BT lets Ribbit developers croak

Ribbit has ended its developer programme to focus on voice technologies for BT.

The cloud telecoms firm is set to delete all accounts, API keys, saved messages, voicemail boxes and transcriptions permanently and realign its business towards the needs of its parent company – BT Group.

Ribbit revealed its plans in an email to developers – leaked to Cloud Pro – warning users they only had 60 days to make necessary changes to their Ribbit-dependent applications.

The email read: “We recently changed our business objectives to focus our efforts on voice technology for our parent company, BT Group, and have decided to discontinue support and external access to our voice platform, SDKs and APIs.”

“Please prepare accordingly and remove any dependencies on the Ribbit platform from your applications prior to the effective shut down date.”

In the email, Ribbit suggested the developers moved over to a fellow Californian start-up, Twilio, and even organised a discounted deal for migrators, including $100 (£61.50) free credit and $100 discount for tickets to Twilio’s upcoming conference.

BT confirmed the closure of the developer programme, but was keen to emphasise both Ribbit Mobile and Ribbit for Salesforce were going strong.

“Ribbit technology is pivotal to BT’s voice technology strategy,” the company told Cloud Pro.

“We now have a co-located development team working on Ribbit in our global development centre in Adastral Park and we are integrating Ribbit into a number of services to provide our customer facing teams in BT Retail, BTGS and BT Wholesale the ability to sell and market services that utilise underlying Ribbit technology.”

The spokesperson added: “We can confirm that Ribbit is closing its developer programme to concentrate on future voice technology for BT Group. However, users of existing Ribbit services such as Ribbit for Mobile and Ribbit for Salesforce are not affected in any way and we are in fact hiring in Mountain View.”

BT Group purchased Ribbit back in July 2008 for $105 million, less than a year after it launched. The developer programme was made public in the following November.

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.