EVENTS Ribbon
“When we asked who should be responsible for SIP security, the vast majority of partners said that the
UCaaS provider should do it or they should do it and I should pay for it.”
John Macrio, VP, Global Channel Marketing, Ribbon Communications
A fresh perspective on 2019
Last month Ribbon Communications hosted a group of partners, vendors and journalists at the Perspectives 19
event in Washington DC. CommsBusiness’ very own Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne took a trip across the pond to see
where their priorities lye over the coming months.
Much like a lot of the
industry, Ribbon
Communications has
gone through some what
of a change over the past 18
months.
CTO Kevin Riley himself
said on stage that the company is
“expanding its strike zone” when
it comes to the technologies that
Ribbon embraces; exemplified
by the acquisition of Anova Data
last year.
With the new capability to
analyse data, Riley said that
Ribbon is now: “Pushing more
authoritatively into the enterprise
edge; a model which is forming
rapidly.
“When I think of enterprise,
I think of SD WAN, SIP
Trunking, UCaaS, CPE that
is creating disruption and
transformation today and 5G
and IoT in the very near future.
That is a space that Ribbon is
committed to playing in.”
Moving away from Tradition
“That acquisition has enabled
us to expand our offerings
beyond voice and provide
analytics for churn reduction
and monetisation for revenue
generation,” said Ribbon
Communications VP of
solutions marketing Sanjay
Bhatia,
Similar to Riley, Bhatia
spoke to embracing technologies
that were traditionally not in
the Ribbon repertoire in order
to “provide value” to industry
trends adding that “with the
acquisition of Anova Data we
can now move from voice into
a data domain, and into the
enterprise edge.
“From there we can provide
the overall analytics of IoT
and 5G, which are global
technological trends for the
mobile carriers as well as other
service providers.”
Market trends
Away from the recap and
announcements of where the
company is going, delegates were
also treated to insights from new
research that pulled together data
from a global survey conducted
in April.
Amongst other trends, one
main point taken from the
research is that it is a great time
to start pushing CPaaS solutions.
Interest in the solutions
is “in the 90s” in terms of
percentage according to Ribbon
Communications vice president
of global channel marketing John
Macario, however the findings
show that there is still a lack
of interaction in the customer
service side from enterprises.
Macario said that, although
click to chat is popular,
businesses are not “going up
the stack” of potential features
such as click to call, escalating to
video and sharing screens.
He also pointed out “click
to chat is really staffed by an
agent sitting there, in a queue for
outbound phone calls, they may
be taking inbound phone calls,
they have a chat window open
which is their responsibility to
respond to.
“The ribbon experience has a
chatbot behind it that can gather
information so agents can do
their job without having to spend
time on low-value activities
like saying “Hi my name is
Catherine”; we can do that for
you.”
SIP Security
A more sinister area that was
highlighted by the research was
the security of SIP lines.
Findings from the report
pointed to confusion when
it comes to securing the
communications infrastructure
and resellers are apparently under
the illusion that their providers
are responsible for securing the
lines sold to them.
Macario continued: “When
we asked who should be
responsible for SIP security, the
vast majority of partners said
that the UCaaS provider should
do it or provider should do it and
partners should pay for it; Only
about 30 per cent felt that their
company should be responsible
for it.”
Going forward, Macario
offered caution as best practice,
adding that there is no
expectation on decision makers
to know how to best protect
themselves. The point still stands
however that this is an issue that
needs addressing and may be
happening more regularly than
first anticipated.
“Just as in the early days of
data security breaches there were
things going on that we don’t
know about, I suspect that the
same things are happening in
SIP right now.
“Unified communications is
a wonderful thing, it can make
you much more productive, it
can help you run your business
better but it needs to be done
sensibly and you need to ask
your providers what level of
security they are providing
against various attacks.
“If someone commits toll
fraud by stealing credentials
on a cloud-based PBX, who
is going to be responsible for
those toll charges? These are
sensible questions that any
businessperson ought to be
asking.”
50 | Comms Business Magazine | June 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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