Industry Insight: The Future of Unified Communications

RingCentral pioneered cloud-based business phone service, showing businesses of all sizes how to move beyond business telephone systems based on a private co-operative exchange (PBX) box in a wiring closet. Emphasizing flexibility every bit much equally cost savings, RingCentral has go a clear leader in cloud communications and collaboration.

We asked RingCentral SVP of Operations Curtis Peterson why small businesses that accept non yet embraced the cloud or even Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology why they should make the motion now. During our conversation, we also touched on important topics such as the growing popularity of Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), the importance of agility for both vendors and clients, cloud security, and the mobile vocalism assistant revolution.

PCMag (PCM): Even today, many pocket-size business owners stay abroad from VoIP simply because they don't understand information technology. Explain the divergence between a barebones VoIP service, deject PBX, and full UCaaS to our small to midsize business (SMB) readers. What are these technologies and which do you think is best for most SMB operations?

Curtis Peterson, RingCentral Curtis Peterson (CP): VoIP engineering science is widely distributed but barebones VoIP service is just transmission of phone calls over the net. It won't take the features you would expect from a traditional concern phone system. Deject PBX takes what used to be the PBX that you had on-premises and moves those capabilities to the deject. Yous get voice, voicemail, call transfer, multi-fashion calling, page and hold, and other sophisticated features that businesses look.

And so we add together modes of communications that go beyond vox, such every bit video conferencing, online meetings, SMS, team messaging, and collaboration. That latitude is what turns information technology into UCaaS. UCaaS is a powerful option for businesses of all sizes, merely particularly SMBs, considering information technology's flexible, comprehensive, and cost constructive.

The reward to an SMB of choosing a complete UCaaS solution, like RingCentral, is that they go all the features they'll need to run their business in the future just without paying any more for the simple-to-use and consummate phone system they need at present.

PCM: RingCentral has fabricated switching to a cloud PBX very like shooting fish in a barrel. Only just considering something is easy doesn't hateful it's necessarily the best movement. We know VoIP is supposed to exist cheaper but what benefits does information technology offer? What's a primal benefit that you lot find most oftentimes surprises your customers because they didn't remember to consider it?

CP: I call back flexibility is even more important than price but nosotros sympathise toll is important for SMBs. Our plans commencement at $19.99 per user per month and you can pay as you go (or, better yet, pay as y'all grow). You only pay for the capacity yous need, but at the same fourth dimension, you're too getting more for your money.

Besides, whatsoever SMB will tell you they never desire to miss a customer call. That'south actually the costliest error they tin can make. With RingCentral, you lot don't have to be at your desk to reply the phone; cloud service is mobile by nature. That means workers can communicate no matter where they are: in the part, at dwelling house, or on the road. With 99.999 percent uptime, our service is more reliable than whatever on-premises hardware you lot tin can buy. In the event of a catastrophe, your offices literally could exist under water and your people could still be answering calls from some other location. And on a day-to-day basis, you tin can open up a new office or assign a number to a remote worker in a heartbeat.

In that location are as well benefits to using RingCentral equally your business organisation grows. Web and video conferencing, team collaboration, and phone call center solutions are all seamlessly integrated into one solution. We also have global reach and then information technology doesn't thing where your employees are geographically located. We serve nearly 80 countries with virtual numbers today, and we take our complete RingCentral Global Office solution bachelor in 35 countries.

We provide an open platform and hundreds of integrations into the tools you need to run your concern, such as Salesforce, Google, or Role 365.

One of the key overlooked benefits is that we do five to six major releases a year, so our solution is constantly improving and customers ever benefit from the latest engineering science.

These are just some of the reasons why over 350,000 businesses trust RingCentral for this critical business need and why we're the market leader with the well-nigh manufacture awards.

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PCM: Mobile devices continue to invade the workplace, especially for SMBs. The only trick is that employees won't use their own devices. How does RingCentral help companies leverage their employees' mobile hardware without taking over the device?

CP: Using RingCentral's mobile apps gives employees a full set of capabilities including calling, video conferencing, SMS texting, team messaging, and collaboration. Our apps let employees go on business and personal use of their telephone carve up.

For the company, one of the disregarded benefits of having a business-assigned phone number on an employee'southward device is that, if the employee decides to go out, you can turn off their access to that telephone number at the same fourth dimension you switch off their e-mail. All business concern interactions—including the texting or customer calls—can be redirected to someone else in your organization. In other words, the advice with that client doesn't become out the door with the employee.

PCM: Deject security is condign an increasingly sore bailiwick for every aspect of deject technology, voice and communications included. How is RingCentral addressing this business organization for customers in 2022?

CP: Service guarantees and security were the top two selection criteria cited in the recent "Unified Communication (UC) Strategies and Vendor Leadership" report from IHS Markit. Nosotros invest in security as competitive differentiation, knowing customers must have that peace of mind if we desire them to stick with u.s..

RingCentral deploys all-time-of-breed network protections that are optimized for voice and information. These defenses, together with RingCentral experts continuously monitoring systems for anomalies, help to forestall service disruption, security data breaches, fraud, and service loftier-jacking.

PCM: There's suddenly a lot of buzz most leveraging vocalization assistants in concern. Given that voice is a big role of your business concern, how does that factor into your plans?

CP: Consumer engineering inevitably makes its manner into the workplace. It's a pattern we've seen many times over with technologies like instant messaging (IM), mobile apps, and more. Now it'south happening with voice assistants coming to the workplace and we believe the touch on will be big.

Many consumers are already familiar with voice assistant technology in their homes. Amazon has been leading the charge with their Alexa-powered Amazon Echo devices, enabling people to ask things similar, "Alexa, what'southward the atmospheric condition?" or "Alexa, what'southward today's news?" Now the same innovation is coming to the workplace with Alexa for Business and we're excited to be a office of it.

Using RingCentral and Alexa for Business, you can use voice commands to join meetings, send text messages, mind to voicemails, and make calls.

PCM: Aside from voice assistants, what are the cardinal trends you remember small businesses should attempt to leverage in 2022?

CP: Workplaces being defined by a physical function space is a thing of the past. We will see a proliferation of technologies designed for the new workplace that exponentially increase remote collaboration among workers to optimize productivity, accelerate innovation, and foster customs. This means collaborative communication solutions like RingCentral Glip will exist essential. You need a platform with a range of tools, so you tin start with posting team collaboration messages and movement to a vox call, a text exchange, a video conference, or a file shared for joint editing.

Meanwhile, vox assistants are just the showtime of a broader trend. We'll run across conversational modalities interoperate and go smarter, powered by natural language processing (NLP), instant transcription, and continuous automobile learning (ML). Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI) volition become more pervasive. Ultimately, this means nosotros'll see the arrival of more than contextual information. With the constant deluge of information that knowledge works bargain with, context matters, and emerging technologies will learn to surface what matters most.

The globalization of business will intensify. Fortunately, the cloud democratizes the possibilities, creating opportunities for SMBs to go global. Within the UCaaS space, we're seeing global customers increasingly seek a single global cloud communications solution, like RingCentral. We've observed that North American companies have their highest concentration of seats in UK, Deutschland, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Information suggests that global workforces in the EU and APAC are as well embracing mod cloud communications and collaboration solutions to increase productivity.

Communication and collaboration are going to be everywhere and we want to help you take advantage of all the possibilities.