Nasdaq: RBBN Russell 2000 Component | |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Predecessor |
|
Founded | 2017 |
Headquarters | |
Key people | Bruce McClelland, CEO |
Products | |
Website | ribboncommunications |
Ribbon Communications Inc. is a public company that makes software, IP and optical networking solutions for service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors. The company was formed in 2017, following the merger of Genband and Sonus Networks and is headquartered in Plano, Texas. [1]
Ribbon Communications was the combination of two companies, each of which had acquired other businesses over their history.
Ribbon Communications was founded in October, 2017, following the merger of Genband and Sonus Networks in May. [2] Ray Dolan initially headed the combined company, while Walsh led the Kandy business unit. [3] By December, Dolan, who had led Sonus since 2010, resigned. [4] Franklin (Fritz) W. Hobbs was appointed as president and CEO of the combined organization [5] and served in that role until November 2019. [6]
In January 2018, the company announced that its session border controllers would be used in the virtual network services of Verizon. [7] In 2018 Ribbon also acquired Edgewater Networks. [8]
In November 2019, Ribbon announced it would acquire ECI Telecom from Shaul Shani for $486 million in cash and stock. [9] The company completed the merger in March 2020.
In February 2020, Bruce McClelland was named president, CEO and director. [10] [11] A years later, Ribbon moved its headquarters to Plano, Texas. [12]
In August 2020, AVCTechnologies announced an agreement to buy Kandy Communications Business. [13] The transaction was completed in December 2020.
General Bandwidth was founded in 1999 by Paul Carew, Brendon Mills, Ron Lutz and Steve Raich in Austin, Texas, and received initial venture capital funding of $12 million. The company raised over $200 million in four rounds of venture funding and grew to over 200 people by 2003. In 2004, Mills resigned and was replaced as CEO by Charles Vogt. [14]
In March 2006, General Bandwidth changed its name to Genband, Inc. and moved its headquarters to Plano, Texas. Genband started as a media gateway vendor selling the G6 media gateway, but eventually branched out to IP switching, IP applications, IP Multimedia Subsystem and session border controllers. [15] In August, 2006, Genband acquired Syndeo and Baypackets (headquartered in Fremont, California, with employees mostly in India). [16] In October, 2006 it acquired the digital central office products known as Siemens DCO. [17]
In 2007, Genband acquired Tekelec's switching group, which expanded product offerings in application software and SIP trunking gateways. In 2008, the company acquired Nokia Siemens Networks’ Surpass HiG media gateway product portfolio, including fixed-line trunking media gateways. The company concluded 2008 with the acquisition of NextPoint Networks, which included session border controller (SBCs) and security gateway offerings.
In May 2010, Genband purchased Nortel Networks' carrier VoIP and application business for an estimated net $182 million after Nortel became bankrupt. [18] [19] Existing shareholder One Equity Partners assisted in financing. [20] In June, 2010, Genband was re-incorporated as Genband, Inc, and disclosed an equity investment from executives and board members of about $4 million. [21] In December, 2010 it moved its headquarters to Frisco, Texas, keeping its Plano campus as a design center. Both are near Dallas, Texas. [22] In January, 2011, Genband acquired Cedar Point Communications in Derry, New Hampshire. [23]
In 2012, Genband acquired Aztek Networks, a switch maker specializing in hardware that allows for a smoother transition from legacy to IP networks. [24] Genband was named the top-ventured capital backed company by the Wall Street Journal out of nearly 6,000 companies that were considered. [25]
On February 12, 2013, Genband announced the launch of the NUViA Cloud offering which was their entry into the SaaS market. The NUViA Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) offering included HD voice, video, multimedia messaging, mobility, conferencing, Web collaboration, desktop clients, and fixed and mobile convergence hosted from datacenters run by the company around the globe. [26]
Also in 2013, Genband acquired Fringland Ltd., provider of the Fring! app, an over-the-top (OTT) mobile IP communications service provider. Two years later, it announced the Fring Alliance, a community promoting communications service providers to provide instant messaging, voice and video services to their subscribers. [27] Charles Vogt left Genband in 2013 and David Walsh added the CEO position to his other already held title of Chairman. [28]
In 2014, Genband acquired uReach Technologies, a provider of unified communications and messaging, and introduced unified communications products and services for business customers. [29]
In September 2014, Genband announced Kandy.io, cloud-based, real-time software support communications marketed as platform as a service (PaaS). [30]
In May 2015, Genband was named in CNBC's "disruptor" list. [31] In 2016, it was involved in a patent dispute with Metaswitch. [32] In September, 2016, pre-packaged software using the Kandy technology were announced, called "Kandy wrappers". [33]
Sonus Networks, Inc. was founded in August 1997 by Jay Pasco-Anderson, Karl Schwiegershausen, Michael G. Hluchyj, Rubin Gruber and Tony Risica.[ citation needed ] Hluchyj was chief technology officer, Gruber served as president until November 1998, when Hassan M. Ahmed became CEO and chairman. There were no revenues until the quarter ending in March 2000, with accumulated losses of about $50 million against $1.1 million revenues. [34]
On May 31, 2000, Sonus had its initial public offering (IPO), raising over $100 million. It was listed on Nasdaq with the symbol SONS. [34] At the time (near the end of the dot-com bubble), it was located in Westford, Massachusetts.
