Wireless carriers are going beyond mobile phones and data plans and embracing new cloud services for businesses in a significant way. While mobile phones and data plans are the core business for carriers, it’s become clear that one of the major vectors of growth is in the enterprise. In fact, Ralph de la Vega, president & CEO of AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions, in a recent New York Times article said, “business solutions, or services it offers to businesses, will become its largest source of income.”
(Those business solutions include business phone service, virtual call center, conference call services and CCaaS.)
Here at RingCentral we’ve been privileged to partner with major carriers like AT&T in the U.S., BT in the U.K., and now Telus in Canada, to deliver a complete cloud-based solution that addresses the needs of the modern mobile workforce. These relationships with carriers leverage what we do best — deliver a world class unified communications platform in the form of an app that works across mobile devices, tablets, desktops and even the desk phone.
As further explained by AT&T’s CEO, “Mobile is in the enterprise…Enterprises want to untether their employees.” These trends are undeniable. Mobile ubiquity is fueling the demand among businesses to untether employees and it’s accelerating cloud adoption.
It simply means the old wired phone call is being replaced by the IP phone call. The old PBX system is going away, and being replaced by smart cloud-based VoIP phone solutions that deliver voice, text, audio conferencing and video call—all via a single app delivered on your choice of device.
Some folks may wonder why haven’t carriers done it on their own to create a homegrown solution or why partner with a software provider like RingCentral? The fact of the matter is — a number of carriers have tried to do it on their own with ‘assemble it yourself’ technology licensed from software vendors. But, it’s become quite clear this approach doesn’t work as well, and it’s not in the wheelhouse of what carriers do best.
Going with RingCentral provides mobile service providers a turnkey solution with light touch integration, and a fully managed service without the infrastructure costs or challenge of pulling together major software development resources. This approach speeds up the time-to-market, while also creating a fast track for time-to-revenue. Carrier partners also benefit from the built-in future-proofing done as part of RingCentral’s ongoing software updates and release cycles to constantly improve the product and add best-in-class features on a regular basis.
Our announcement today with Telus Business Connect is a reiteration of the enterprise opportunities wireless carriers are pursuing in the cloud, and it’s another validation of the world-class business communication solution offered by RingCentral. We believe the evolution of carriers embracing the cloud and providing enterprise solution bundles together with RingCentral is a space to watch. Stay tuned!
To learn more, visit www.ringcentral.com, or visit our team this week at Enterprise Connect in booth 1501 of the expo hall, and follow along on Twitter using #EC15.
Originally published Mar 17, 2015, updated Aug 21, 2024