Plantronics Gets Context-Aware with Developer Connection

Headset manufacturer Plantronics (NYSE: PLT) has established the Plantronics Developer Connection (PDC) for the growing population of developers dabbling in apps designed for what’s called “contextual intelligence.”

“As you look at communication and the trends, there is a lot of stuff happening around people and apps talking to each other and things,” said Shantanu Sarkar, vice president of Software Development at Plantronics. “There is a fair opportunity to add value.”

In the case of Plantronics, developers have been able to create applications around the intelligence gathered by devices that incorporate Plantronics’ Smart Sensor technology, which can automatically detect when a user is a certain distance from his or her desk or is on another call, for example.

The PDC offers developers technical resources, forums and application programming interfaces through a software developer kit for Microsoft Windows environments. Additionally, developers have access to Plantronics engineers for assistance.

“We want to provide the tools and infrastructure around context,” Sarkar said. “There is a growing democratization and popularization of contextualization and we are the enablers.”

Sarkar noted the realm of applications are endless, but one obvious environment that would benefit from custom apps is the call center, where supervisors could automatically be notified if an agent is farther than, say, five feet from his or her screen.

Developers also could create rules for certain actions, such as automatically putting a user in Do Not Disturb mode if he or she is taking a call on a mobile device.

Among the resources for developers, according to Plantronics:

“We have the ability to unleash a lot of innovation and value creation,” Sarkar said. “There is a whole new area of context intelligence and value intelligence we together can create.”