In January 2001, Sonus acquired Anousheh Ansari's firm Telecom Technologies, Inc., in an all-stock deal. Sonus subsequently integrated TTI's soft switch technology INtelligentIP into its own packet telephony suite. In 2008, Richard Nottenburg joined as chief executive. [35] A product called a network border switch was announced in 2003, and updated in 2006. [36]
In August 2012, Sonus acquired Network Equipment Technologies, Inc., for approximately $42 million. The acquisition complemented their existing SBC line with the NET UX series for SIP Trunking and SIP-based UC. [37]
On December 13, 2013, Sonus agreed to acquire Performance Technologies Inc entered into a definitive merger agreement, under which Sonus will acquire PT for $3.75 per share in cash, or approximately $30 million.[6] In 2014 Sonus acquired Performance Technologies, moving into the diameter signaling market. [38]
In 2016 Sonus Networks Inc., acquired Taqua expanding its soft switching portfolio. [39]
Kandy is a cloud communications platform created by Genband in September 2014. [40] The Kandy platform includes Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) assets formerly known as NUViA. The platform also includes pre-built customer engagement tools, based on WebRTC technology, called Kandy Wrappers. The platform offers white-labeled services to Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and Systems Integrators (SIs). As such, Kandy Partners typically sell these to their end customers under their own brands.
Kandy was formed when GENBAND announced the launch of its real-time software development communications platform in September 2014. [41] [42] Initially only focused on CPaaS, the scope of the platform was quickly expanded to include GENBAND's Nuvia UCaaS offer, rebranded Kandy Business Solutions (KBS). After the 2017 merger Ribbon Communications maintained the Kandy offerings and Kandy sub brand for its cloud portfolio.
On December 2, 2020, Ribbon Communications sold the Kandy assets to AVCtechnologies. AVCT issued to Ribbon units of securities consisting of convertible debentures in an aggregate principal amount of approximately $45 million and warrants to purchase an aggregate of approximately 4.5 million shares of AVCT's common stock for an exercise price of $0.01 per share. [43] On January 11, 2023, American Virtual Cloud and all of its affiliated subsidiaries, including AVCtechnologies and Kandy Communications, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company will continue to operate normally as 'debters-in-possession'. [44]
Avaya LLC, often shortened to Avaya and formerly Avaya Inc., is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includes unified communications and contact center services. In 2019, the company provided services to 220,000 customer locations in 190 countries.
Mitel Networks Corporation is a Canadian telecommunications company. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications, but after a change in ownership in 2001, now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified communications, collaboration and contact center products. Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with offices, partners and resellers worldwide.
Vonage is an American cloud communications provider operating as a subsidiary of Ericsson. Headquartered in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, the organization was founded in 1998 as Min-X as a provider of residential telecommunications services based on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In 2001, the organization changed its name to Vonage.
