No Jitter Roll: SD-WAN Offers, Slack AcquisitionNo Jitter Roll: SD-WAN Offers, Slack Acquisition

We start this week’s news recap with a pair of SD-WAN announcements followed with news on the latest Slack acquisition, a phone server, a revamped API developer experience, and an executive appointment.

SD-WAN Moves from Aryaka, 8x8, AT&T

This week, we saw two SD-WAN services announcements.

First, cloud WAN provider Aryaka and cloud communications provider 8x8 partnered to deliver solutions that combine 8x8's Open Communications Platform, which includes voice, team chat, meetings, and contact center services, with Aryaka’s managed SD-WAN offerings. With these solutions, joint customers can leverage Aryaka's backbone to access 8x8's regional UCaaS points of presence with a goal of optimizing performance across the WAN, the companies said. Additionally, they’ll deliver real-time insight into traffic management and UC and contact center service performance via a single dashboard.

Separately, AT&T has expanded its SD-WAN portfolio with a service powered by Cisco secure SD-WAN technology. Similar to other SD-WAN services, AT&T SD-WAN will provide intelligent routing, cloud connectivity, and the ability to assess application performance in real-time, according to AT&T. For security, the service features an enterprise firewall, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection. Additionally, AT&T Managed Services and AT&T Cybersecurity divisions will support and manage this new service; to reduce complexity, they’ll have a view into the network and security via a single management interface, AT&T said.

Slack Makes Directory Acquisition

Slack this week announced the acquisition of enterprise directory provider Rimeto. With Rimeto, enterprises can search a directory for users based on attributes like who worked with a specific customer, a sales professional in a particular region, and more, Slack said. Rimeto will be available as a Slack integration, as well as a standalone product, Slack said.

No additional details were available at this time.

VOSS Lengthens Life of Telephony Devices

UC management provider VOSS Solutions late last month announced a registration and telephony server, VOSS Phone Server, aimed at prolonging the lifespan of and maximizing investment in telephony assets. This telephony server delivers registration and call-handling features for new and existing SIP phones, clients, and endpoints so that enterprises can connect legacy gear into new UC platforms, the company said. Phone Server provides enterprises the ability to extend the lifetime of unsupported devices, get basic but scalable telephony at a lower purchase price for shared spaces, transition to new solutions with minimum disruption, and integrate traditional SIP phones and analog devices into Cisco, Avaya, or Microsoft Teams platforms, Voss said.

Aircall Debuts Developer Resources

Cloud voice platform provider Aircall late last month launched two resources aimed at facilitating the use of its free public API to build voice integrations. One is a developer-dedicated website that provides access to API documentation, content, tutorials, and other guidance for using the Aircall API and publishing projects in the company’s app marketplace. The second is Aircall Labs, which Aircall described as a “home for experience apps that are built using open-sourced code.” The goal, the company said, is to let users see how the end-to-end process in action. The first app available via Aircall Labs is a weather app, which lets users — say a contact center agent — know the weather at the location at the other end of a call, Aircall announced.

Apps built in the Aircall Labs environment are available at no cost to Aircall customers, as is the public API, Aircall said.

PGi Designates New CEO

After serving as CEO at UCaaS provider PGi for the past two years, industry veteran Don Joos, is headed to TPx Communications, a managed services provider. PGi and TPx, both privately held, are Siris Capital portfolio companies. CapTaking Joos’s place at PGi, effectively immediately, is Rick Mace, a Siris executive and board member of various of its portfolio companies, PGi announced this week. Mace will focus on PGi’s post-COVID-19 go-to-market growth opportunities in events and collaboration, PGi said.

Dana Casielles, No Jitter associate editor, contributed to this article.

Looking to see the latest from top communications and collaboration providers? Then, make sure to attend Enterprise Connect Digital Conference & Expo 2020 from Aug. 3 to 6. Visit the exhibitor page here and make sure to register today!