Ribbon Communications Rolls Out Remote UC&C Offering

Ribbon Communication has unveiled its new cloud-based Work@Home offer, which delivers remote working capabilities to enterprises and contact centers of any size looking to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Enterprises that need to switch their operational model to an all-remote workforce because of the coronavirus have access to a complete unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solution with Ribbon’s Smart Office, which provides screensharing, HD video whiteboard, group chat conferencing and more on both desktop and mobile clients. Fully functional licenses are available from select partners free of charge until June 30, 2020.

Ribbon‘s Kandy cloud-based solutions deliver full UC, collaboration and omnichannel contact center.

Ribbon’s John Macario

John Macario, Ribbon’s senior vice president of channel marketing, tells Channel Partners that with the Kandy platform’s provisioning portal, partners can “bring customers up really quickly and easily.”

“Very quickly we were able to include this Work@Home offer to the Kandy portal so our partners can go to it and in minutes literally turn up collaboration for as many employees as needed in enterprises, small businesses, agencies, whatever size,” he said. “It’s our firm belief that once people get accustomed to using these kinds of collaboration tools, remote working becomes much more natural and much more productive. It benefits our partners because obviously they’re selling it and making recurring revenue on it downstream in the short term. They’re really helping businesses deal with the current situation and the end users will ultimately understand that working remotely is an option in that there are tools in place to help them do that.”

For this Work@Home initiative, Ribbon is making available a set of resources available to all partners who resell Kandy, Macario said. Those include co-branded collateral campaigns, social media and other assets they can use. Ribbon is also rolling out a set of global co-marketing programs for a select group of partners based on their “enthusiasm about working with us and the market space that they serve,” he said.

And Ribbon’s portfolio is focused on security as Kandy includes border session controllers at the cloud periphery to ensure conversations are secure, he said.

Smart Office provides tight integration with the rest of Ribbon’s UC feature set, Macario said.

“If you’re using a videoconferencing solution with a cloud-based PBX from a different provider, you have to make those things work together, and I’m not saying they don’t,” he said. “It’s just that hey, if there’s a problem with one you have to work with them, and if there’s a problem with another you have to deal with them. It’s kind of the one throat to choke mentality so it makes sense.”

Contact centers looking to keep their operations uninterrupted while moving to a decentralized and remote model can turn up a working contact center in 30 minutes via Kandy’s live support, gaining a complete omnichannel contact center from a web browser.

“In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, companies must be empowered to shift their operations to alternate locations  quickly and efficiently,” said Sacha Gera, Ribbon’s senior vice president of cloud products. “We remain completely committed to working closely with our customers and partners to minimize the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”