The Google Voice landing page lists the primary features as “One Number” (for all your phones), “Online Voicemail” (that behaves like email) and “Cheap calls” (which are actually free in the U.S. and Canada). Yet I think that those features are listed in reverse order of importance to folks that are generally unacquainted with VoIP services, call management and the joys of automated transcription of voicemail messages.

Of the dozen of so people I’ve invited to use Google Voice, those of us who use it to make free calls to Canada are the happiest. Most of the others have either not used the service at all, or occasionally give out their “Google Voice” number to people with whom they are carrying out business. After a few months of using the service, most don’t know their Google Voice number by heart (I know I don’t). Recent invitees have been able to pick a vanity number (like ones that include their names) that they find easier memorize.

With cheap calling as the primary reason people register for Google Voice, it is on a collision course with Skype when it comes to growing the user base for enhanced VoIP services. Indeed, it is probably not a coincidence that Skype chose this day to open its waiting list for “Skypekit” a library of software and API’s to help application developers integrate Skype into their offerings for all sorts of devices and mobile platforms.

Stepped up activity surrounding Google Voice and Skype will lead other “cloud based” telephony platforms (like IfByPhone and Bandwidth.com, among others) to step up their game. Thus the second half of 2010 should emerge as a golden age for phone apps. With newbies entering the market both as customers and as application developers, the best counsel I can provide is to say (as I have in the past), “The difference between a brilliant phone app and a stupid phone trick is the attention paid to the quality of the user experience.”

Beside, the ability to originate a phone call (or even a video chat) from “inside” an email client is a candidate for the “most demo’d” feature for the “Unified Communications” suites from Microsoft, IBM, Avaya and a handful of others. According to the “Google Operating System” blog post, Gmail users will be able to click on a “phone icon” which will open a “chat client” that includes a dialpad for originating a phone call. It will also illustrate the credit balance a Google Voice user has on his or her account. For those of us who have used Google Voice on an iPhone, the similarities sound pretty striking. You are presented with a landing page that features the keypad, but also provides one-touch access to Buzz, Gmail and “more”. The keypad captures digits and then initiates a a call that that ultimately goes over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). It’s pretty slick, and ultimately transparent to the user (except that a dialog box appears to say that it is originating a call from some third party’s number.

These are by-no-means “stupid phone tricks.” Google is making its point that “voice services” are an integral part of Web-based offerings and that the Web extends from desktops to smartphones to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) on a natural, as needed, basis.

Those 2010 figures were spurred in no small part by growth in sales of its “cloud-based” offerings, marketed as CaaS. Product Manager Roe Jones told us that 25% of the dollar volume in new orders was driven by CaaS contracts. He added that from 2008 to 2009 CaaS revenues grew 59%. It is no surprise that InIn could make the transition to cloud-based services so quickly, when compared with its largely premises-based rivals. From its beginnings, InIn’s offerings amounted to the application of a “private IP-based cloud” for its existing clients. Once customers built confidence in IP-based VoIP transport, the transition to distributed (or cloud-based) implementations was just a matter of time.

That said, InIn’s packaging of CaaS, specifically its “Local Control VoIP” approach, represents good product positioning. It is able to capture “pull” in the form of enterprise customer demand for “hosted” or “managed” services that have the potential to eliminate capital expenses, reduce operating expense and staffing needs without sacrificing reliability or business continuity. It is doing so without a radical alteration in its long-standing technological approach, which has been software based and data center driven.

The CaaS approach moves the Data Center (which houses application logic and communicates with premises-based resources over SIP Signaling) into “The Cloud” where it communicates over MPLS-based data or signaling links with enterprise, premises-based resources. Those resources include a Media Server and SIP Proxy, agent workstations and the corporate database (which could be moved to The Cloud if desired). The voice path is entirely premises based, allowing for greater security, as well as the ability to store and analyze voice files for compliance purposes.

