How Dialpad partnered with Ably to raise the bar for realtime reliability at global scale

For a communications platform like Dialpad, realtime messaging infrastructure is foundational to customer trust. Every call notification, message update, and live transcription depends on consistent, low-latency delivery across web, desktop, and mobile environments.

For Dialpad, reliability isn’t a feature; it’s a commitment customers depend on to run their businesses. As enterprise adoption increased and usage expanded globally, Dialpad’s engineering team reassessed whether their realtime messaging infrastructure was built to deliver the level of consistency customers expect at scale.

“Reliability comes first,” says Arnaud Budkiewicz, VP of Engineering at Dialpad. “Then it’s about experience. How responsive everything feels. How confident customers are that it will work, every time.”

Rather than waiting for reliability to become a problem, Dialpad chose to invest proactively in infrastructure designed for continuous uptime, predictable performance, and global scale. That decision led them to Ably.

The search: Finding a partner, not just a provider

With reliability established as a non-negotiable, Dialpad's engineering team took a deliberate and disciplined approach to selecting the realtime infrastructure partner. They evaluated every viable option, including building their own solution in house, through the lens of what enterprise customers would require at a global scale.

"We really looked at everything on the market. Build versus buy. We considered every option," says Arnaud. The criteria were clear: enterprise-grade reliability, global low latency, guaranteed message delivery with ordering, and the ability to scale alongside Dialpad's growing international customer base.

Beyond surface-level performance, Dialpad ran comprehensive benchmarks and architectural reviews, engaging directly with founders and CTOs to understand how each platform was designed. “We wanted to make sure the underlying architecture would truly work for us," Arnaud notes.

Through that process, Ably stood out for its reliability, performance, and architectural sophistication, particularly for the critical   requirement of pub/sub communication between backend services and client applications.

Ably's pub/sub infrastructure now powers more than 20 critical use cases across Dialpad's platform, supporting virtually every customer interaction, including:

• Call notifications requiring split-second delivery

• Live transcription streaming where AI-generated text updates in realtime during calls

• Messaging notifications across one-on-one chats, meetings, and omnichannel contact center conversations

• System coordination messages keeping clients synchronized with backend state

The proof of concept phase validated Ably's approach early in the process. "We quickly had a working solution,” recalls Arnaud. “The integration across different clients, including web, server-side with Python, client-side with mobile, was smooth," Arnaud recalls.

But what truly differentiated Ably was their willingness to adapt their architecture to Dialpad's enterprise requirements, particularly in environments with strict security policies such as IP address whitelisting, a common requirement in regulated and large enterprise organizations.

"We worked directly with Ably's CTO to simplify this process" Arnaud explains. "Instead of requiring customers to whitelist seven different domains, Ably enabled us to reduce that down to just two or three."

This co-design approach turned a complex deployment requirement into a competitive advantage for Dialpad and a smoother experience for enterprise customers. 

The migration: Precision at enterprise scale

Migrating realtime infrastructure for a platform serving hundreds of enterprise customers required a deliberate, well-orchestrated approach. The effort involved approximately 20 engineers working over the course of a year.

"We took a phased approach," Arnaud explains. "Many customers operate in environments that require IP address whitelisting, so we planned the migration carefully to ensure a seamless experience across customer deployments."

The results of migrating to Ably speak to what matters most for enterprise infrastructure: consistency, confidence, and trust.

"Number one is really the SLA. It's a solid service," says Arnaud. "So far, it’s been exactly what we need. No major incidents, no issues. The peace of mind has been huge."

With a realtime infrastructure designed for continuous uptime, Dialpad can confidently support enterprise customers with demanding SLA requirements, across regions and times zones.

"Enterprise customers are usually global, so you need to offer the same level of quality and service everywhere," Arnaud notes. Ably's worldwide infrastructure supports Dialpad's expansion across Japan, Australia, Europe, and beyond.

Arnaud is clear: “Choosing Ably was a strategic investment in reliability and customer trust. It’s delivered exactly what we need.”

Looking forward: Infrastructure that scales with ambition

With a realtime foundation built for reliability and global scale, Dialpad's engineering team can focus on what matters most to its customers: continued innovation and an even better experience across every interaction.

"Now we can think about how to further optimize our architecture," continues Arnaud, ,including exploring additional Ably capabilities like presence APIs and collaboration features.

The confidence in the partnership is clear. "As we grow in different regions, we are confident that we're working with a provider that can support us every step of the way with the same level of quality," says Arnaud.

For companies evaluating realtime infrastructure providers, Dialpad's experience offers a clear takeaway. Enterprise reliability isn't just about features or pricing. It's about choosing a partner with a platform built to support growth, consistency, and trust at scale.