Genband ran Perspectives13 over the 29 April – 2 May, customers from over 80 countries came together to see how Genband are bringing  their communications platforms and services together.  Genband has both built and bought a portfolio of communications-centric products across telco and enterprise, see M&A history at the end of this weblog: from the core IMS, VoLTE and RCS; through the edge with SIP trucking, peering and interconnect; to a range unified communication services.  Ericsson and Huawei have become the duopoloy top-dogs for service providers, and Genband is now a close second with in my opinion an edge because of their focus on communications services and enterprise market presence.

Genband are strong in North America, though in need of building their global presence to the same level.  What differentiates Genband in my opinion is their focus on building the communications services that use the communications platforms they also sell.  In particular NUViA (evolving from the Nortel UC portfolio) with their SIP heritage across service provider and enterprise, putting it into the cloud, and as announced at the conference adds WebRTC with their SPiDR WebRTC gateway.  And critically a tight partnership with Samsung to get their UC services across the Samsung device portfolio.  SPiDR sits at the edge of the network and provides open, web-centric APIs that allow application developers to leverage the rich communications services of the telecommunications network; including voice, video, presence, shared address book, call history, instant messaging, and collaboration.

At the conference the line-up of speakers was impressive include Tony Melone, Verizon CTO; Tim Wagner, VP and GM Enterpise Sales at Samsung; Chuck Kalmanek, VP Research AT&T; Balan Nair, CTO Liberty Global; Vish Nandall, Head of Strategy, Marketing and CTO Ericsson North America; Matt Beal, CTO CenturyLink.  As well as F5, SFDC, SAP, Frontier, Videotron, BT, IBM, Yankee, Gartner, mPortal, Polycom, etc.

I was impressed with Samsung’s vision and focus on the enterprise, they’re currently selling 1500 devices per minute.  50% of the Samsung Galaxy Note II are sold into enterprise.  Its my currently device, and its great.  SAFE is their enterprise security solution across VPN, MDM, on device encryption, corporate integration; and built into many of their phones, including the Note II.  And from the bare metal up they have Knox. which manages the work/personal use as well as greater security.  And with Genband they have their UC offer, Smart Office, preloaded across Samsung’s enterprise focused devices.

Parting thoughts:

• Genband for IMS, VoLTE, RCS, UC, really any communications platform and service should be considered along with Huawei and Ericsson.
• As ALU and NSN dissolve, new companies are emerging like Genband that provide a choice from the duopoly, providing an answer to, “IMS. What choice do you have?”
• Samsung are potentially going to dominate the enterprise and leave Apple standing.  Their Safe and Knox enterprise security solutions, their focus on winning Government and Financial services verticals, mean they have all the pieces in place.  Their devices (both individually and across the portfolio) from an enterprise perspective are now stronger technically than Apple, and Samsung’s focus on the software and solutions, make a compelling proposition.  Its hard to fine a better partner.  And backing up this comment, the Pentagon has just approved the Samsung S4.

Quick Genband M&A History

• 2006 – General Bandwidth becomes GENBAND
• 2006 – Acquires Siemens DCO Business (IP Switching)
• 2007 – Acquires TEKELEC Switching Solutions Group (IP Switching)
• 2008 – Acquires NextPoint Networks (SBC/Security)
• 2009 – Acquires Nokia Siemens Networks Product Units (Trunking Media Gateways)
• 2010 – Acquires Nortel Carrier Voice and Applications Solutions (IP Switching)
• 2010 – Named #1 Supplier in the Global Service Provider VoIP Market (Softswitches, Media Gateways, Session Border Controllers, Media Servers and Applications)
• 2010 – Named Leading Carrier IP Softswitch Supplier in North America, with more than 60% Revenue Share
• 2011 – Acquires Cedar Point Communications (IP Switching)
• 2012 – Acquires Aztek Networks (IP Switching)
• 2012 – Ranked No.1 on The Wall Street Journal List of Top 50 Venture Backed Companies