CallFire

This past weekend, the CallFire team attended Opportunity Green, a conference where leaders and executive in the “green” space collaborated, shared ideas, and discussed sustainable practices.
CallFire was there to share information regarding how call centers can be made more environmentally friendly.

Businesses and organizations can use our Cloud Call Center to hire employees or volunteers that can work out of their homes instead of commuting into a traditional call center, and creating pollution. The conference itself was extremely environmentally friendly, with each attendee receiving a Kor water bottle, and filling stations from Everpure located throughout the conference area. Food served for lunch was organic from Organic to Go and Whole Foods, and all of the plastic was biodegradable. The non-dairy coconut icecream from Coconut Bliss was a highlight of ours!

The green perception of CallFire was well received at the conference, and we made some good industry connections. Organic fair trade chocolate from Sweet Earth and Shaman attracted people to our booth, and the telephone number listed on the plantable seed paper band was an ice breaker into what CallFire does. The number on the paper gave attendees a chance to win an ipod nano. One lucky winner would call the number and find out that they were the winner. The number was one of the toll free numbers that CallFire sells for the Call Tracking/Call Forwarding product. This lead into discussions about CallFire as a whole.

Video: CallFire CEO, Dinesh Ravishanker, briefly discusses the impact of SIP and XMPP standards on CallFire customers and unified voice communications as a whole. Google Voice, Gizmo5, AIM, Grasshopper and others are mentioned within the talk.

Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwxd18fF-Dg

The CallFire team will be manning booth # 319 at IT Expo West next Tuesday Sept 1 – Thursday Sept 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Come by, talk to us, learn about our products, and get to know the team.  We will also have give-aways, so come by and see what we have!

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 6, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — 8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT), provider of Internet Protocol (IP) communications solutions for business and residential users, today announced it is providing voice trunking services to cloud telephony solution provider CallFire. CallFire began offering its hosted power-dialing services to small business, call center and enterprise customers over 8×8’s established VoIP network last week.

The agreement between the two companies links 8×8’s enterprise-class SIP trunking service together with CallFire’s cloud telephony platform, currently in use by over 14,000 businesses.

“CallFire and 8×8 are collaborating in order to stay at the forefront of innovation in cloud telephony services,” said CallFire CEO & Co-founder Dinesh Ravishanker. “8×8 has become a critical component of our relentless commitment to increasing voice quality for our customers. We are pleased to say that 8×8’s service quality has been exceptional. Our solutions are not only complementary, but together create a best-of-class service for SMBs and the enterprise.”

Initially a customer of CallFire, 8×8 noted that CallFire’s voice quality could benefit from 8×8’s superior VoIP network. By powering a substantial portion of CallFire’s underlying VoIP network, 8×8 was able to combine its enterprise quality VoIP with CallFire’s innovative Hosted Power Dialing platform, and now uses CallFire’s broadcast services exclusively in its call centers.

“We experienced the features and benefits of the CallFire solution firsthand in our own outbound call center and can attest to the simplicity, affordability and effectiveness of this valuable sales, marketing and customer service tool,” said 8×8 Chairman & CEO Bryan Martin. “8×8 is very pleased to bring a better business voice network to CallFire to provide reliable, high quality digital voice service for CallFire’s cloud telephony solutions. In addition to being a valuable partner, CallFire is also now a valuable customer.”

About 8×8, Inc.

8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT) offers voice, video and mobile communications solutions for business and residential customers. These solutions leverage existing broadband Internet connections and cellular networks to deliver advanced features and digital quality phone service at a fraction of the cost of legacy, copper wire alternatives. Businesses of any size, configuration or geographic location can benefit from the cost, performance and operational advantages of VoIP technology. All 8×8 communications solutions carry little or no upfront investment, no maintenance or upgrade fees and no change in user behavior. For additional information, visit www.8×8.com.

About CallFire:

CallFire is an industry leader in cloud telephony services that makes using VoIP simple. CallFire specializes in providing high-availability systems, beautiful user interfaces, furious developer support, and unparalleled customer care. Our products include hosted power dialing for agents, voice broadcast, toll free numbers, call tracking analytics and voice APIs. Our tools help developers, carriers & publishers build useful telephony applications. CallFire is located in Downtown Los Angeles and is comprised of a friendly group of intellectuals with aspirations to revolutionize how companies do business.

CONTACT: 8x8, Inc.
         Joan Citelli
         (408) 687-4320
         jcitelli@8x8.com

         CallFire.com
         Rebecca Siegel
         (213) 221-2218
         becky@callfire.com

[originally published by globenewswire.com]

Members of the CallFire team will be at the Universal City Hilton this Thursday, July 30th at Twiistup.

Twiistup holds an annual conference that connects people from tech, entertainment & media. In two days of events, there will be presentations from various start ups to demonstrate their products for investors & media. Twiistup also hosts a series of educational seminars on topics like online video, leveraging the social web, and more!

Check out the impressive list of attendees here: 101 people you’ll meet at twiistup.

CallFire is one of the sponsors at this event and hopes to connect with developers & media folk who use phones creatively. We’re also there to learn valuable information from the many insightful speakers that will attend. A few of the confirmed attendees for this conference include executives from Mahalo, Rubicon and CentralDesktop.

The best part, there’s a fun “80s Tech Prom” mixer and many members of the CallFire team will be there! If you are planning on attending Twiistup, find the folks in CallFire t-shirts and introduce yourself.

I spent this Sunday afternoon at Eco Fabulous in Newport Coast. My interest in the relationship between tech & sustainability, got me here.  Green conferences like Opportunity Green are pushing businesses to embrace sustainable business practices, while outlining the business benefits of doing so. A homesourcing analysis by IDC forecasts 300,000 ‘homesourced’ workers in the U.S. by 2010. It’s no wonder Cloud Call Center platforms like CallFire are considered serious players in “Green Tech”.

Cloud Call Centers and Hosted IVRs seem to be the #1 way to reduce the overall carbon footprint of your call center or small business workforce.

Reduce emissions by hiring from home

The average US call center agent commutes 24 miles via automobile.
In a 50-week year, this agent will account for 6,000 miles/yr.
The average agent carbon footprint is about 2 tons of C02 each year!

Slash call center startup costs & reduce waste

The average call center requires 130-200 square feet per agent.
Agents require a PC, telephone & high speed internet connection.*
A 100-seat call center can save 168,000 kWh/yr by homsourcing.
*Note: Utilizing idle computing hardware seems to be a green trend.  Watch “The Story of Stuff” with Annie Leonard.

Cloud Call Centers lead to happy agents

Improve employee satisfaction by reducing commuter costs, reducing parking frustration & vehicle wear.
Hire the best agents anywhere in the world, while targeting low-cost geographies.
Increase agent productivity & decrease sick-leave as it did for Holland America Cruise Lines.

Now that Cloud Call Center agents can use their own home office, PC and internet connection, the barriers to develop call centers for the enterprise and SMB markets are reducing quickly.  With $0 hardware and no recurring infrastructure costs, hiring from home is both sustainable & preferable to most US business owners.