The Evolution of Cloud Communications — and What the Future Holds
Today we’re kicking off an action packed week at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, Florida. It’s a terrific gathering of industry leaders and buyers of enterprise telephony and unified communications services.
This is my third time attending Enterprise Connect, and it gets me thinking about the following: “How is unified communications evolving?” The roots of communications in the enterprise has typically involved a traditional on-premise PBX system, which has evolved over time but remains the proverbial box in the basement. As additional modes of communications were added to support unified communications, disparate systems were added and additional complexity inevitably ensued. Eventually hosted solutions, including cloud communications, broke through the stalemate and expanded the realm of what forward thinking IT executives deemed as the next viable generation of communications services. So where is cloud communications going next? I see two emerging themes:
Communications and collaboration are merging. RingCentral is a communications solutions provider and we’re great at connecting people over voice, fax, SMS, conferencing and video meetings. However, collaboration solutions have normally operated as a separate service and not necessarily integrated with the business phone system. Communications and collaboration in real-time are coming together, and seamless interaction is taking place with deeply embedded communications functionality in the the workflow of business applications. The bottom line is, how you interact and communicate, whether person-to-person or within a team, will be empowered by the merging of communications and collaboration.
Communications as a platform is going to take off. There’s a new software ecosystem being built around cloud platforms, where platforms are connecting with other platforms and creating new levels of productivity and efficiencies. Here at RingCentral, we have a robust, award-winning platform not only for enterprises and carriers, but also for software vendors, individual developers, and systems integrators.
We’ve opened APIs to our cloud-based business communications system. With the RingCentral Connect Platform, developers can now access the power of multi-modal, real-time communications and messaging, supported by our business logic and customer data management and reporting. We’ve released a whitepaper today available for download about the RingCentral Connect Platform — check it out to learn more.
As head of Product Marketing at RingCentral, and a long time industry veteran in the communications space, it’s quite an amazing time and opportunity. I’m excited to kick off RingCentral’s first time having a show presence at Enterprise Connect. Look for us on the expo floor at Booth 1501, and if you want to hear more, you can find us at:
- “CHOOSING YOUR CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS PROVIDER” Panel Speaker: David Berman, President of RingCentral Location: Osceola BDate: Wed, March 18 Time: 8:00–8:45 am ET
- “THE FUTURE OF THE CONNECTED BUSINESS IN THE CLOUD”Session Speaker: Marco Casalaina, VP of Integrations, RingCentral Location: Expo Floor “Market Leader Theatre” Date: Wed, March 18 Time: 4:30–5:30 pm ET
We’re looking forward to showcasing our full product bundle and service, and of course — highlighting the latest around the fantastic integrations and developer opportunities of the RingCentral Connect Platform. And, if you want to stay up on our activities at Enterprise Connect, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and follow along on social using #EC15. Hope to see you all there!
