Unified Communications Featured Article

RingCentral ITEXPO Keynote Emphasizes Cloud, Collaboration, Openness

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

The cloud is no longer in question. The fact is that workloads have moved to the cloud.

That includes cloud-based ERP solutions for accounting offered by companies like NetSuite (News - Alert), CRM solutions from Salesforce and others, human resources software offered by Workday and others, and unified communications solutions from companies like RingCentral (News - Alert).

At the same time, we’re seeing cloud-based business communications increasingly being offered on a global basis, based on open platforms, featuring team collaboration, and leveraging artificial intelligence.

All this trend spotting comes courtesy of Curtis Peterson, senior vice president of cloud operations at RingCentral. Peterson presented one of the keynote addresses this morning at ITEXPO in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

RingCentral is a UCaaS Gartner (News - Alert) Magic Quadrant 2016 leader and claims to be the largest and fastest growing pure play UCaaS provider. Peterson said the company is seeing 40 percent year-over-year growth, has a $400 million revenue run rate, and a 2,200-strong workforce.

In terms of product, he said, RingCentral offers a complete solution that’s easy to use and manage, supports a variety of communication types, allows for team collaboration, is based on an open platform, and is available globally.

Companies with as few as 50 people with offices around the world want cloud solutions, and they don't want to have to shop different vendors, said Peterson. “So the world really is getting more flat,” he added.

Speaking to the subject of openness, Peterson said RingCentral works with other solutions through various pre-integrations as well as by delivering APIs through which integrations can be achieved.

In terms of team collaboration, 80 percent of employees say team messaging and collaboration applications help their productivity and work efficiency, said Peterson. Meanwhile, he added, 42 percent of employees save two hours a day compared to those relying on just email.

Team collaboration should include everything from team messaging and file sharing to tasks and notes. And, he said, all this stuff should be embedded in a stack so you can move from one channel to another, and have a context thread so you can go back and see the history of a project.

On the AI front, Peterson noted there’s a lot of hype. But, he said, there’s also lots of opportunity there.

Today what we have is augmented AI, which entails humans helping AI solutions, he said. But going forward, he added, we will see mashable AI. And that, he said, will involve leveraging data to do predictions.

To hear more from RingCentral, make sure to stop by booth 605 and meeting room 210 at ITEXPO this week. The company will also be holding a webinar on Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. EST. The webinar, titled “Customer Engagement Beyond the Contact Center,” will discuss the different touchpoints that companies have for customer engagement and what sort of tools are needed to make each interaction efficient, controlled and positive for the customer. You can find out more and register HERE.