For the past weeks the blog has been quiet. We didn’t want to shut it down or reduce it to silence, but we have worked a LOT. We’ve worked on many levels – not only on product development, but also on related things that will help sustain our company’s development. Many changes were based on your feedback, thank you for sending them to us. You will see a lot of interesting stuff in the next period 🙂

Many people ask us what happens with Automation – when is it going to be released? We initially planned to release the first version on June, but after internal discussions we decided that’s not the best time. This was due to many reasons, like: many people would not have tested it in June, the mid summer release was not business appealing, there were still some important things that should have got to the first version.

In fact, the last reason was the most important. We take an incremental approach on developing software, with each increment solving issues and adding features. Our idea was to try to complete two or three more development cycles before releasing the product to the public. This was a very good thing because during this time we dramatically improved the internal APIs, which means that we will open more the product to third party developers and also we improved the product’s usability.

Right now, we expect to launch VoipNow Automation Beta in September. I know that many of you guys need it ASAP, but I assure you that this delay brings important business value that will compensate. We faced a huge pressure to release Automation faster, there are over one thousand emails on sales email asking when Automation is going to be released. And a bit of history. When we were a smaller/immature company, we made some mistakes and we learned a hard lesson from them. For example, we were often pushed to release faster and we did. While initially this looked to be done in the customer’s best interest, in fact it was against his interest because it affected reliability. That’s why we decided to make our rules tougher (to summarize the release policy – we release only when we are satisfied about the product) in order to avoid something like this happening in the future. I know that some clients don’t like this policy, but I also know that customers that are doing serious business will appreciate the results.

BTW, meanwhile, we added several new payment plug-ins and there are others where we will request for your help because we cannot test them (we cannot open an account with an Australian bank for example).

And a hot news that maybe you didn’t expect: VoipNow 2.0.3 is close. Very close. And yes, it will have some new features. 🙂