From RingCentral migrating 35 million users to Zoom partnering with HP and more, here is a rundown of the popular stories circulating UC news this week.
Eric Yuan on Five9 Partnership After Contact Center Launch
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has provided insight into how the vendor’s partnership with contact centre providers will play out now that it’s launched its own solution.
Speaking on an earnings call after Zoom published its quarterly results, Yuan said that Zoom would continue to support its partnerships with the likes of Five9 and Genesys. He said Zoom will be going after existing customers that have not yet chosen a cloud-based contact centre offering.
“The market is huge for contact centre when you think about all of those modules. Some customers have already deployed Five9 and will deploy more Zoom features; some will deploy Zoom Contact Center; and some will deploy Genesys – that’s all ok.
“We will focus on our install base and the customer that truly believe in Zoom’s UC vision and want to standardise on Zoom’s UC platform. That is our go-to strategy”
The launch of Zoom Contact Center came not long after Zoom’s proposed takeover of Five9 collapsed.
Microsoft Delays Price Increases
Microsoft has pushed back its price increases through a “grace period” that will let CSP partners transact deals at February prices.
The vendor had planned to hike prices from yesterday but will instead let partners push through business under old costs until 5 pm PT on 14 March. All deals after this will be made at the higher prices.
One Microsoft partner told UC Today that Microsoft’s systems slowed on 28 February as partners tried to rush through deals at the cheaper pricing, resulting in Microsoft introducing the grace period.
“The grace period provides partners with additional lead time for adapting business processes and placing orders for these six Modern Work products, and we anticipate Microsoft partners will not use this grace period to pull forward demand for these offers,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft announced the price rises last August and justified them as a “reflection” of the increased value provided by the Microsoft 365 portfolio.
RingCentral Sees Early Mitel Migration Success
RingCentral is off to a “very promising start” migrating Mitel customers over to its own UCaaS solution, according to CEO Vlad Schmunis.
The pair announced a partnership at the end of next year, making RingCentral the “preferred UCaaS partner” for Mitel. RingCentral has since set about migrating Mitel’s 35 million UC users to its platform.
Schmunis said that RingCentral has already won contracts valued in the seven digits as part of the Mitel alliance, attributing this in part to its work with channel partners.
RingCentral COO Mo Kitibeh said one contract with a financial services firm comprised 7,500 users and 400 contact centre agents in a combined UCaaS-CCaaS deal.
Kitibeh said that the Mitel partnership is different from others that RingCentral has secured – with Avaya and Atos, for example – which means it got out of the gates quicker.
“One key difference here is there is no co-branding,” he explained.
“We were able to immediately begin enabling the channel and the go-to-market motion.
“The Mitel team and myself are spending multiple hours together every week trying to accelerate our growth in continuing to enable their channel partners for success with the RingCentral products.”
RingCentral executives were speaking on an earnings call as the vendor reported its quarterly numbers, with sales in the final quarter of 2021 rising 34 percent year on year to $448m.
Zoom Partners with HP for Modular Meeting Pods
Zoom has partnered with HP and office pod firm ROOM to create a “turnkey video collaboration suite for modern offices and workspaces”.
Room for Zoom is a modular booth with a 27-inch HP Collaboration G6 touchscreen device and Logitech Brio Ultra HD PRO business webcam, preinstalled with Zoom Rooms software.
The booth features adaptive furniture, accessory rails for personal belongings, a whiteboard, connected power sources, ventilation, and two LED light strips with remote dimming. It is also soundproofed with recycled plastic.
A single booth costs £15,495.
Phil Perry, Head of UK & Ireland at Zoom, said:
“Architecture and location can be a source of stress during video calls: lighting, background noise and the chance someone could walk into the room during a conversation.
“ROOM worked with us to put together a product that removes those pain points while helping people in workplaces in the UK work more closely together, regardless of their location”
“We’re excited by this collaboration, and we’re looking forward to seeing Room for Zoom roll out across the UK in the coming months.”
ROOM launched in 2018 and claims to have 5,000 customers, including Nike, J.P Morgan, Google and Salesforce.
GoTo Launches New Contact Center Solution
GoTo, formerly called LogMeIn, has upgraded its CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) offering, which focuses on flexible customer communications.
GoTo said the new features, coupled with flexible customer communications, will improve customer experiences and increase sales for clients using its CCaaS solution.
The new CX will be housed in GoTo Connect – one of two new SMB-focused platforms the firm launched last month and designed to allow flexible work for users.
Paddy Srinivasan, Chief Product and Technology Officer at GoTo, said:
“Gone are the days of SMBs feeling like costly and overly complicated contact centers are out of their reach. We believe that small businesses especially can benefit from the ability to engage with their customers across a variety of channels. With GoTo’s new Contact Center we are enabling just that with a simple, easy to deploy, and affordable contact center solution.”
Updates to GoTo’s CCaaS include real-time analytics, an outbound dialler (for salespeople) and queue call-backs (for customers), remote support facilities (via GoTo Resolve), and new communication channels tailored to the customer.
