Ribbon, which has a longstanding presence in the region and offices in Dubai and Riyadh, supports mission critical networks for tier one service providers and large enterprises in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and other GCC countries. The company serves banks, airlines, government organizations, and others who require the highest standards of quality and security. In this Q&A with Ashraf Hassan, regional vice president of sales, we find out more about the company and its offering.
Who is Ribbon in a nutshell?
Ribbon is known around the world for its expertise in supporting service providers and large enterprise network transformation. The first wave was based on our VoIP international gateway, and IPX solutions including our comprehensive Session Border Controller portfolio and international interconnect solutions. Today we are enabling today’s collaborative environment and new ways of communicating through applications. We support our customers with optimized Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams and numerous other voice, video, messaging and contact center applications including Zoom phones and Etisalat’s Cloud Talk solution, in partnership with American Virtual loud Technologies (AVCT) and Kandy. We also provide PSTN connectivity globally, and are a market leader in SIP Trunking.
How has Ribbon supported its customers during the pandemic?
The pandemic has significantly accelerated the process of digital transformation and we’ve been proud to support our customers during this unprecedented time. Our software and hardware solutions have enabled them to remain operational in this “new normal” of a more hybrid, collaborative world while delivering high availability, quality, and customer experience.
Where does Ribbon stand when it comes to IOT, industrial IOT, and edge solutions generally?
IoT and IIoT are the future for evolving many services, industries and industrial applications. A consolidated edge is essential to effectively support these devices, which will be connected to the network using a variety of fixed (fiber and copper based) and mobile technologies such as WiFi, 4G, 5G, and more. Our super converged multi-access edge provides a consolidated single platform able to collect the IoT/IIoT data from all of these fixed and mobile technologies. At the Edge, traffic must be dynamically routed and meet the service parameters defined for latency, capacity, reliability, routing maybe to analytics and control functionality in the core of the network, or ever increasingly to a distributed cloud housed in multi-access Edge compute located wherever required in the network.
How does Ribbon participate in the innovation the Middle East region is known for?
Connected vehicles, augmented and virtual reality, cloud gaming and smart manufacturing are some of the modern applications that require low latency. Our IP Optical solutions deliver on the promise of network slicing and ultra-low-latency connectivity, which is key in supporting the huge number of connected devices with different bandwidth and quality of service requirements.
In summary, why should service providers and large enterprises engage with Ribbon?
Our IP and Optical networking and Secure VoIP solutions are deployed in over 1,000+ Service Provider, Enterprises, and Critical Infrastructure networks around the globe – from the cloud or on premises. Our IP Routing solutions support next gen services including the evolution to 5G, Cloud Services, IoT & Fiber rollout with a super-converged Multi-Access Edge.
