Podcast

Ep 79 – Weaving through the public cloud with Ribbon

November 14, 2023

This week’s guest

Bruce McClelland

President and CEO Ribbon Communications

When innovative new tech comes along, established software vendors face a balancing act between maintaining existing solutions for current customers and adopting disruptive new tools to stay competitive. For this episode, I talk with Bruce McClelland, President and CEO of Ribbon Communications, about his nearly billion-dollar company’s efforts to juggle both priorities, its adoption of cloud-native software, and what it sees happening with telcos’ public cloud deployments. Listen now to hear:

The expanding role of software at Ribbon and in telco [04:58];
Where Ribbon sees demand for the public cloud in telco and what’s driving it [08:17];
The company’s decision to remain cloud-agnostic [10:56]; and
Bruce’s thoughts on network workloads running in public clouds [14:23].

Links and resources

Learn more about Ribbon Communications.
Grab a copy of the 1997 best-selling business book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen
Bruce and I have something in common: we’ve both run the UCaaS / CPaaS company, Kandy! I acquired Kandy back in March of this year, read all about it in this press release.
Let’s meet up at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas on November 27 – December 1. I’ll be hosting a fantastic hospitality lounge with great food and drinks (and even a sommelier!) and zipping around the HyperLoop in a Tesla. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this video.
Bruce and I are fans of the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A. Check out comedian Tim Hawkins’ hysterical take on The Beatles’ classic song, Yesterday, which pays homage to the restaurant, sweet tea, and waffle fries.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
And someone sent us fan art after listening to the episode! Check it out:

Wanna talk public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

Guest bio

Bruce McClelland is CEO and President of Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global communications and network solutions provider to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors. Bruce is a technical business leader with a proven history of developing and growing sustainable, profitable businesses through technology and business cycles. Before joining Ribbon, Bruce was CEO at ARRIS and led its sale to CommScope, where he served as COO. During his tenure at ARRIS, Bruce held multiple leadership positions and had a key role in the successful acquisition and integration of multiple companies including Ruckus, Pace and the Motorola Home Business. Bruce began his career at Bell Northern Research and held several leadership roles at Nortel. He has served on the boards of ARRIS and Benu Networks, and actively supports the Georgia Cystic Fibrosis chapter. Bruce holds a BS in Electrical Engineering (Great Distinction) from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

Follow DR

Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know
Follow Telco in 20 on Twitter @TelcoIn20
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR

The Telco in 20 podcast won 2023 and 2022 MarCom Awards, a 2022 Hermes Award, and was recognized as a Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a short review? It takes seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!