Ribbon is bringing together hundreds of customers, technology ecosystem partners, software partners and channel partners for the seventh annual edition of Ribbon Perspectives, being held this year in Washington, D.C. during April 28 – May 2, 2019.
Unlike massive conferences and exhibitions, Perspectives is a more focused and intimate gathering including executives from the world’s largest service providers, network operators, cloud delivery platforms, and real time voice, video and messaging applications companies who are working with Ribbon to advance mission critical communications.
Key themes for this year include cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning based security, communications platforms as a service, robocall prevention, and edge solutions, with a focus on how collaboration is accelerating innovation, including bringing government agencies together with enterprises.
We sat down with Bita Milanian, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and producer of this VIP event for the past six years, to learn more about what attendees can expect at the event, and about the topics that will be shared coming out of the event with a broader global audience, including our readership at ChannelDrive.
How is Perspectives19 going to be different from previous editions?
This year, we chose Washington, D.C. to accommodate our partners within major U.S. federal government agencies and our pride in helping those agencies secure some of the most- mission- critical and confidential conversations in history. And Washington is such an exciting city, both rich in history and as a vibrant technology hub, including the surrounding Virginia and Maryland areas where many of our partners operate.
We’ll continue to deliver an amazing array of networking events, along with keynotes from key influencers in our industry, in addition to exhibiting some of our latest innovations and those of our partners.
This year we’ve also partnered with the Network Media Group to livestream some a number of customer and executive panels from our Solutions showcase. It will be great to share these moments on our streaming page with those who are unable to attend Perspectives this year. And we hope it will give them the necessary incentive to join us in 2020!
What are some of the key messages that we can expect at Perspectives 2019?
Ribbon is delivering AI and ML-based security and analytics capabilities to help leading CSPs and large enterprises improve network efficiencies and enhance network-wide security, so a great deal of time will be devoted to this new level of intelligence.
Ribbon has always been a software and security company, ever since inventing softswitch technology in the 1990s, driving session border controller platforms as a world leader since 2000, and now bringing security all the way to the edge with our Edgewater Networks acquisition.
We have redesigned our Kandy communications platform to enable leading service providers such as AT&T, KPN (The Netherlands), Hong Kong Broadband, and Optus (Australia) to quickly take to market carrier-grade, white label embedded APIs and Real-Time Communications capabilities, and will be sharing those success stories.
We are also working with global Systems Integrators such as IBM to deliver cloud-based digital transformation solutions to some of the world’s largest enterprises including Hertz, a great case study of how our technologies dramatically improve productivity and customer experience.
In keeping with the DC theme, Ribbon is collaborating with federal agencies (FCC), industry organizations (SIP Forum) and ecosystem partners (Neustar) to deliver standards-based (STIR-SHAKEN) solutions designed to combat the growing nuisance and robo-calling epidemic, a topic we all care about.
And finally, Ribbon’s Cloud, Microsoft Teams and Intelligent Edge solutions are providing our channel partners news ways to differentiate their offerings in an increasingly competitive marketplace, and we’ll be sharing exactly how at our event later this month.
Why it is so special for Ribbon ecosystem and customers to attend this?
Our customers and partners success is our success and while we practice this every day, bringing people together in the “real world” can make all the difference. It has been a great experience watching the “aha moments” happen at previous Perspectives events – countless ideas and partnerships have been born during past events, and this is only increasing as our industry becomes more software-driven and connectivity solutions become more integrated, including for the Internet of Things – and the Internet of People and Things.
Why do you think CTOs and C-level executives should attend this?
There is no better place to see the future and build the future together, and to meet other influencers who are truly moving our society forward.
How many companies and people are expected to attend this year’s Perspectives?
We are expecting over 700 guests to attend this year and will certainly reach many more through the news we’ll be streaming from the event. We look forward to another high point not only for Ribbon, but for our ecosystem customers, technology partners, channel partners and top industry analysts and journalists who cover our space reporting live from the events. #RBBNP19 is the hashtag to follow!
