New bundle brings business communications with Google Apps
Challenges competitors on ease of deployment, robust capabilities and cost efficiency
BELMONT, Calif.—June 22, 2016 – RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG), a leading provider of business cloud communication and collaboration applications, and Google today join efforts to help mid to large size enterprises transition to the cloud. Companies are increasingly adopting cloud productivity tools like Google Apps and cloud communications applications like RingCentral Office to enable greater flexibility and workflow efficiency. This has created a rise in demand for a seamless experience between these types of applications so users don’t have to jump in and out of different environments to get work done. The new offering, called RingCentral Office Google Edition, addresses this by providing a unique and integrated bundle for enterprises. For $30 per user per month, the offering includes Google Apps Unlimited with unlimited storage and a new edition of RingCentral Office that integrates with Google Apps and Google Hangouts. This bundle will provide richer and more robust enterprise communication solutions compared to competing industry solutions, such as Office 365 and Skype for Business.
Businesses are continually looking for ways to work faster and smarter so they can stay ahead and compete more effectively. RingCentral and Google address this need with a complete communications and productivity environment, where every employee in a distributed enterprise can work however they want, communicate in whatever mode they choose, on any device.
“Google’s impact on the enterprise is significant as more CIOs and IT decision makers make the jump to the cloud and move away from legacy on-premise infrastructure,” said Vlad Shmunis, chairman, founder and CEO of RingCentral. “Our status in the ‘Recommended for Google Apps’ program can give enterprises the confidence in RingCentral as a high quality, reliable, and secure communications solution. Our partnership with Google presents an amazing opportunity to help companies realize the benefits of Google Apps and the RingCentral platform together, with true enterprise communication capabilities compared to competing solutions, such as Office 365 and Skype for Business. Together with Google, we look forward to helping enterprises maximize their cloud investments with an unprecedented, integrated communications and productivity solution bundle.”
Channel Partnerships to Drive Adoption
The new bundle, RingCentral Office Google Edition, will be be sold through channel partners initially, with Agosto signing up as the first channel partner. Agosto, founded in 2001, is a premier Google for Work partner, known for bringing unmatched levels of service and commitment in helping businesses migrate to the cloud. In addition to developing joint channel partnerships for the integrated offering, RingCentral is also providing extensive sales training to RingCentral direct sales and sales engineer staff to champion the innovative power of the integrated solutions and to inspire more businesses to move their communications and productivity to the cloud.
“It’s great to be an inaugural channel partner of the RingCentral Office Google Edition,” said Aric Bandy, Agosto president. “We’ve been a key player in the adoption of Google Apps in the enterprise; this new integrated offering is a great way to add to our portfolio of services and help more businesses migrate their communications applications to the cloud too.”
About the RingCentral and Google Offer
A new tier of RingCentral with WebRTC has been developed for this bundle, which is purpose-built for Google, integrated with Hangouts, Gmail, Drive, Chrome, and Android. The bundled offering will be available in the U.S., Canada and UK for $30 per user per month. Existing Google customers can add this RingCentral tier for $20 per user per month and use their Google credentials to log into RingCentral using single sign-on. The ability to make calls directly from Google Apps allows enterprises to spend more time communicating with customers, and less time toggling between apps, dialing, and recording all types of communications into the profile. RingCentral for Google eliminates the need for customers to use a separate communications application, promoting a holistic cloud solution that yields significant productivity gains.
Additional Supporting Points and Supporting Quotes
RingCentral for Google is a plug-in available today from the Google Apps Marketplace where there have been nearly 200,000 installs since it was first made available in February 2015. Among all of the various integrations offered by RingCentral, the Google integration leads as the most popular among RingCentral users. In November 2015, RingCentral was chosen as a trusted communications solution in the new “Recommended for Google Apps” program. Reviewed for the quality of integration and vetted by a third-party security firm, RingCentral delivers a great product experience that Google’s business customers can count on to serve core functions in their everyday business needs.
“In a recent survey of North American enterprises, we asked respondents what capabilities they deem important in choosing a UC solution; 69% said the ability to integrate voice with business applications is ‘very important.’ It is no longer enough to have a communication tools unified; it’s necessary to bring those tools to individual applications, to launch communication sessions—chat, voice, and video—directly from email, address book, or other productivity tools,” said Diane Myers, senior research director & UC analyst for IHS (formerly Infonetics Research).
“As one of the top universities in the country, it was crucial for us to have a communications solution that integrated with Google Apps. With click-to-dial capabilities and the RingCentral Meetings integration with Hangouts, communicating with colleagues and students has never been more effortless,” said Naveed Husain, Chief Innovation Officer, Teacher’s College, Columbia University.
“RingCentral for Google has been life changing for our sales team that spends 60-80% of their time engaged in prospecting and sales calls. In addition to easy access to our communications history, we can make and receive calls directly from a phone number within Gmail and ProsperWorks CRM. RingCentral combined with the power of Google Apps has made us more productive than ever,” said Bret Knobelauch, Senior Director and Global Head of Sales, ProsperWorks.
“When we transitioned our communications to the cloud, we chose RingCentral because it had already been vetted by Google, so we knew it would be a great solution. Our business relies heavily on Gmail and we needed a dependable platform that would allow us to easily and efficiently integrate as well as track our communications within the Google Apps we utilize every day,” said Carl Landers, Chief Marketing Officer, Conversica.
About RingCentral
RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG) is a leading provider of cloud-based business communications and collaboration solutions. RingCentral’s cloud solution is easier to manage, and more flexible and cost-efficient than legacy on-premise communications systems. It meets the needs of modern distributed and mobile workforces spanning SMB to Enterprises globally. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, Calif. RingCentral and the RingCentral logo are trademarks of RingCentral, Inc.
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