Ribbon Communications Inc., a global leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications, held its annual customer and partner summit Perspectives18, on June 3 -7. The event featured keynotes, break-out sessions and panel discussions from executives from some of the world's largest technology companies including AT&T, Bell Canada, British Telecom (BT), Cable Labs, Charter, Fortinet, Intel, KPN, Microsoft, NTT, Nvidia, Polycom, Red Hat, Smart Cities Council, TELUS, Verizon, Wells Fargo and many more.
Each year, Perspectives brings together the top minds, thought leaders and decision makers in the technology, channel partner, service provider and enterprise communities to exchange ideas. For the second consecutive year, Perspectives18 took place in the heart of downtown Los Angeles at the prestigious L.A. LIVE entertainment and sports district.
"This was our first Perspectives event under the Ribbon brand and we couldn't be more pleased with the top tier line-up of speakers and entertainment that we had assembled for this year's event," said Patrick Joggerst, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Business Development for Ribbon. "It is a critical time in the communications industry and the topics that our speakers addressed such as how we can all work together in the digital economy to prosper and succeed will be sure to spur a great deal of discussion and thought."
Joggerst added, "One of the things that makes Perspectives18 such a unique event and much more than just a user conference or industry tradeshow is that we try to strike a delicate balance in featuring top level speakers and offering our partners great branding visibility and networking opportunities, while providing attendees access to some of today's top strategic thinkers, complemented by outstanding entertainment."
"I attend a number of events throughout the year, both large and small, and Perspectives is always among my favorites," said Stéphane Téral, Executive Director, Research and Analysis, Mobile Infrastructure & Carrier Economic, IHS Markit. "The speakers are always top-notch, the content is very relevant and the Ribbon team makes the conference informative, interactive and fun."
"Polycom sees Perspectives as a valuable conference for our customers and the industry," said Rob Hornish, President, Polycom Americas. "We get to showcase proven solutions to a critical audience, and we also have the opportunity to participate in the industry conversation with some of the leading companies and executives in the collaboration business."
Ribbon was joined by partners, solutions providers and technology organizations from around the world to demonstrate innovative new technologies in its Solutions Showcase.
Featured entertainment at Perspectives18 was presented by Los Angeles-based BERLIN featuring Terri Nunn, one of the greatest synth electro-pop bands of all time who performed exclusively for the conference attendees at the iconic Microsoft Square. Perspectives18 included also a variety of nightly entertainment and networking opportunities. In addition, Ribbon hosted the Alliance of Channel Women Networking Event, on June 6th.
This event followed several important announcement and partnerships that Ribbon made with the aim of leveraging its technology portfolio and assisting its partners with its cutting-edge solutions.
Ribbon had announced that its Kandy Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) now leverages its technology partnership with Subsentio, LLC. Ribbon's initiative means that its Communications Service Provider (CSP) customers around the world now can assist criminal and terrorist investigations with a law enforcement compliance program that includes a full-featured cloud communications suite.
"Today's CSPs must manage and respond to law enforcement assistance requests on multiple technology fronts," said Patrick Joggerst, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP Business Development for Ribbon. "Having access to a law enforcement compliance program that includes a differentiated solution is a key asset in an age of widespread public safety threats. A leading APAC carrier has already taken steps to deploy services which implement our compliance program, and more CSPs are in the pipeline to embrace this solution."
The expanded partnership supports Ribbon with an on-call team of experts who specialize in meeting a wide variety of global requirements for lawful intercept, records production, and data retention. As an FCC-recognized trusted third party for law enforcement assistance, Subsentio helps CSPs meet their law enforcement assistance requirements under mandates such as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and the Stored Communications Act through a blend of regulatory and technical resources.
On the regulatory side, a trained staff implements law enforcement requests for subscriber information while meeting the growing requirements of subscriber privacy law. Technically, the staff discloses the subscriber information using secure technical solutions designed to protect the privacy of the investigations and non-suspects.
"A large part of the fight against terrorism and other types of crime now takes place in our communications networks", said Steve Bock, president and CEO of Subsentio. "We're thrilled to extend our partnership and give CSPs access a complete law enforcement compliance program that includes a virtualized technical solution with a single contract."
Moreover, SoftBank, one of Japan's largest tier one carriers, has selected the recently launched Ribbon Protect platform for its advanced ability to provide real-time communications network traffic monitoring and analytics.
Ribbon Protect is a real time communications security solution that empowers communications service providers and enterprises to quickly respond to and mitigate attacks and fraud by performing network-wide data analytics and policy enforcement. The solution also provides network operations with a centralized and single view of the end-to-end network.
