The CEBP ecosystems begin to mature

Within the past week or so, three interesting announcements show that the CEBP ecosystem is beginning to mature in fascinating ways.

1. Nuance purchased Jott. I find this announcement to be curious. I am a big fan of both companies. Jott has done a great job with their consumer and small business focused diary application that leverages a non Nuance based engine. Nuance is the dominant player in speech recognition technology. I haven't seen any serious analysis of why this is an intelligent move for Nuance or Jott. Competition from Google and Microsoft is one off the cuff answer. The VCs created an exit for themselves is another answer. I am interested in learning more about this deal.

2. Voxeo hires the Adhearsion guys
Since you can't technically purchase an open source project, hiring the founders is the next best thing. Again, all the principals in this deal are people I really respect. This could be a very smart move IF they don't get pulled into the trap of so many open source projects...the perception that everything is Free! Yes, I have reviewed Chris Anderson's latest book FREE.
However, getting pulled deeper into the per minute commoditization game will eventually destroy the valuation that Voxeo has tried to build up.

3. Jaduka announces relationship with Strikeiron.
This is the first of several announcements Jaduka will be making with Strikeiron. As I have mentioned previously many times, creating a developer strategy is just one phase in the 4 pronged strategy for a CEBP go to market effort.

From our perspective Strikeiron provides a dream channel for Jaduka's services to developers.
* StrikeIron is not only the largest provider of web services, but they have the largest number of Enterprises that uses these services
* StrikeIron is pre-integrated into NetBeans, allowing our services to be available to the millions (4 million downloads last year!) of Enterprise developers already working on SOA and WOA applications
* StrikeIron is pre-integrated into IBM’s Mashup Center, allowing IBM, its partners and customers to voice enable any application without costly and expensive integration efforts
* StrikeIron is pre-integrated into SalesForce, the largest SaaS provider in the world

Our little edge of the Telecom industry is starting to heat up.