Vonage SVP Reggie Scales Talks Expansion Opportunities for Partners
Vonage is enabling its partners to power engagements around the globe, Scales said.
May 19, 2023
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CF: How has Ericsson bolstered the evolution of APIs for Vonage?
Vonage’s Reggie Scales: Our journey began with Ericsson in July of last year. We’re happy to be under the organization. Our API business is core to what we’ve done over the years since we acquired Nexmo. And then also for our UCC business, we’ve always had those use cases where APIs bleed into our typical offerings. Now, with Ericsson, it just expands our capabilities, which allows us to unlock the power of our platform, leveraging 5G capabilities. This opens more opportunities for us. It’s really given us the chance to go deeper into the engagement and offer more to our partners, as well as our customers.
CF: I would ask a similar question for SaaS technologies. What’s new with SaaS within Vonage?
First of all, we are very excited about the growth opportunity that SaaS has created. Cloud adoption is at an all-time high. And for us, we say all the time (and it’s what our partners need to understand) is that we’re uniquely positioned to deliver innovative tools and technology solutions that help enterprises drive customer engagement and loyalty. That’s the heart of SaaS as it is known today. You know, we’re very unique for our combination of contact center communications APIs. As I mentioned, conversational commerce means we’re enabling our partners to power engagements around the globe, and these change every notion of communications itself. That’s what we’re excited about.
We at Vonage need to be at the forefront of that, and I believe us having our own intellectual property, having the ability to grow our business at scale, and now having the power of Ericsson behind us, means more sustainability and longevity. It just gives us an opportunity to craft new revenue streams for our product and for our partners.
CF: What makes Vonage unique in the SaaS space?
RS: Many of the things that I mentioned make us unique. Having our own intellectual property gives us the ability to tailor our solutions around our customers at scale. We’re not necessarily pushing products; we’re leveraging solutions and looking at the outcome of each customer journey. And us having our own opportunity to leverage those solutions for our customers with our own intellectual properties is a big differentiation. We are one of the only providers that can say, “We can help your entire journey,” whether it be unified communications and our collaboration suite, a full breadth of contact center offerings, or whether it be programmable APIs. And now our leveraging of AI for low code, no code for customers is just making the art of the impossible possible.
CF: Why is there such a focus on no code and low code? Is this just what the market is demanding or is Vonage trying to push this forward into the market?
RS: I think it’s what the market is demanding. I mean, if you look at the way the market is going today, we want to be able to move fast and be nimble, and customers are looking for ways to become more efficient. I believe that’s what we are providing with our approach. We just recently unveiled our Vonage AI Acceleration Suite. This is an integrated portfolio of low code, no code products, and at its heart is the development of applications that deliver personalized AI-driven customer engagement solutions. That’s the root of it. Our business has been built upon the principles of those already with our APIs. It’s just really making available to the broader existing and prospective customer base.
CF: How will Ericsson’s acquisition of Vonage impact partners for the long term?
RS: It’s going to open up their portfolio. One of the biggest trends you’re seeing in the channel right now is supplier consolidation. On the flip side, what you’re seeing is solution consolidation. With Ericsson, that gives partners a broader spectrum to be able to leverage. If you look at our competitors, some of them are very much focused only on contact centers. And then you have the other competitors that are focused on APIs with Vonage. There’s an opportunity to advance their portfolio through the scale that we’ve already created in our partnership.
CF: Besides the things that you just mentioned, is Ericsson putting more resources into its partner program?
RS: Absolutely. So are we putting more resources into the partner program for not only Ericsson, but also for Vonage. We’re also putting more resources and tools together for our products to be able to do self-sourcing and self-enablement and things of that nature. Ericsson is now making an investment into our business to expand our developer community, because the developers are key to what it is we’re doing behind the scenes to make these solutions readily available. Ericsson is giving us that cash infusion as well as the loan longevity play and investments that may not have been readily available when we were standalone.
CF: Is there a relationship between the developer community and partners?
RS: There is, but not at scale. I think there’s a huge opportunity area. Partners haven’t had access to developers. They haven’t needed to because they’re going through the suppliers.
CF: I guess the opportunity is that the partner can at least express what their needs are for their customers to the developer and the developer creates the product, right?
RS: Correct. And then at Vonage we create that vehicle because we have the developer community unlike any other of our competitors.
CF: And why is that?
RS: Because it’s the heart of our business. If you look at what the API community actually is, it’s an ecosystem of developers that have come within our portfolio to provide these solutions. And you can’t do it without the developer community. When you look at some of the competitors that we go against in the API community, they’re single-threaded. They’re not doing the developer approach, the API approach, and are without the roster of partners, as well as the historical cadence of the of the partner community. It just becomes an opportunity for us to expand their relationships into a deeper portfolio.
CF: On a different topic, Ericsson did proceed with layoffs earlier this year. The logical question from our team would be, are there more to come? And does Ericsson have plans to streamline its channel program within Vonage?
