This is one of my favorite times of the year!  GENBAND just kicked off our Second Annual GENFuzion Developer Challenge and I couldn’t be more excited.  The contest is designed to expand the universe of third party applications powered by the GENBAND A2™ Communications Application Server. By opening our new GENBAND RESTful APIs to developers and providing a collaborative testing environment for application development, we feel that we have created an outstanding developer eco-system for fostering innovation. 

Our inaugural Developer Challenge was extremely successful, yielding several  innovative applications including a queuing alert app for businesses such as restaurants to better manage customer wait times and a stock tracker alert app designed to notify stock brokers or stock traders when configurable thresholds have been reached and allowing them to communicate with each other faster to buy or sell stocks.  

This year we’re planning on surpassing the success of last year’s Challenge by partnering with Polycom and offering additional strategic categories in which developers can enter and win increased cash prizes.  The GENFuzion Developer Challenge will recognize the top three applications across several strategic categories that include IP Phones, Family Applications, Converged Applications (TDM and IP environments), Mobility and Business Productivity. The top three overall winning applications will receive cash prizes of $20,000, $15,000 and $10,000 respectively; category winners will be recognized with honorable mention prizes.

Through our GENFuzion Developer Community, GENBAND provides “Sandbox” testing for applications and creates a collaborative discussion forum in addition to opening our APIs to developers. The GENFuzion Developer Community has become a strategic development resource for operators, enterprises and resellers to leverage, while also providing developers a vehicle for reaching new customers. All GENFuzion developed applications are promoted through our GENApps Showcase.

So if you feel that you have “the next big app,” I encourage you to check out our GENFuzion site and register for this year’s contest.  Who knows, you might be one of this year’s big winners. In addition to cash prizes and free publicity you will have your application promoted to the largest telecommunications service providers and enterprises around the world. If you win, we pay you top dollar and even if you don’t, we still promote your applications – so it’s definitely a win-win situation.   Visit our GENFuzion site  at http://genfuzion.genband.com to learn more.   Good luck!