April 3, 2020
Debut comes amid skyrocketing demand due to social distancing, lock-down orders in response to COVID-19 outbreak
By Jeffrey Burt
RingCentral is stepping into the video conferencing arena at a time when demand for such technology is surging as more employees find themselves working from home.
The Lowdown: The company this week rolled out its RingCentral Video (RCV) remote video meeting technology as part of its larger RingCentral Office platform.
The Details: RingCentral enters a crowded and booming video collaboration market that includes the likes of Cisco Webex, LogMeIn’s GoToMeeting, Avaya’s Spaces, and Zoom, a RingCentral partner and a company that has seen demand for its product skyrocket but also has been beset by issues around security and privacy.
RingCentral worked with Google to ensure RCV would work well in a browser-based environment by leveraging Google Chrome’s WebRTC, an open technology for enabling real-time communications through APIs. Features of RCV include:
>Broad collaboration modes: RCV comes integrated with RingCentral’s Message Video Phone capabilities, such as business voice, SMS, and fax, giving users multiple modes of communication.
Browser-based: Users don’t have to download and application to join, host, or schedule a meeting.
>Security: RingCentral doesn’t rent or sell any customer personal information and complies with such privacy regulations as HIPAA, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
>Infrastructure: RingCentral leveraged its experience delivering Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) to create a new and high-availability platform for RCV.
>Reach: The company offers full PBX capabilities in more than 40 countries and a virtual presence in another 80-plus countries.
>Integration: Because RingCentral’s platform is open, RCV integrates with such business productivity applications as Google G Suite and Gmail, Microsoft Teams and Office 365, HubSpot and Slack. In addition, RingCentral for Salesforce is available on the Salesforce AppExchange and the company will add more integrations with companies like Canvas, Zendesk, Epic, and Gong.io.
>Data: RCV includes an analytics platform that gives IT administrators key performance indicators (PKIs) for such areas as adoption, usage, and quality of service (QoS) and a dashboard.
The Impact: A recent Gartner survey found that 88% of organizations worldwide are recommending or requiring employees to work from home, driving demand for video conferencing capabilities. Zoom official said the company in March saw meeting participants reach more than 200 million, compared with 10 million in December. Other video collaboration vendors also are seeing sharp increases in demand.
The Buzz: “The world is experiencing the largest work from home demand ever. At RingCentral, we’ve always been focused on addressing the needs of modern, mobile, and distributed workforces by delivering trusted, reliable, global, and easy to buy, manage, and use solutions,” said Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral’s founder, chairman, and CEO. “Today, we’re taking the next step in delivering a world-class seamlessly integrated MVP experience to further enhance employee productivity as they work from anywhere.”
“RingCentral optimizing Google Chrome’s WebRTC to power RingCentral Video showcases the mutual value our companies have to bring hassle free communications to our customers,” said Gregg Fiddes, head of enterprise ecosystems at Google. “We are excited to collaborate with RingCentral on their needs and see RingCentral choose Chrome as their inaugural launch platform for RingCentral Video, providing the greatest security and speed for their users.”
Related Links: CHANNELNOMICS: Zoom Faces Skyrocketing Demand, Security Issues
