RingCentral Doubles Strategic Partner Seats

RingCentral has seen its business with its strategic partners double, according to COO Mo Katibeh.

The vendor’s senior team spoke on an earnings call with investors after announcing a quarterly sales growth of 28 percent year on year in Q2, up to $487m.

RingCentral has partnerships with Avaya, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Atos, with Katibeh vowing to continue building with their partners.

“Seats from our strategic partnerships are up almost 100% year over year,” he said.

“Mitel continues to gain traction as endpoint compatibility remains on track, and we continue to onboard their channel partners. Avaya also continues to consistently add seats to our growing base with another sequential growth quarter.

“We continue to believe that there is a meaningful opportunity for ACO as a destination for Avaya’s customers, which represent the world’s largest installed on-premise base.

“Partners remain part of our differentiated go-to-market strategy and are contributing to our $1 million-plus wins in the enterprise market. Last, international continues to be an area of opportunity.

“In addition to recently launching with Vodafone in Germany, we closed multiple million-dollar TCV wins outside of North America and launch services in new geographies. We continue to build up our efforts globally as we are still early in the opportunity.”

During the call, the vendor was asked if there would be changes to the partnerships should any of the strategic partners enter financial difficulties or were acquired, in reference to Avaya ‘Removing’ its CEO.

Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral CEO, commented: “Avaya has been a contributor. They have been a partner and a strong partner.

“They are also representative of the world’s largest installed on-prem base, which means what? It means that we always want more.

“We want it more, we want more and we will continue wanting more. But they are, again, somebody that’s been contributing to our success. We expect them to continue doing that.

“We expect that they understand that RingCentral continues to be both a growth driver for them, as well as the profit margin driver for them.

“They have a new CEO that they’ve announced a few days ago. It’s a person we know extremely well. I have a good personal relationship with Alan.”

The vendor has just announced the launch of ‘Vodafone Business UC with RingCentral’ in Germany as a joint venture which improves communications and employee experience.  

The solution combines RingCentral Message Video Phone (MVP) with Vodafone’s 5G and mobility capabilities.  

During the Q1 investor call in May, RingCentral reported almost 50 percent year on year in the quarter for partner growth.

At the time, Katibeh said that RingCentral’s partnership with Mitel was “ramping materially faster than originally expected”, while business with Avaya was up 30 percent year on year.