With this morning’s announcement (Sonus Networks Announces its Completion of Sonus and Genband Merger) that we are now a single company called Ribbon Communications, we wanted to take this opportunity to share some behind the scenes details of how we came to this decision.

Changing names is never an easy decision. In the case of companies with leadership positioning in their markets, it is even more difficult as there is a tremendous amount of built-in awareness and brand equity that you must abandon. At the same time, a name conveys the company’s culture, mission and values, and in an industry that’s constantly changing, older names may no longer be effective or representative.

So this summer, our leadership team made the decision to take our merger as an opportunity to move forward and come up with a name that more accurately reflects our combined capabilities and the dynamism and opportunities that secure real-time communications enable. We engaged argodesign, a firm that is well known for its design and UX work, to support us through the process.

One of our goals was to move past the kind of straightforward technology names that many companies have used – our world has changed and with more friendly, intuitive experiences now being the norm, we wanted a name that embodied those qualities. In fact, we wanted to come up with a name as transformative as we are to the industry.

The process kicked off with a meeting with Ray Dolan and David Walsh to help answer some critical questions including:

• What’s exciting about the future?

• Where do you see the combined company having the biggest impact?

• What are the best parts from the two companies that need to be brought forward?

The result was a high level brief that would serve as guidepost for the rest of the process. We went through 3 rounds of names, ranging from already-existing words to invented ones, always trying to gage their sounds, the emotion they evoke, and the message they convey, while also exploring potential graphic representations, and how they would interact. We wanted a name that was both simple and rich in meaning, and that worked well with Kandy, our Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offer.

When the selection process came down to 3 names that were strong contenders, it was time for trademark research, as well as making sure that the associated URL and social media properties were available. With all of that done, Ribbon resulted as the clear favorite.

What made it stand out? While it may seem counterintuitive at first, Ribbon has the softness and flexibility that today’s digital experiences demand. It’s the thread that binds us all together, the secure connectivity that supports and informs our new way of working and living. It’s agile and flexible, lives at the endpoints and ties them together. It’s the new way of secure, embedded real-time communications.

Welcome to Ribbon!