Digital Multiplex System (DMS) is the name shared among several different telephony product lines from Nortel Networks for wireline and wireless operators. Among them are the DMS-1 Rural/Urban digital loop carrier, the DMS-10 telephone switch, the DMS SuperNode family of telephone switches, and the S/DMS optical transmission system.
Broadvoice is a privately owned company headquartered in Northridge, California. They provide Voice over IP (VOIP) cloud-based telecommunications services to small, medium, and enterprise businesses in the United States. Broadvoice offers telephone services, unified communications as a service (UCaaS), SIP Trunking, telecommunications network and security, along with virtual call centers, so business customers can use voice and video communications via a broadband Internet connection or cellular phone.
8x8, Inc. is an American provider of Voice over IP products. Its products include cloud-based voice, contact center, video, mobile and unified communications for businesses. Since 2018, 8x8 manages Jitsi.
SipXecs is a free software enterprise communications system. It was initially developed by Pingtel Corporation in 2003 as a voice over IP telephony server located in Boston, MA. The server was later extended with additional collaboration capabilities as part of the SIPfoundry project. Since its extension, sipXecs now acts as a software implementation of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), making it a full IP-based communications system.
F5, Inc. is an American technology company specializing in application security, multi-cloud management, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking (ADN), application availability & performance, network security, and access & authorization.
Ciena Corporation is an American networking systems and software company based in Hanover, Maryland. The company has been described by The Baltimore Sun as the "world's biggest player in optical connectivity". The company reported revenues of $3.63 billion for 2022. Ciena had over 8,000 employees, as of October 2022. Gary Smith serves as president and chief executive officer (CEO).
Extreme Networks, Inc., is an American networking company based in Morrisville, North Carolina. Extreme Networks designs, develops, and manufactures wired and wireless network infrastructure equipment and develops the software for network management, policy, analytics, security and access controls.
Verizon Business is a division of Verizon Communications based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, that provides services and products for Verizon's business and government clients.
RingCentral, Inc. is an American provider of cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services.
Lumen Technologies, Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a member of the Fortune 500 and has been on the S&P 500 index since 1999.
Mavenir Systems, Inc. is an American telecommunications software company, created in 2017 as a result of a three-way merger of existing companies and technologies, that develops and supplies cloud-native software to the communications service provider (CSP) market.
BroadSoft, Inc. is a communication software and service provider that was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2018. BroadSoft was founded in 1998 and completed its initial public offering in 2010, and was headquartered in Maryland. It partners with carriers and large service providers in several countries. BroadSoft’s customers include AT&T, Verizon Communications, Sprint, Charter Communications, Comcast, and Vodafone. The company provides technology for service providers to build cloud-based communications services such as voice, video, web conferencing and team messaging and contextual services.
Performance Technologies, Inc was set up in 1981 and now is based in Rochester, New York. The company engages in network communications, telecommunications, and military, aerospace and government systems. In January 2011, Performance Technologies acquired GENBAND's Universal Signaling Platform (USP) and SP2000 signaling technology.
MyNetFone Australia Pty Ltd is part of the MNF Group, the company that owns and operates Australia's largest VoIP network, which is also the 3rd largest interconnected voice network in the country. MyNetFone provides broadband internet and cloud-based communication services to residential, business and government sectors.
Birch Communications was an American provider of IP-based communications, network broadband, cloud computing, and information technology services to small, mid-sized, enterprise and wholesale business customers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. It was acquired by Fusion Connect in 2018 and integrated into the company. Founded in 1996 in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, several years later the company began acquiring other telecom companies in an effort to increase its network size and service offerings. Birch Communications raised $77.5 million in funding in 2011, and $110 million in funding in 2012 after it financed a new $90 million facility.
Xura, Inc. , previously known as Comverse, Inc., was a technology company headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, United States, in existence from 2013 to 2017, that offered a portfolio of digital services which enabled global communications across a variety of mobile devices and platforms. Xura marketed and sold to communications service providers (CSPs) and to enterprises.
Masergy Communications is a software-defined networking services company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Plano, Texas. The services they provide include Managed SD-WAN, Unified Communications, Cloud Contact Center, and Managed Security. Masergy was acquired by Comcast on October 8, 2021.
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