Summary Bullets:
- Recent initiatives have increased brand awareness for RingCentral and enhanced its reputation in the unified communication and collaboration market.
- RingCentral’s diverse portfolio of voice, video, messaging, and contact center services makes it a competitor to be taken seriously.
RingCentral is by no means a new kid on the block. Last month marked 22 years in operation. Since the time of its founding, noteworthy milestones have been reached. For example, in 2003, the company introduced its cloud phone system. In 2009, a presence in the UK was established. In 2012, a partnership was forged with AT&T. In 2013, an IPO was completed. Fast forward to the present and RingCentral continues to achieve. In the past year alone, the company has propelled forward with new features, new services, strategic partnerships, and acquisitions. RingCentral is serving notice to competitors: ignore it at your own peril.
RingCentral has been busy inking partnerships that have generated new offers. Some of the more noteworthy consist of a trio of agreements involving Avaya, Unify (subsidiary of Atos), and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE). In March 2020, ‘Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral’ was launched, followed in September by ‘Unify Office by RingCentral.’ In July 2020, RingCentral and ALE joined forces; their new unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) solution (‘Rainbow Office by RingCentral’) will launch this year. Another prominent partnership was unveiled in November 2020, when RingCentral and Vodafone announced a forthcoming co-branded UCaaS and contact center-as-a-solution (CCaaS) offer.
Partnerships are not the only means by which RingCentral has united with other companies; acquisitions have played a role as well. In December 2020, RingCentral announced the acquisition of DeepAffects, a conversational intelligence provider that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to extract insights from discussions held before, during, and after meetings. In March 2021, RingCentral acquired cloud encryption startup Kindite, which specializes in cryptographic technologies that mitigate security and privacy risks to applications in the cloud. Its security capabilities will be integrated into RingCentral’s platform.
RingCentral’s platform revolves around three product families: RingCentral Office is the company flagship, a UCaaS platform including team messaging, video meetings, and a cloud phone system. Omnichannel capability inherent in RingCentral CCaaS enables customers to interact with a company through their preferred channel. Rounding out the portfolio is RingCentral Glip, which combines team messaging and video meetings.
The company has been busy of late with new services and features (as a sample attests). In April 2020, the RingCentral Video meeting service was announced. In May 2020, RingCentral introduced a new version of its unified desktop app that enables users to switch between messaging, video, and calling. In June 2020, RingCentral announced ‘RingCentral Cloud PBX for Microsoft Teams,’ which provides access to cloud PBX capabilities from the Teams interface on mobile, web, and desktop as well as broader integrations with Microsoft Teams. In February 2021, RingCentral launched the ability to make calls from within Salesforce.
As a result of RingCentral’s collection of recent initiatives, the company has enjoyed increased brand awareness and enhanced its reputation in the unified communication and collaboration market. Its diverse portfolio of voice, video, messaging, and contact center services makes it a competitor to be taken seriously.
IT Connection 