"Ribbon Protect is the only platform on the market today that provides us with a complete view of our network, while delivering advanced monitoring and intelligent Key Performance Indicator (KPI) capabilities," said Yasuyuki Haga Director Voice Core Network Dept. from SoftBank. "Armed with this information, we benefit immediately from faster, more accurate information about our real-time communications network while also gaining the ability to offer innovative services such as voice security alerts to our customers."
While real-time communications traffic continues to explode, many currently available network planning tools are inadequate, lacking end-to-end visibility into the network and big data-assisted capabilities, making it harder for Communications Service Providers to maintain Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Quality of Service for their customers.
"Analysis of Big Data makes a big difference," said Tatsuki Hino, Country Manager for Japan, Ribbon Communications. "It's an honor to expand our relationship with SoftBank and have them come onto our Ribbon Protect platform. Network health and security are vital to SoftBank's business and we're confident the platform will deliver the comprehensive monitoring and analytics that enable faster and more accurate decision-making."
While large network providers face complex network management tasks, Ribbon Protect enables SoftBank to gain fast and accurate incident management while supporting their ongoing evolution towards intelligent, automated troubleshooting.
Furthermore, Ribbon never feels to improve its services and solutions in order to preserve its credibility and clients' trust. That is why, it has recently added key new features and functionality to its Smart Office Unified Communications (UC) solution to improve the end-user communications and collaboration experience. The mobile enhancements include an innovative Call Boost feature that allows users to seamlessly move an active call from 3/4G or Wi-Fi data services to their cellular voice provider when data network bandwidth and voice quality decreases.
Additionally, the Call Boost application moves the call from the user's limited data plan to their cellular minutes. Call Boost leverages Ribbon's Call Grabber technology. Call Grabber's patented technology and session mobility capabilities dramatically improve the call experience for office employees, mobile workers and business travelers by enabling seamless, active call transfer between phones, smartphones, tablets and mobile devices in a one-step process that is undetectable to other parties on the call.
In addition to providing advanced mobility and desktop UC capabilities, Ribbon is extending its support for Vidyo's patented, best-in-class video technology to power Smart Office's Collaboration Rooms with industry-leading HD video conferencing and screen sharing. Smart Office technology supports, without plugins, WebRTC and rich client options that make the video collaboration experience extremely easy to launch. Smart Office combines the use of Vidyo's scalable VP9 and H.264 SVC codecs and architecture, delivering the best possible video quality to every device, including mobile, irrespective of its resolution or available bandwidth.
Ribbon's Smart Office applications leverage the company's innovative Omni container technology which offers CIOs the ability to instantly brand and add new functionalities and applications across all mobile and desktop soft clients at launch-time without having to send out numerous software updates. The Ribbon Omni container technology is built on WebRTC media capabilities to easily facilitate seamless traversal of firewalls, which is ideal for business travelers working from their hotels or using third party Wi-Fi networks.
"Our customers want the latest in technological and collaboration advancements, including one-number access to all communications devices, the ability to have the same office connectivity capabilities regardless of where they are working and the option to include co-workers, customers, friends and guests in multiple collaboration environments," said Sacha Gera, Senior Vice President of Cloud Products at Ribbon. "Smart Office is designed to deliver all of these capabilities and more, while providing anywhere access to UC. With great new features such as Call Boost and enhanced HD quality voice and video, we are delivering on our continued commitment to make staying connected easy and convenient."
Gera added, "We selected Vidyo's technology as a key component of our Smart Office Collaboration Rooms because of its ability to deliver superior performance in low bandwidth environments. The combination of Vidyo's technology and our Call Boost feature provides our customers carrier-class, enterprise-grade access to voice and video."
"We continually innovate to deliver the best collaboration experience possible to our customers and partners via our VidyoCloud platform," said Sam Waicberg, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships for Vidyo. "Our longstanding relationship with Ribbon has allowed us to work closely together to enrich the Smart Office Collaboration Room video capabilities even further by embedding our patented, scalable, real-time video technology into their award-winning platform."
The Smart Office platform is available to both service providers and enterprises or as a Service (aaS) within Ribbon's Kandy Business Solutions and can be easily branded and resold in a multi-tiered model. Smart Office delivers mobile workers an improved user experience and offers enhanced support for native iOS and Android notification and calling services. Smart Office also includes an emergency alert notification solution that delivers real time and system-wide notifications in emergency situations.