Campus Network Solutions

Whether education means K-12/primary school, a community college, or a major university, Ribbon has solutions to keep faculty, staff and students connected. Whether the task is to migrate traditional PBX hardware to the cloud or extend the life of existing on-campus assets, Ribbon is ready. It's no surprise that we are already the heart of communications in some of the world's preeminent education institutions, with dozens of deployments on campuses with 30,000 or more users. 

Ribbon solutions secure networks from serious attacks as well as distracting nuisance calls. Our Session Border Controllers (SBCs) prevent unauthorized access, encrypt calls to prevent eavesdropping, and are part of campus-wide solutions to integrate multiple brands and generations of technology. Ribbon Analytics takes the next step by providing campus-wide reporting so busy administrators can quickly spot issues and proactively make changes to ward-off future challenges.

Ribbon solutions are standards-based and certified with major cloud providers like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Ring Central, Cisco, and more. We also have incredible references with leading cloud contact center providers like Avaya, Genesys, Five9, Nice InContact, Cisco, and more. Unlike traditional enterprise communications providers, Ribbon doesn't use proprietary protocols that lock institutions into a single brand. As an example, Ribbon's centralized policy & routing engine is deployed by educational institutions to provide a vendor-agnostic "superhighway" for communications. This makes it easy to connect multiple campuses together, regardless of the brand or generation of communications deployed. In addition, this architecture can be used to simplify and accelerate migrations to the cloud. 

Ribbon has the scale, resiliency, security, and cloud migration choices institutions need. Our heritage building solutions for communications service providers mean that no campus is too large and our expertise building virtualized software means that no location is too small.

Digital Transformation in Education

Major universities can be the equivalent of an entire municipality with hundreds of buildings, police, fire, and maintenance staff. Of course, this is in addition to their core mission of education. Even as many departments are shifting to accommodate remote or hybrid learning, on-site IT infrastructure must be able to meet the needs of traffic that originates both off on and off-campus. That's why Ribbon's service provider heritage is so important, our solutions were designed for the scale and resiliency a campus community requires. Many enterprise vendors just can't deliver Ribbon's scale or our ability to seamlessly transition campuses from legacy TDM to standards-based IP communications or to the latest cloud services.

Eliminating Barriers to Cloud Migrations

Ribbon solutions are certified with major cloud providers like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Ring Central, Cisco, and more However, there are often critical systems like security, elevators, fax, paging, and more that are tied to legacy systems. Worse, legacy wiring may make moving to the cloud seem cost-prohibitive. Be assured, Ribbon can help. Solutions like our G5 high-density analog gateway can preserve legacy cabling and devices on-campus, even as other services move to PCs and mobile clients. Ribbon has multiple solutions to migrate select users or an entire campus to the cloud. Organizations that desire to move to the cloud can do so cost-effectively and securely with Ribbon solutions. 

Ribbon has multiple as a service offers for organizations that want an OPEX purchasing model or that lack the budget to buy software or hardware. Ribbon offers solutions that are purchased on a per user per month basis, making solutions cost-effective for any size budget.

Mobility and Innovation

School administrators must constantly walk a tightrope, balancing their young students' deep engagement with the hottest communication tools vs the limited technical skills of some faculty and staff. Ribbon's unified communication tools and cloud collaboration integration can help administrators provide mobile solutions that are relevant to students and staff.

Nortel Migrations

Ribbon continues to support Nortel SL-100 and CS2100 deployments at campuses across North America. Some of these platforms have run for decades without a single moment of downtime.  It's no surprise that IT staff are worried about replacing a solution with that track record of reliability. Thankfully, Ribbon has proven that the next generation of these platforms, the Ribbon C20, and Application Server are just as reliable. Ribbon has helped multiple universities move to modern platforms without sacrificing the scale and reliability of their legacy environments.