Nextiva Targets RingCentral, Doubles Partner Investment

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NEXTIVA NEXTCON — Nextiva says its channel-partner revenue grew 100 percent year-over-year.

The company on Tuesday laid out multiple statistics that show the growth of its partner program, Nextiva’s revenues and the unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) industry in general. Nextiva channel chief Ira Feuerstein and president Tracy Conrad shared the numbers during the State of the Union partner keynote Tuesday at the NextCon conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nextiva’s Ira Feuerstein

Nextiva’s numbers show the unified communications market growing 20 percent year-over-year. The opportunity is incredibly ripe, with a UCaaS market penetration of only 8 percent. The company says it competes with 120 other UCaaS providers, with 10 exiting the market last year. Some of those competitors went out of business, while some were gobbled up by larger companies. Feuerstein and Conrad told the partner audience that they hope to stay the course in the midst of industry M&A.

“When you’re looking people in the eyes, and you’re talking to your customers (and so is somebody else), you want to make sure three years from now, five years from now – 10 years from now – they’re not being consolidated to another company, just another number to be disrupted in their business and/or partner relationship. So when you look at Nextiva and you have a partnership with us, that won’t be changing,” Conrad said.

Nextiva says it is slotted in sixth place in UCaaS after coming in ninth two years ago. RingCentral was first with 6.5 percent market share, followed by 8×8, Vonage, Verizon, AT&T and Nextiva. Feuerstein pointed out that all of those companies are public, except for Nextiva.

“I’m telling you right here, right now; I personally have a target on RingCentral,” he said. “There’s a big bullseye target on them, and we’re coming for them. We’re growing tremendously fast.”

Nextiva also touted the investments it has made in its partner program. The company has doubled its channel team, with 35 channel managers. Feuerstein called up a large contingent of 20-30 Nextiva channel personnel out of the audience and onto the stage. Feuerstein and Conrad said that investment has led to a 100 percent year-over-year revenue increase for the company’s partners. The company itself improved by 54 percent.

NextOS

The speakers reviewed Nextiva’s new and upcoming offerings for 2017, with an emphasis on the NextOS communications platform that the company recently started making available to select businesses.

Feuerstein calls the platform, which attempts to …

… bring together the sprawl of applications that have arisen in many business environments, “the biggest game changer” he’s seen in hosted communications.

“Because the truth of this is, if you look at all the hosted communication providers out there – you can fill in the blank – none of them are innovating. It’s the same features from carrier to carrier,” he said. “They may call it something a little different, and maybe there’s a little nuance every once in a while, but it’s really an industry that hasn’t innovated in the 12 years I’ve been in it. The feature set is still the same as it was 12 years ago, and there’s a few minor things that come out here and there.”

He touted the offering as a major revenue opportunity for partners. Other products from Nextiva include its Call Flow Builder, an offering for HIPAA compliance, Setup Wizard and Advanced IVR.

The company is also redesigning its partner portal to create a single login, deal registration and pipeline tracking and analysis. Nextiva will also be doing phone rentals – featuring the Polycom VVX 501, Panasonic TGP600 and Nextiva Clarity router – for certain partners.

Read the recap of Monday’s keynote speech, where CEO Tomas Gorny detailed Nextiva’s strategic plan.