In 2010, we told you Genband has become a mini Alcatel-Lucent for all practical purposes and we couldn’t help thinking of this, almost a decade later as we sat, discussing the latest happenings at the company. GENBAND is actually not only a company delivering hardware and software, they have become a cloud-enabler for carriers worldwide. For example, Deutsche Telekom has a consumer app based on Kandy.
Who is GENBAND today? They are becoming the ultimate enabler of carrier communications solutions. They are partnering broadly and doing what is needed to woo developers to their ecosystem. In many ways, the competition for the company is Twilio – but they don’t compete head-to-head… GENBAND enables carriers to compete with Twilio. In other ways the competition is Skype – but they don’t compete directly, they enable carriers to take on Skype with Fring.
More broadly, GENBAND is the carrier arms dealer, allowing these service providers to compete with various OTT and other Silicon Valley services. They give you a platform to take back your network from a range of “parasitic” services.
If these Silicon Valley solutions get betwen carriers and their customers, GENBAND does the opposite. We searched for the antonym for disintermediate and frankly couldn’t find one. Since it’s a holiday weekend, we took poetic license and invented a term, re-disintermediation… That is what the company does for carriers worldwide.
But there is so much more.
The company is also making inroads, supplying solutions to the DoD – they recently became JITC certified. Recall that the The GENBAND EXPERiUS Application Server shares its heritage with the Nortel AS 5300, which provides it with the unique capability to offer a highly scalable, cloud-based upgrade option for legacy Nortel communications systems deployed by the US Department of Defense.
The company has further thrown its hat into the SIP trunking field – enabling carriers to roll trunks out to their customers. The twist is they can be integrated applications and accessed through APIs or Kandy Wrappers which are prepackaged applications.
GENBAND has deep roots in communications – as does Dialogic – two names which were the talk of the market during the dotcom days. Now they are partnering – Dialogic’s PowerMedia XMS will provide video functionality to GENBAND, recording, conferencing and more.
Last but not least is a partnership with IBM – it will allow the IBM Connections Cloud to offer collaboration services to enterprises. In addition, Watson is making bots intelligent for their customers. Once trained, a bot can interact with prospects and customers and when specific keywords are used which indicate a bot is in trouble, the communication can escalate to a live agent. The service costs around ten cents per connection they told me in a recent meeting.
One last area of interest is the company’s focus allowing citizen developers to develop solutions without coding. For example in an hour, they were able to create a solution which at the click of a button launches a conference bridge and invites the appropriate people – useful if there is an IT outage for example.
There is certainly a lot happening at GENBAND – the good news is, their product breadth isn’t slowing their ability to innovate.
Speaking of Communications Innovation…
Communications 20/20 will be held July 18-20, 2017 at Caesars Palace,
Las Vegas, Nevada and will focus on the next wave of technology and innovation that will transcend the importance of person to person contact, disrupting the future of the entire communications industry. Communications 20/20 will provide vital knowledge and insight through unique programming, hands on training, live demos, keynotes, exhibits and networking events.
This unique conference will allow for individuals and companies entrenched in the traditional communications ecosystem that want to understand how to adapt and profit from the new software-defined communications trends that will permeate through all industries and enterprises.