Verizon Business and RingCentral launched a strategic partnership that will co-brand and integrate RingCentral’s unified communication as a service (UCaaS) with Verizon services.
Under the partnership, the two companies will launch RingCentral wtih Verizon. RingCentral will be a part of Verizon Business’ network-as-a-service effort that covers everything from 5G to edge computing and services. Those network services from Verizon will be combined with RingCentral’s cloud communications platform, which includes Message Video Phone.
RingCentral’s competition in UCaaS includes Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, 8×8, Google, LogMein and Vonage among others.
Verizon Business with RingCentral is designed to address the new normal of work and collaboration. RingCentral with Verizon will give customers one point of contact for deployments as well as integration with CRM, industry-specific apps and APIs.
Partnerships like the one with Verizon Business have given RingCentral fuel for growth. For the first quarter, RingCentral reported revenue of $352 million, up 32% from a year ago. RingCentral Office (a combination of UCaaS and Cloud communications as a service) saw growth of 40%.
RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis said the first quarter growth was driven by a wide range of partnerships with Avaya, Atos, AT&T, BT and Telus. “We believe we are witnessing the intersection of two megatrends of digital transformation and hybrid workforce adoption, which is creating a structural shift in awareness and demand for cloud communications solutions,” said Shmunis.
RingCentral broke even for the first quarter and non-GAAP earnings were 27 cents a share.
For 2021, RingCentral said revenue will be between $1.5 billion to $1.51 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $1.24 a share to $1.27 a share.
“We think that we’ve proven RingCentral to be a very good partner to many of the industry players, starting with the traditional channel, extending into carriers or global service providers,” said Shmunis.
