On Dec. 14, Alianza announced its commitment of $200 million in new investment toward research and development for accelerating cloud communications growth for service providers. The company is also adding experienced unified communications (UC) industry veterans to its product leadership team, devoted to delivering state-of-the-art cloud communications technology for service providers.
The company's expanded, seasoned product team will be led by UC veteran Dag Peak, formerly of BroadSoft, Cisco, and RingCentral, who as Alianza's new chief product officer "will focus on continuing Alianza’s legacy of innovation to help service providers successfully and efficiently navigate the end of the softswitch era," as reckoned by a company statement, which noted further, "Today’s news is significant as Alianza is moving forward with strong investments as legacy VoIP and cloud comms vendors are cutting back on innovation and support."
After increasing engineering and development spend by 44% in 2022, Alianza is committing more than $200 million for additional investments in research and development over the next five years. According to a press release, the new investments will enable service providers with:
- New and improved end-user communications products, features, and functionality to enhance competitiveness, accelerate growth, and meet the evolving needs of business and enterprise end users.
- Back-office digital transformation, including improved service management, automation, portals, workflows, and APIs to improve customer experiences, reduce operating complexity, and eliminate costs from service providers’ operations.
Alianza said its platform vision and roadmap will benefit from the company's recently expanded product and design team led by new chief product officer Dag Peak.
The team's focus is furthering Alianza’s leadership position in innovative voice, video, messaging, mobile, and other cloud communications offerings that enable broadband operators to grow revenue while reducing costs and complexity.
Peak will oversee product strategy and innovation for the company’s cloud communications platform. For more than 20 years, Peak has focused almost exclusively on the service provider market and has demonstrated a successful track record of transformational and results-driven leadership at BroadSoft, Cisco, and RingCentral, where he held strategic roles in sales engineering, partner enablement, and product management.
In the last six months, Peak has added ten new team members who come to Alianza with deep industry expertise in all facets of cloud communications from companies including BroadSoft, Cisco, Metaswitch, Microsoft, Jive, GoTo, RingCentral, Avaya, AT&T, and Lucent.
Alianza’s new product team leadership includes:
- Michelle Pfister, VP of product management, UCaaS and Apps
- Dennis Weeks, VP of product management, Platform Services
- Jesse Lee, senior director of product management
- Mohammad Al-Taraireh, senior director of product management
“I have dedicated my career to innovation and service provider success in the cloud communications market,” commented Peak. “Alianza is building something truly special and revolutionizing service provider voice with solutions that will impact the market for years to come. With our R&D investments and a passionate, top-caliber team, Alianza will ensure our customers have the products they need to grow their businesses in the evolving communications landscape.”
“The talent we are assembling at Alianza is an essential part of accelerating our customers’ success,” concluded Brian Beutler, Alianza’s founder and CEO. “Dag and his team will confidently lead our product investments and further our commitment to deliver the best cloud communications experience for service providers."
