Ribbon enhances Smart Office Unified Communications solution with extended mobility and collaboration capabilities

Award-winning Smart Office solution adds new Call Boost feature and leverages Vidyo’s market-leading technology for premium collaboration experiences

WESTFORD, Mass. – Ribbon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications, today announced that it has added key new features and functionality to its Smart Office Unified Communications (UC) solution to improve the end-user communications and collaboration experience. The mobile enhancements include an innovative Call Boost feature that allows users to seamlessly move an active call from 3/4G or Wi-Fi data services to their cellular voice provider when data network bandwidth and voice quality decreases.

Additionally, the Call Boost application moves the call from the user’s limited data plan to their cellular minutes. Call Boost leverages Ribbon’s Call Grabber technology. Call Grabber’s patented technology and session mobility capabilities dramatically improve the call experience for office employees, mobile workers and business travelers by enabling seamless, active call transfer between phones, smartphones, tablets and mobile devices in a one-step process that is undetectable to other parties on the call.

In addition to providing advanced mobility and desktop UC capabilities, Ribbon is extending its support for Vidyo’s patented, best-in-class video technology to power Smart Office’s Collaboration Rooms with industry-leading HD video conferencing and screen sharing. Smart Office technology supports, without plugins, WebRTC and rich client options that make the video collaboration experience extremely easy to launch. Smart Office combines the use of Vidyo’s scalable VP9 and H.264 SVC codecs and architecture, delivering the best possible video quality to every device, including mobile, irrespective of its resolution or available bandwidth.

Ribbon’s Smart Office applications leverage the company’s innovative Omni container technology which offers CIOs the ability to instantly brand and add new functionalities and applications across all mobile and desktop soft clients at launch-time without having to send out numerous software updates. The Ribbon Omni container technology is built on WebRTC media capabilities to easily facilitate seamless traversal of firewalls, which is ideal for business travelers working from their hotels or using third party Wi-Fi networks.

“Our customers want the latest in technological and collaboration advancements, including one-number access to all communications devices, the ability to have the same office connectivity capabilities regardless of where they are working and the option to include co-workers, customers, friends and guests in multiple collaboration environments,” said Sacha Gera, Senior Vice President of Cloud Products at Ribbon. “Smart Office is designed to deliver all of these capabilities and more, while providing anywhere access to UC. With great new features such as Call Boost and enhanced HD quality voice and video, we are delivering on our continued commitment to make staying connected easy and convenient.”

Gera added, “We selected Vidyo’s technology as a key component of our Smart Office Collaboration Rooms because of its ability to deliver superior performance in low bandwidth environments. The combination of Vidyo’s technology and our Call Boost feature provides our customers carrier-class, enterprise-grade access to voice and video.”

“We continually innovate to deliver the best collaboration experience possible to our customers and partners via our VidyoCloud platform,” said Sam Waicberg, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships for Vidyo. “Our longstanding relationship with Ribbon has allowed us to work closely together to enrich the Smart Office Collaboration Room video capabilities even further by embedding our patented, scalable, real-time video technology into their award-winning platform.”

The Smart Office platform is available to both service providers and enterprises or as a Service (aaS) within Ribbon’s Kandy Business Solutions and can be easily branded and resold in a multi-tiered model. Smart Office delivers mobile workers an improved user experience and offers enhanced support for native iOS and Android notification and calling services. Smart Office also includes an emergency alert notification solution that delivers real time and system-wide notifications in emergency situations.

Key Takeaways:

• Ribbon has enhanced its Smart Office Unified Communications platform with the latest in mobility, desktop and Collaboration Room technology.
• A key new feature in Smart Office is Call Boost, which leverages Ribbon’s patented Call Grabber technology for the ability to seamlessly move active calls to a cellular device without interruption. Call Boost allows for calls to be moved from 3/4G or Wi-Fi data services to the caller’s cellular voice provider when data network bandwidth and voice quality decreases.
• Smart Office also includes an emergency alert notification solution that delivers real time and system-wide notifications in emergency situations.
• Vidyo’s enterprise-grade technology is powering the Smart Office Collaboration Room video capabilities.
• Vidyo is a sponsor of Ribbon’s Perspectives18 annual customer and partner summit taking place June 3 -7 in Los Angeles.