as stage 1 of your funnel.

But be careful what you wish for with the bingo card software... I have a friend at SAIC, and if that contract came through, we might have to take up your challenge. ;)

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Thanks for the note - I think your concern is coming from a completely appropriate place. We strongly feel this partnership is great news for you as an existing Twilio developer and something you should be excited about. Important that we be clear about what this means for you.

AT&T's Advanced Communication Suite includes a web portal of applications that do some very basic services for SMB customers and were built by a third party as part of this initial offering. The apps in this web portal will grow, which we absolutely believe will be a promising opportunity for our existing community of developers. We'll have more details on this opportunity at Twiliocon (http://www.twilio.com/conference) in a few weeks time.

Most importantly though, ACS customers use the same Twilio API you know and love. The code you have right now will work on AT&T's Advanced Communication Suite, which we hope you'll agree opens up a lot of potential.

We are not in the apps business; we are in the platform business. This and any partnership we engage is about extending the reach of addressable customers you can reach as a developer.

Competing with you is not how we win - getting you in front of more and more customers is how we win.

Josh2600hz• 14 years ago

Congrats to Twilio. Seems like VoiceAPIs are heating up and quick.

RobSpectre7• 14 years ago

Thanks Josh.

TwilioJosh• 14 years ago

Nice! Great comment from another company doing pretty cool things. :)

josh2600• 14 years ago

For sure, lots and lots of hard work went into this win.

Telecom is a huge market, and a global one at that. I think it's fair to say that Twilio is probably the best Developer Evangelism team on the planet. Kudos for doing it with class.

//Sidenote I can't remember the password for the josh2600hz login, but it's still logged in on my iPad. First World Problems.

telecuda2• 14 years ago

Hopefully a side-effect of this is speeding up the release of an MMS API, which will unleash a whole new flurry of photo-sharing startups that we appear to love so much.

tdfx• 14 years ago

Has this been discussed at all by Twilio? MMS rollout over Google Voice has been moving at a glacial pace for years now (although they did add Sprint most recently, so there is 1 person I know who can now send me pictures). I know each carrier has its own MMS system of sorts, so I'm curious whether the challenge is more technical or political.

telecuda2• 14 years ago

They don't officially comment on it -- which is different than saying "it's not on our roadmap" like they do with other features -- but with the size of the opportunity it presents, the relationships they have with carriers, and the combined talent of their engineers, I'd say it's only a matter of time.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

Just don't let AT&T support and/or reputation ruin you.

There are few companies I hate to the degree I hate AT&T. This is based upon repeated, personal experience as well as the way they have ripped off the citizens of my state, amongst others, and fought by hook and by crook to stifle broadband Internet competition and thereby adequate and improving Internet availability and performance.

I'll add that if you are acquired by them, you will want to plan your exits, as remaining under AT&T senior management will, in my estimation, lead to thoughts of self-harm and suicide.

Yes, strong words. Did I mention that I hate them, and that in my opinion they have given very good cause for this?

P.S. I should mention that this is the AT&T of today, which is essentially the rebranded SBC. To distinguish it from the AT&T of yore.

P.P.S. I'm just one "schmuck" out here relating my own sentiment, I realize. And I don't want to rain on your parade. But I guess I won't delete my comment; I have some serious concern about the influence a close association with AT&T may end up having on Twilio. (As well, I guess, I don't think AT&T really deserves you -- not that that's a very practical business position.)

Twilio’s Biggest Partnership: AT&T Will Resell Its Cloud Telecom Apps And API

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