Founded by a group of technology industry heavyweights, including cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, telecom veteran Michael Price, VoIP guru Jeff Pulver and former Apple CEO John Sculley, the San Mateo company's new service enables business and individual end-users to locate, contact and collaborate with co-workers, customers, suppliers and partners in real-time across existing disparate networks, devices and applications.
The service consists of Tello Enterprise for businesses and Tello Basic for individuals and runs on the Tello Connect platform. It features a federation system that aggregates contacts' presence and allows interoperability of disparate voice and instant messaging systems, including phones, mobile devices and PCs.
Users can quickly locate and collaborate with others by selecting the ideal communication medium—be it a voice call, instant messaging session, or rich media tool such as a web meeting—regardless of the communications system or device their contact is using, according to Tello.
Users can launch voice calls, instant messaging and web sharing from a single interface, the company said. Tello also integrates with enterprise applications for triggering instant communications to solve critical business issues.
Tello's current partners include Avaya, Cisco and Digium. Tello Connect, the service platform for Tello Enterprise, interoperates with systems from these and other organizations.
Through a management interface, IT administrators and end-users can maintain their policies and preferences. The Tello service also employs a series of encryption, authentication and authorization techniques.
Tello Basic is available to individuals through a free beta trial for use on PCs and mobile devices and provides end-users with a single, intuitive interface for managing communications with business contacts. Individual users can register and download Tello Basic, on the company's website.