Ribbon pitches best-of-breed approach with IP Wave model

Ribbon Communications positioned itself as a one-stop-shop for operators’ networking needs, unveiling a new IP Wave framework for planning deployments which addresses their IP routing, optical transport and software requirements.

Michael Soulakis, VP of Americas and IP Optical Networks at Ribbon, told Fierce the idea behind IP Wave is to show operators it is thinking about their networks holistically, even if customers don’t buy its products across all three of those areas.

“Yes, we make sure we offer really good product in those domains, so we have the expertise. Obviously, we want to sell those products. But what we have found is if you really open up that ecosystem, make it where they’re not locked in, make ease of adoption – all those help us to gain entry but it also allows us to partner at probably the biggest problem domain in our customer’s network,” he explained. “It is not the elements, it is lifecycle management.”

By consulting “almost as a neutral party” and enabling a multi-vendor approach to each of the different layers, Ribbon can be part of the entire business conversation and help simplify operational complexity, he explained. That said, Ribbon does have its own offerings in each of the three areas.

In terms of optical transport, Soulakis said the company’s 400G ZR+ product is currently its flagship offering, but noted it is planning to come out with a 1.2 terabit product next year. On the IP routing front, meanwhile, it already offers an NPT 1000 series and will launch a new set of NPT 2000 routers this year, he added.

As far as orchestration goes, Soulakis said the company has also recently upgraded its Muse software, which allows operators to choose from a modular suite of applications.

“What we’re seeing is there’s an opportunity where Muse has had a lot of attraction to look and feel,” he said. “Especially in OLS…a lot of customers want to be able to look at all the different vendor components, but they don’t really have that one vendor they can work with that can build the overarching management layer. And so we’ve put a heavy investment into being able to build adaptation quickly and also building common APIs.”