Ribbon Communications will deliver secure UCaaS to financial services institutions via IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

Ribbon will onboard its UCaaS offering to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services platform. The two companies have a longstanding relationship deploying large-scale public cloud UCaaS projects for retail and government businesses.

Ribbon’s Kandy Business Solutions will provide financial institutions with a full suite of cloud-based UC services, and clients like chat, video, voice and text. That will enable the transition of business communications to the cloud, the company said.

Big Opportunity for Ribbon, IBM Partners

Greg Zweig is Ribbon’s director of solutions marketing.

Ribbon’s Greg Zweig

“We think this announcement benefits both Ribbon and IBM partners,” he said. “IBM’s global reach, expertise and portfolio are world-class. So the opportunity for Ribbon partners and IBM partners to work together to deliver best-in-class communications services creates a bigger playing field for all of our partners. The financial services environment is so demanding; in many cases, only a handful of the technology providers are even capable of engaging with these customers. Our partners can’t help but benefit from that engagement.”

The IBM platform helps institutions safely migrate their sensitive operations to the cloud. They can also take advantage of cloud-native technologies from IBM‘s ISV and SaaS vendor partners.

“We think this announcement transcends COVID-19,” Zweig said. “The need to enable employees to securely work (and communicate) from anywhere has been a unique challenge for the financial services sector for many years. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that requirement and continues to challenge the industry. However, when we are all lucky enough to see the day when COVID-19 is gone, the technology that enables work from home will remain and grow.”

Ribbon Selling Kandy

Ribbon recently announced it has entered into an agreement to sell the Kandy Communications business, including Kandy Business Solutions, to AVCtechnologies. The proposed sale should close in the second half of 2020.

“We are excited to expand our relationship with Ribbon Communications by helping to onboard its Kandy Business Solutions to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services,” said Evaristus Mainsah, IBM’s general manager of Cloud, Cloud Pak and Edge Ecosystem. “Ribbon’s offering can help financial institutions transform their business communications with a safe platform.”