Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Verizon boosts Virtual Communications Express with VoIP, SD-WAN, Webex Calling

Verizon is rolling out enterprise-specific enhancements to its premier cloud calling solution - Virtual Communications Express (VCE).

Verizon is delivering its VCE solution over its global VoIP service, and reinforced with hosted or premise based SD-WAN connectivity. The solution is also now available across Asia, Europe and the U.S.

Verizon is also now offering VCE via a Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan - Webex Calling. This combines hosted UC&C capabilities and Verizon’s VoIP connectivity with the added flexibility of Cisco’s Flex Plan licensing model. Verizon is the only carrier in the market that supports Cisco Webex Calling in Webex Teams on a private MPLS network providing enterprises with greater security for their business communications.

“To compete globally, businesses need their entire global workforce, whether office based or mobile, to be working at their optimum capacity. First class collaboration capabilities are vital,” comments Alla Reznik, executive director of customer experience, global products and services, Verizon. “By leveraging Verizon’s global network strength and market leading VoIP portfolio, we have developed an enhanced collaboration solution that delivers powerful hosted UC&C features underpinned by superior network connectivity and performance. This enterprise-grade solution will take global business collaboration to the next level.”

"Cisco is excited to be partnering with Verizon and we're delighted to deliver the power of a Single Platform bringing together Webex Calling, Teams and Meetings as the best Enterprise Collaboration solution for our customers. Verizon’s specific enhancements to VCE enables enterprises to heighten employee collaboration by providing a more productive, secure and cohesive environment, " comments Sri Srinivasan, Cisco senior vice president and general manager, collaboration.


SD-WAN: Linking Policy to Carrier Networks for Improved Customer Experience



MEF Annual Meeting – July 2019, Shawn Hakl, Senior Vice President Business Products, Verizon, highlights the importance of the industry’s new SD-WAN services standard published by MEF. Among other things, standardization will help link policy to carrier networks to deliver a greater customer experience.

“SD-WAN is really the control plane for which virtualized functions will be implemented. As we see more capabilities built into the intelligent network – the Software-Defined Network – at the core of carriers, SD-WAN will really be the way that you interface policy with the carrier network.” This will be expressed in ways like enabling users to select slices in a 5G network.

“The work that the MEF is doing around standardization of the SD-WAN spec just makes it easier for that integration to work across multiple types of underlying transport. And what that means to the end user is that it lets them get an overall experience from the network relative to their apps. So you can support a broader range of use cases with specialized needs coming across the network. You can build a better end-to-end application experience, meaning you’ll hit price points more effectively and, more importantly, your guaranteed service resiliency and service capability in an always-on connected world.”