InIn is holding the Spring tour to announce three new features (which will be available “late Q2 or early Q3), which differentiate the CaaS offering. The CaaS portal is a Web page which serves administrative functions, like displaying billing summaries and details, as well as enabling the ability to make moves, adds and changes. In the coming months InIn will add call monitoring and access to an archive of voice files to the mix, making it a very robust supervisor portal. More features are coming as the company pursues its cloud-based destiny.

A second, new feature of CaaS is browser-based Work Force Management (WFM). It provides mechanisms for scheduling and managing relatively large contact center staffs. InIn calls the third feature “Agentless Dialing”, but Opus Research has long called the sorts of services offered “intelligent notification”. This software supports automated, outbound messaging for alerts, appointment or payment reminders or other “updates” that comprise customer service strategies. The application also enables called parties to be put in touch with a live agent should that become necessary in the course of a call.

As mentioned above, InIn its roll-out strategy, thus far, can be considered a success. Its timing is great and its product architecture and sales strategy has been largely friction free for prospective implementers. The services are offered on a per user/per month basis with a price that ranges from $65 to $200 depending on volume levels and features that are included. As the new services come on line in the coming months, we would expect revenue growth to accelerate. But growth could be tempered as non-traditional competitors from the cloud-based community – think Voxeo, Salesforce.com, Amazon.com and even Google along with telephony partners – aim their sights (and sites) on the “next generation” customer care services, which are destined to support more social networking and mobile interactions.

Google will likely build out its VoIP offering (Google Voice) to become a full-blown competitor to Skype and conventional telcos/carriers. However, it already has the capability given its previous Gizmo5 acquisition. GIPS will add video and more muscle to the mix, giving Google some new enterprise tools for Apps and maybe Wave (or whatever Wave evolves into).

One of the drivers for recombinant communications is that consumers and businesses alike continue to gravitate towards the cheapest and most convenient communications channels. The addition of Google as a voice and videoconferencing service only accelerates this trend and offers new choices for consumers and enterprises.

Dan Miller, senior analyst with Opus Research, notes GIPS’ raison d’etre, from its inception, was to provide focus on a high-quality user experience. The GIPS voice codec was the secret sauce that made sound quality exceptionally good on Skype’s early VoIP offering, primarily for PC-to-PC communications. Looking ahead, with network speeds getting faster and Google’s cloud becoming ever-more capacious, GIPS can help focus on both sound and video quality for real-time communications and streaming across broad range of Google services and an unpredictable set of endpoints or devices. High levels of sound quality and reliability helped Skype maintain popularity among end-users even though it is a highly proprietary system in the increasingly “open” and “standards-based world” of RC (Recombinant Communications).

At the time, Cisco noted that versions of the client would be out “soon” for both the Blackberry and for the Nokia E-Series handsets. The corporate call for a Blackberry-based solution is obvious. MVS 5 provides IT departments with the mechanism to manage calling plans, security settings and PBX-like features to their Blackberry-toting employees. That can lead to toll savings and greater confidence in the security and privacy over wireless links. Cisco has also been adding a number of bells-and-whistles to its fixed-to-mobile offering, most notably a protocol for “call preservation” which assures that users can quickly restore a call should it be interrupted by lost connectivity or a move from a mobile phone to a fixed-line or extension.

Cisco and RIM have been offering similar features to corporate customers in Europe for about a year and many of the features represent a new packaging of capabilites that RIM brought in-house with the purchase of Ascendent Systems in 2006. MVS 5 will be formally available “later this year.” As noted in our February post, clients for Android and even Windows Phone are not far behind.

Unified Communications, iPhone apps and dashboards for enterprise VoIP are slipping into the category of “commodity.” What caught the eye of the digirati was a Facebook app called 8×8 Connect, which was introduced on the second day of the ITExpo. Here’s where Om Malik invites readers of GigaOm to “Call Me via VoIP on Facebook. In the article, Om conducts a test drive of the new service (which can be accessed and launched here). Om notes that the service “could be especially helpful for small business owners and consultants, who could use it as a way to generate interest in the products/services they’re selling.”

