Thomas Edison, the prolific American inventor, said that in order to produce truly great ideas, you need to have a lot of them. This is exactly what GENBAND had in mind when we launched the GENFuzion Developer Community and kicked it off with the first edition of the GENFuzion Developers Challenge earlier this year. The contest, in which developers competed for cash prizes by designing innovative apps powered by the GENBAND A2™ Communications Application Server, was a huge success --reeling in some truly great ideas and bringing a number of innovative apps to market already.

To provide some background, the GENFuzion Developer Community was recently created to foster collaborative innovation in the Web Collaboration and Communications Enabled Applications (CEAs) space. By offering developers an accessible eco-system for development, with all of the tools and support needed to execute on their ideas, the GENFuzion Developer Community presents an exciting opportunity for creative developers. The winners of the GENFuzion Developer Challenge and top app developers were recently recognized after competing across several strategic categories including Lifestyle, Productivity, Mobility and Unified Communications.

SwitchPoint Solutions was the first place winner with its inspired Queuing Alert, which dramatically improves wait list management for restaurants, beauty salons and other service-oriented businesses.  According to a recent article, major restaurant operators could be losing up to $1 million in sales each week as guests leave because of wait-time frustrations. When it comes to investing in new technology, wait management has become a top priority for chains according to the same article.  The National Restaurant Association estimates that 16% of restaurant businesses use technology for table management, and 21% have increased their technology budgets this year over last year.

The advanced SwitchPoint Queuing Alert app wows customers by sending details on wait times and service availability straight to their mobile phones. Replacing those bulky, short-range buzzers we are all familiar with, SwitchPoint’s app helps customers stay informed and make better use of their wait times, which should greatly improve satisfaction.

With the Queing Alert app, SwitchPoint combines the latest front-end programming technologies such as HTML5, Backbone.js and Jquery Mobile, and server-side technologies such as Rails, Node.js and Java, with GENBAND’s A2 open application platform to deliver a rich, unified communications experience.  You can check out the SwitchPoint Queing Alert app and other great ideas at http://genapps.genband.com/.

By opening APIs to developers, GENBAND’s goal is to expand leadership by fostering much needed marketplace innovation and establishing a foundation for future ground-breaking applications providing customers with numerous unparalled benefits.  We feel that the GENFuzion Developer Community is more than just an apps story, it’s about continual innovation – and that’s what GENBAND is all about.