RS: We’re always looking for ways to be more efficient. That’s for sure. This macroeconomic climate that we’re in puts us in a position like no other before to look at how we maximize our resources. How do we maximize our tech and then how do we also impact the bottom line? There is an opportunity for us to continue coming together with both companies as one Vonage under one Ericsson and being able to leverage our tools, resources. We want to make sure that we’re hitting our operational targets by still being able to be differentiated and grow our business. This includes a partner community as well as the direct community.
CF: You talked a little bit about AI, but what new AI innovation should we be aware of coming down the pipeline?
RS: I tell you, the sky’s the limit there. From an AI perspective, we just announced the Vonage AI Acceleration Suite. It’s about AI-driven customer engagement solutions. I believe people are going to get more comfortable with the power of leveraging AI into their own tech stack, which is going to make them more efficient. It’s going to make them have access to tools and technology and be able to accomplish things that we thought we never wouldn’t be able to accomplish.
AI for us is also putting us in a position to reach out to our customers, especially in the contact center portfolio. [For example], there is leverage that you can have with virtual assistant — there are more AI tools that you can use before a call actually hits an agent. And then once they process that call, the call planning conversation analyzer which uses AI is going to make us more efficient about being able to better handle the next call and the next situation. I think it’s going to continue to evolve. I believe we’re only at the brink of what is to come.
CF: Is there anything else that you feel you want readers to know about where Vonage is heading with partners and with its technology portfolio?
RS: The channel is core to Vonage’s growth strategy. Like I said, we’re not just selling products and services. We’re empowering partners and customers to what’s next and helping them stay ahead of the curve and technology trends. Cloud adoption is at an all-time high. And the evolution of tech is moving at a rapid pace more so than any in the history of our entire industry. We are at the forefront of that with us coming together with Ericsson. The next evolution of what communications is means putting everyone on notice that you must have a full SaaS-based communications platform that covers all layers of the applications.
We’re going to own the infrastructure as it relates to 5G. We’re going to own the infrastructure as it relates to network security. We’re going to also be able to own the applications layer, create solutions that will then be duplicated at scale, and challenge the industry to make sure that they are forward thinking and staying ahead of the tech curve. We can continue to be as efficient and add differentiation and value to our customers, our partners alike. This is only the beginning. I believe we are part of the next tech evolution with AI. That’s how big this is.
CF: Is there anything else that you feel you want readers to know about where Vonage is heading with partners and with its technology portfolio?
RS: The channel is core to Vonage’s growth strategy. Like I said, we’re not just selling products and services. We’re empowering partners and customers to what’s next and helping them stay ahead of the curve and technology trends. Cloud adoption is at an all-time high. And the evolution of tech is moving at a rapid pace more so than any in the history of our entire industry. We are at the forefront of that with us coming together with Ericsson. The next evolution of what communications is means putting everyone on notice that you must have a full SaaS-based communications platform that covers all layers of the applications.
We’re going to own the infrastructure as it relates to 5G. We’re going to own the infrastructure as it relates to network security. We’re going to also be able to own the applications layer, create solutions that will then be duplicated at scale, and challenge the industry to make sure that they are forward thinking and staying ahead of the tech curve. We can continue to be as efficient and add differentiation and value to our customers, our partners alike. This is only the beginning. I believe we are part of the next tech evolution with AI. That’s how big this is.
Reggie Scales, SVP of global sales applications at Vonage, isn’t holding back about the future of the company. The business cloud communications giant is still, as he describes, “business as usual” when it comes to leveraging programmable APIs, for example. However, that’s only one growing aspect of the company’s technology portfolio.
Since Ericsson’s acquisition of Vonage last year, there are expansion opportunities with 5G, SaaS, AI and more. In addition, the company released an integrated portfolio of low code/no code products, and at its heart is the development of applications that deliver personalized AI-driven customer engagement solutions.
What’s in store for Vonage? When it comes to conversational commerce, Vonage is enabling its partners to power engagements around the globe, and these change every notion of communication itself. In this interview with Channel Futures, Scales discusses that and how the company is empowering partners and customers for what’s next, helping them stay ahead of the curve regarding technology trends.
Channel Futures: What’s new regarding APIs and Vonage?
Vonage’s Reggie Scales
Reggie Scales: APIs mean business as usual for Vonage. We’re seeing massive amounts of growth in this space. We deliver global customizable video conferencing capabilities, including the screen share whiteboarding chat. These are all the things that are happening inside our Vonage Meetings API.
On my side of the house is the applications business, which includes unified communications and contact center. We do also leverage APIs. For example, we are moving forward with Jumper.ai, which is one of our API portfolio solutions that gives us a more robust opportunity to provide messaging throughout our customer base. This is a differentiator for Vonage, having the ability to leverage programmable APIs, and all the things that come with APIs.
We’re also focusing on conversational commerce. This enables our partners with the ability to power engagements around the globe with our full portfolio suite that we call the Vonage communications platform.
See our slideshow above for the rest of our conversation with Scales, including the evolving impact of Ericsson’s acquisition of Vonage.
Then, watch our video below of Channel Futures’ James Anderson talking with Vonage channel chief Jim Regan on Channel Futures TV at the 2023 Channel Partners Conference & Expo.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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