RingCentral Lands Verizon Partnership, Reports Rising Partner Earnings

RingCentral and Verizon are bringing together their respective UCaaS and network capabilities.

The two vendors announced their new relationship on Monday. RingCentral, which has grown a lot through co-branded offerings with companies like AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya, now holds a strategic partnership with Verizon. “RingCentral with Verizon” provides collaboration across multiple devices, while giving customers a single point of contact.

Verizon Business CEO Tami Erwin said the work-from-anywhere solutions and cloud-based communications are growing in popularity.

Verizon’s Tami Erwin

“Through this partnership, we’re leveraging our best-in-class network with RingCentral’s expertise in cloud collaboration to deliver game-changing cloud-based solutions that meet the needs of enterprises today and future proof how they operate moving forward,” Erwin.

RingCentral-Verizon Partnership Details

The co-branded offering will pair RingCentral’s UCaaS platform with Verizon connectivity – including 5G – to serve enterprise customers. Clients can also integrate RingCentral’s “Message, Video, Phone” (MVP) platform into CRMs and other SaaS applications.

The offering fits into Verizon Business’ “network-as-a-service” strategy, which also includes 5G, mobile edge computing, SD-WAN and security.

“At RingCentral, we truly believe this partnership creates additional value for our customers, and we are excited to innovate together with Verizon to deliver end-to-end digital transformation solutions that embed RingCentral’s MVP technology across the enterprise ecosystem,” said Anand Eswaran, president and chief operating officer, RingCentral. “As business communications, including team messaging and video, become critical in enabling people to work from anywhere, this partnership with Verizon helps us meet the ever-changing customer needs.”

RingCentral’s Anand Eswaran

The companies can better serve joint customers, which include the Golden State Warriors basketball team. Verizon deployed 5G Ultra Wideband at the Chase Center arena, while RingCentral provided its UCaaS offering to the team.

“We’re thrilled to see two trusted partners of ours come together to drive the industry forward,” said Mike Kitts, Warriors senior vice president of partnerships.

Verizon and RingCentral both landed in IDC’s 2021 MarketScape for Worldwide UCaaS Service Providers for Enterprise list. Denise Lund, IDC’s research director of unified communications and telecom, said their partnership comes at an opportune time.

“Enterprises have emerged from 2020 planning to spend more on unified communications services. Solutions that will resonate will bring scale and innovations that come with being in the cloud together with expertise in enterprise-grade professional services, networks and security,” Lund said.

Verizon rival AT&T last month expanded its partnership with RingCentral to enhance their joint collaboration offering. Verizon bought video conferencing provider BlueJeans Network last spring.

Earnings

Strategic partnerships have helped propel RingCentral to significant growth in the last year. The vendor released its first-quarter earnings last week, showing a 32% year-over-year revenue increase. RingCentral chairman and CEO Vlad Shmunis gave shout-outs to BT, Atos, AT&T, Avaya 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. RingCentral has always been about work from anywhere,” Shumis said. “With our proven UCaaS platform and a comprehensive CCaaS portfolio, RingCentral continues to win as a trusted communications partner of choice for businesses of all sizes in their digital transformation journeys.”

In addition, RingCentral noted the growth of its channel partner business in its earnings report. The channel increased its annual monthly recurring monthly subscription revenue (ARR) by 53%, to $505 million. On the other hand, direct ARR (which includes co-branded offerings) increased 33%, to $817 million.