Service Providers Increasingly Turn to Communications Platforms Solutions to Quickly Deliver Real-time Communications Capabilities to Enterprise Customers

Leading industry analysts highlight how CPaaS solutions can help service providers leverage their inherent advantages to successfully compete against non-traditional players

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ribbon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global software leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications, recently announced that The Netherlands' leading service provider, KPN, was leveraging its Kandy Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) as a key part of KPN's newly launched API Store. Other leading service providers have also recently launched API Marketplace offerings that provide embedded real-time communications capabilities such as voice, video and chat to their enterprise customers. Hong Kong Broadband and Optus have also launched CPaaS-powered offerings in the past year. This represents a growing trend in which large service providers are turning to CPaaS solutions to quickly deliver their enterprise and developer customers carrier-grade, no-code to low-code, real-time communications (RTC) capabilities.

With CPaaS solutions there is no need for the physical lines and circuits of traditional telecom services or the significant capital expenditures of deploying communications hardware to business locations on-premises. Service providers can conveniently deliver these real-time communications capabilities from an API store or marketplace where they are easily accessible to enterprise and developer customers.

"CPaaS offerings have traditionally been focused at the developer level and providing them with access to simple Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to create basic communications functionality for smaller customers," said Patrick Joggerst, Chief Marketing Officer for Ribbon. "Now increasingly we are seeing communications service providers leverage CPaaS solutions along with their existing relationships with large enterprises and their unique ability to bundle services to create new feature-rich real time communications offerings that can help improve customer stickiness."

"Some forward thinking service providers are already capitalizing on CPaaS offerings for their enterprise customers and this should serve as a wake-up call to other tier-one service providers," said Raul Castañon-Martinez, Senior Analyst, Workforce Collaboration, 451 Group. "We see CPaaS as one of the underlying technologies for enabling the contextual experience for customers and employees and anticipate that this market will only continue to grow, given the increased focus on the user experience."

"CPaaS and embedded communications are disrupting legacy communications and collaboration technology by allowing service providers to open up their communications services to the enterprise and developer markets," said Michael Brandenburg, Industry Analyst, Connected Work, Frost & Sullivan. "By breaking voice, video and messaging services down into very simple but easily consumable and deliverable elements, service providers are able to quickly deliver their enterprise customers revenue-generating turnkey real-time communications applications."

"CPaaS platforms facilitate agility and innovation by offering simplified and rapid on-ramp capabilities to implement and enhance enterprise applications with new functionalities," said Courtney Munroe, Group Vice President of Worldwide Telecommunications Research, IDC. "They are also helping companies rapidly implement embedded communications into their existing business processes with minimal disruption and reduced complexity compared to legacy software platforms - all while providing them with the ability to expand their market reach by providing low-cost communications transactions at scale."

"In order to continue drive new revenue streams, service providers need to further penetrate enterprises with innovative offerings," said Tim Banting, Principal Analyst, Workspace Services (Collaboration), Ovum. "Several Tier-1 service providers have announced they are deploying and beginning to leverage CPaaS solutions to engage C-Suite level customers with the ability to deliver low-touch, no-code and pre-built applications that are aimed at addressing today's critical business communications needs."

Ribbon's SVP of Cloud Products, Sacha Gera, will host a panel on Innovations in Cloud Communications on Tuesday, April 30 at the company's annual customer and partner summit, Perspective19. The session will include tier-one service providers from around the world discussing their CPaaS offerings.

Ribbon's Kandy CPaaS offers service providers numerous benefits including:

• the ability to take to market a carrier-grade, white label CPaaS solution that can be flexibly deployed in public, private or hybrid cloud environments.
• e-commerce services that make it easy for businesses to access and buy both traditional and new services, from one convenient location.
• the ability to offer on-demand freemium models so that service provider customers can try the apps before they buy them, with the capability of easily adding services onto to existing accounts.
• an ecosystem of proven partners that can assist in delivering continued innovation.
• the ability to protect current Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) investments and customers while API-enabling their offerings and helping them build a seamless bridge to the digital world.
• the ability to easily deploy fully functional pre-built apps such as Live Support and Visual Attendant to digitally-enable field support, customer service and e-commerce.

About Ribbon Communications
Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN) delivers market-leading software solutions that secure and power many of the world's leading service provider and enterprise communications environments. Built on world-class technology and intellectual property, the company's cloud-native solutions deliver intelligent and secure real-time communications solutions for the cloud, network and enterprise edge. Ribbon's Kandy Cloud real-time communications software platform delivers advanced and embedded CPaaS and UCaaS capabilities enabling service providers to rapidly create and deploy high-value communications services. To learn more, visit ribboncommunications.com.

Important Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
The information in this release contains forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding delivering value to customers. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this release are forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with Ribbon Communications' business, please refer to the "Risk Factors" section of Ribbon Communications' most recent annual or quarterly report filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements represent Ribbon Communications' views only as of the date on which such statement is made and should not be relied upon as representing Ribbon Communications' views as of any subsequent date. While Ribbon Communications may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Ribbon Communications specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.

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