It was only April this year when UCaaS leader RingCentral first rolled out its RingCentral Video (RCV) remote video meeting technology as part of its larger RingCentral Office platform.
Before that, one tended to think of Ring Central as a PBX-replacement, a telecom-as-a-solution provider.
Now they’re launching RingCentral Rooms for Poly, to be built into the simple Poly Studio X all-in-one video bars.
Additionally, RingCentral Rooms for Poly consolidates any workspace needs into a minimal number of devices while enabling a new wave of rooms intelligence, analytics, and manageability. The solution is specifically designed to simplify large-scale deployments.
RingCentral Rooms for Poly is currently in beta and integrated with Poly Studio X30 and Poly Studio X50-- and RingCentral hopes to go from a very strong UCaaS player to a leader in video and collaboration as well.
Don’t stop reading yet. There are some important points to come.
At this point it is clear many solution providers in IT have no idea who RingCentral is (or rather who they've become...)
RingCentral just made the Forbes “Global 2000: The World's Largest Public Companies” list. At #1818, their first appearance places them ahead of Slack (1990) but behind an Avnet (1787). RingCentral’s current install base is just over 2 million users. They were recently ranked highest for both the European Hosted IP Telephony and Unified Cloud Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Market in the new 2020 Frost & Sullivan UCaaS Radar Report.
The latest financials (Q2) for their last quarter include:
- Total revenue increased 29% year over year to $278 million.
- Subscriptions revenue increased 32% year over year to $257 million.
- Total Annualized Exit Monthly Recurring Subscriptions (ARR) increased 33% year over year to $1.1 billion.
- RingCentral Office ARR increased 36% year over year to $1.0 billion.
- Mid-market and Enterprise ARR increased 50% year over year to $581 million.
- Enterprise ARR increased 58% year over year to $363 million.
- Channel ARR increased 60% year over year to $375 million.
RingCentral is rocking the pandemic and here are the key business moves it made in just the last 3 months…
--Announced RingCentral Video (RCV), a reimagined video meetings experience. Leveraging RingCentral’s years of experience as a global UCaaS leader, RingCentral Video joins RingCentral messaging and RingCentral phone to complete their differentiated Message Video Phone™ (MVP) solution.
--Announced expansion of strategic partnership with Atos SE with new Unify Office as the exclusive UCaaS solution for 40 million users of the Atos Unify family of products. (Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of €12 billion. European #1 in cloud, cybersecurity and high-performance computing, the Group provides end-to-end orchestrated hybrid cloud, big data, business applications and digital workplace solutions.)
--Announced global expansion and general availability of Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral in Australia, Canada, and the UK along with the availability of several key new features and capabilities including tools to help migrate customers more efficiently and effectively.
--Launched their IGNITE Partner Program, which enables partners to own the entire sales cycle with organizations of up to 400 employees. The program reinforces RingCentral's commitment to the channel and gives partners greater flexibility to choose the sales process that best suits the needs of each individual prospect.
--Announced RingCentral PBX™ for Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing integration, enabling Microsoft Teams users to have access to more robust cloud PBX capabilities without ever having to leave the Teams interface on mobile, web, and desktop.
--Announced a strategic partnership to introduce a new co-branded cloud solution – Rainbow Office powered by RingCentral –exclusive for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. RingCentral and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise will jointly develop programs enabling both companies to lead the cloud communications services for the enterprise market.
--Launched initial release of RingCentral Rooms, extending the power of RingCentral Video to conference rooms and meeting spaces that have dedicated video conferencing equipment, such as monitors, speakers, microphones, and cameras.
All this in just one business quarter. This is not just a company “on the move:” this is a company marching to world domination.
What’s the secret to its success? RingCentral have reached a tipping point, the point where it built its business well enough on serving small to mid-sized companies that it’s become a big, big company. As a big company, it can now attract executive talent with big company experience. For example, Phil Sorgen, former Microsoft Corporate Vice President for US Enterprise Commercial Group, recently joined RingCentral as Chief Revenue Officer.
As a big company, RingCentral suddenly finds it much easier to make partnerships with other big corporations that want access to their base of customers.
You could say “they are now in the club.” The unofficial Club where huge companies recognize you as big enough to do business with as a partner. Each deal they make with an Avaya, Atos, Alcatel-Lucent now attracts another big deal.
In one sense, you might argue RingCentral has become like a super-big SaaS “distributor,” the Tech Data of managed UCC services.
But maybe a better analogy is RingCentral is now the Android of UCC, the accepted platform all others will want to join, to add their apps.
And do not be surprised, in the future, if they buy or merge with a big hardware player—and, like Google or Zoom, even build or OEM their own devices. That’s coming, too.
If you are in meeting rooms, conferencing or workspaces, do yourself a favor and check out their IGNITE partner program. We are not suggesting you have to join but you at least need to know what's going on. Because it’s lunchtime in UCaaS and if you don’t have a place at the table you might be on the menu.
