Core of KooKoo-The hardware powering the KooKoo platform

We started Ozonetel in 2007 with a vision to build voice services. We have always been involved in voice services and even had a hosted VXML platform which we used to power voice services for the automobile industry. We also developed self service IVR applications for Telecom companies on Avaya.

During this time, we were building our own platform. Our experience with different vendors led us to believe that the only way to approach this problem was to own the whole stack. So while we were doing services, we started designing our own PRI card, the hardware which receives the calls. Finally, in 2010, we had a good and stable hardware design. Building hardware is real hard work. There is very little scope for mistakes. In software, you make a mistake, some one raises a ticket, you checkout the source code, patch the code and check it back in and everything is fine. In hardware, you make a mistake, the whole batch of fabricated hardware is gone. There is no way to recover it. But thanks to our CEO, CSN Murthy's experience in hardware(his previous venture Intoto was sold to Freescale semi conductors), we were able to build the hardware with little problems.

So, finally, when we had a card which was to our satisfaction, we felt really confident. By that time, our software stack was also shaping up well and was working seamlessly with our hardware. So we felt the time was right and launched India's first cloud telephony platform, KooKoo at Unpluggd.

Even now, we are one of the very few cloud telephony companies in the world and the only one in India who has their own proprietary hardware. So, without further delay, the star of Ozonetel :)

This is one form of PRI card which we have developed which can take 2 E1 ports. We have enabled things like on chip DTMF detection, on chip call bridging etc to make full use of our hardware and reduce the load on our call servers and improve their performance. This is the card which has helped us to handle more than 650 million calls on the KooKoo platform. This card goes into a server which is hosted in a data center. Several of these servers are hosted in a rack in a data center. A live image of one KooKoo rack is given below.

Each data center has several racks like this and we have data centers in 10 locations across India. This private cloud forms the core of the KooKoo platform which has helped businesses like Telebrands, Agarwal Packers, Zovi, Taxiforsure, Intuit, Wipro, Indiamart, HolidayIQ, Bigbasket etc run their communications.

We are now working on a more efficient design of the hardware which will allow us to take more calls/server and this will help us to scale more efficiently.

Cloud Telephony-History and state of the art

Well, its been 11 years since Twilio launched their voice API in November 2008. I would say that was a major turning point in the cloud telephony industry. Before that, for people to build telephony applications, you either had to depend on proprietary platforms like Avaya dialog designer or build on arcane technologies like VXML which again was supported at varying degrees by the incumbents. Enter Twilio with their voice API and the industry changed for the better. Since it's been almost 11 years now I thought now might be a good time to do a comprehensive review of the cloud telephony industry as a whole in general and in India in particular. The Beginning Twilio was undoubtedly the startup which ushered in the era of cloud telephony. They started in November 2008. At that time in India, we at Ozonetel had launched a hosted VXML platform. There were no takers. After all who coded in VXML :) So when Twilio launched and we saw them take off, we immediately realized tha...

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Cloud Telephony Experiments

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