Om also mentions that it could be improved by making it “more personal.” His example would be to allow users to upload their own picture, avatar or brand so that it can be displayed with the user’s phone number (I’d call this part of the movement toward better Caller ID). He also sees advantages to being able to embed the “Call Me” button on a company or individual’s “fan pages.”

My trial went a little differently. I followed the link from GigaOm to the “8×8 Connect” page on Facebook. Then things started to go awry. Being the unintentional demo breaker that I am, I accidentally mis-typed my email address and (probably because my proper name is much more than “Om Malik”) my “8×8 Connect” record and registration form is associated with another Dan Miller, who had been there before me and entered a different mailing address and a bogus phone number. Needless to say, I lost confidence in going any further and removed the app from my Facebook account. After doing so, I went back into the app to see if I could “fix” my mistake, but the record of my evil twin seems to be persistent.

I applaud 8×8’s effort to add click-to-call to social networking and hope this registration “bug” is just that – a fixable bug. However, one of the major challenges faced by solutions providers in the era of Recombinant Communications is to continue to introduce a steady stream of innovative services, but they need to do a better job of testing such services. Alternatively, they could just “do a Google” by calling every new offering a “beta.”

VoxBone’s special ingredient and differentiator is its ability to assign “iNums”, based on the +883 country code assigned by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as an “international number. Since introducing them in November 2008, VoxBone has assigned 18 million iNum numbers. When it launched the service, it noted that it was teaming with Iotum, Jajah, Mobivox, Gizmo5, Ribbit, Truphone, Rebtel, Voipbuster and Voipuser. You’ll note that Jajah, Gizmo5 and Ribbit have since been acquired by Telefonica, Google and BT respectively.

The trends shaping the Recombinant Communications ecosystem are taking shape. Increased call volumes and revenues are in the model. So is continued industry consolidation as companies themselves become building blocks in the ultimate solution stack.

The phrase “over-the-top” suggests a level of extravagance (think of “over the top” entertainment). Yet, during the past 10 years it has become synonymous with “cheap international calls”. In 2010, I expect OTT to return to form and refer to all sorts of value-added services and innovations, whose providers take advantage of those “cheap” or “free” minutes to take VoIP “beyond customary boundaries” (which happens to be one of the Dictionary.com definitions for “over the top”). Avaya and 02 are seeing the same trend, and we can expect a stream of acquisitions, partnerships and innovative service offerings that take incumbent carriers and traditional enterprise infrastructure providers over-the-top and outside their comfort zone. Case in point: BT with Ribbit.

The immediate beneficiaries will be SpinVox, selling its Voicemail-to-text transcription services; JoeDeveloper, selling a suite of call management features called QuickSet Pro; and Mobile Max Pro, offering mobile subscribers the ability to take control of BroadWorks-based call routing functions like call forwarding and setting “Do Not Disturb” status.

As Sebastian Rupley notes in GigaOm, the move has been met with a bit of skepticism and even ridicule. On the one hand, fragmentation of the application market across multiple application stores has been the bane of the wireless business, where Apple’s iTunes-based marketplace has attracted imitation from fellow handset makers and carriers alike.

We would argue that the world of Recombinant Telephony invites multiple marketplaces. The more there are, the merrier it will be both for end users and for 3rd Party application developers. Broadsoft has already enlisted a number of VoIP-based carriers into its fold. Comporium (Rock Hill, SC), SimpleSignal (Southern California and Central Colorado), Telesphere (HQ: Phoenix, AZ) and WorldxChange (Aukland, NZ) have already committed to operate “satellite” app stores as 2010 approaches.

Broadsoft’s Xtended Marketplace may not be as conspicuous as the shelves at the end of the aisle at Best Buy or Costco, but it has the potential to raise the profile for a number of aspiring developers of innovative, phone applications.

Believe me, it is nice to see voice conversations being integrated with social media (like the Vivox app on Facebook). However, I’m concerned about the overall user experience arising from the @call @username service. I’m going to defer to Phweet originator Stuart Henshall’s commentary the issues of potential latency in call set up, as well as the vulnerability to something akin to phone spam. But for now, I’m very glad to see that the largely screen-based world of social media is rediscovering the phone call.