Ribbon Announces Next-Gen, Microsoft-Friendly Intelligent Edge Offerings

Ribbon Communications just launched a new portfolio of Microsoft-certified enterprise edge solutions.

Ribbon on Tuesday introduced the Next Generation Intelligent Edge Portfolio, which the company said brings together and improves the quality of enterprise voice and data applications.

Ribbon’s Patrick Joggerst

“Our Next Generation Intelligent Edge portfolio gives managed service providers the ability to offer their business customers one of the broadest portfolio of Microsoft-certified enterprise edge solutions on the market,” said Patrick Joggerst, Ribbon’s executive vice president of business development and chief marketing officer. “In addition to delivering business-class data and voice services, it allows them to significantly reduce total cost of ownership by having the ability to centrally provision, secure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot their UCaaS, SIP trunking and direct routing service offerings.”

Ribbon also unveiled the EdgeMarc 6000, which can deploy multiple virtual network functions (VNFs) and can function as a wireless WAN failover option. The EdgeMarc 6000 operates as the new portfolio’s “centerpiece” with its ability to connect communications infrastructure.

“The portfolio’s advanced resiliency, traffic prioritization and remote monitoring capabilities combined with management from Ribbon’s EdgeView Service Control Center allows service providers to adhere to service-level agreements in their managed offerings,” Joggerst said.

Pure-IP’s Gary Forrest

Gary Forrest, CEO of SIP trunking provider Pure-IP, said the offering lets it “deploy reliable, state-of-the art edge devices at our customer sites and offer Microsoft Teams direct routing as a service.”

“We are a longtime Ribbon customer and it is due in large part to the robust and innovative solutions they keep delivering like their new Next Generation Intelligent Edge offering,” Forrest said. “It allows rapidly growing service providers like Pure-IP to attract new and retain existing enterprise customers by offering the latest in real-time communications with advanced analytics and security technology.”

John Burke, principal research analyst and chief information officer at Nemertes Research, said Ribbon wants to solve customer and partner demand delivering an end-to-end, software-based solution at the edge of the network.

Nemertes’ John Burke

“Enterprises are coming to see the edge as an extension of the data center, want to manage functions there the way they do in data center or cloud, and so are looking for containerized, all-software solutions for all communications and security functions,” Burke said.

Ribbon last fall announced its purchase of ECI Telecom and its intentions of establishing a “powerful, leading edge” solutions provider.