Highlights:
- RingCentral India’s Vivek Wamorkar is a Director of Engineering Development who has spent his career on the frontiers of video technology.
- The company’s India Innovation Hubs are actively searching for talented developers and engineers interested in pushing the limits of the ways we communicate now.
RingCentral India is quickly earning a reputation as a leading innovation hub for the company. It’s one of the company’s mission-critical research and development centers where new ideas are tested, cutting-edge technology is explored, and pivotal milestones are achieved. We spoke with Vivek Wamorkar, RingCentral India’s Engineering Director, to get a look at what the team’s up to now, and what’s next.
Growing an innovation reputation.
Vivek is a video communications veteran who has spent years working with pioneering companies across the space. His experience gives him the highly specialized ability to identify, pursue, and develop ideas with the potential to deliver better performance and experience.
Hearing good things.
Wamorkar was drawn to RingCentral because of its reputation for superior audio quality — a legacy of RingCentral’s expertise in voice communications. “Other video companies…usually don’t have top-notch voice solutions,” Vivek explains. “RingCentral is very strong in [this area].” These technologies might seem disparate, but the ingredients of high-quality audio technology also form the backbone of a world-class video conferencing solution.
Hybrid hurdles
The global workforce is becoming more widely distributed and heterogeneous every day. Everyone’s connecting from everywhere, on every sort of device. Vivek and the R&D team are on the front lines of these technological challenges. “Overcoming [the] constraints of [the] internet is the biggest challenge in voice and video communications,” Wamorkar explains. “The constraints of the internet lead to a variety of quality issues including latency, disconnection, and packet loss, and every company tries to tackle this problem in their own way.”
AI innovation
Vivek is excited about the direction RingCentral’s videoconferencing capabilities are heading , and the R&D opportunities those provide. “Technology…is gearing up towards AI-driven features that enhance your communications and overall toolset. The technology is already mature enough that it can not only transcribe your meetings, but provide useful notes and next steps. And that’s only the beginning.”
Backgrounds in the foreground.
As more and more people are working remotely, backgrounds are coming to the fore. Bandwidth and lag issues are shrinking, so people are spending more and more time on-camera. And that silly little gimmick that let us all look like we’re dialing in from the beach is now gaining importance. “We’re just about to the point where you could dial in to a virtual meeting in street clothes, and the program could put you in a nice suit,” says Wamorkar. He didn’t mention if the tech has developed good fashion sense yet, but does acknowledge “improvements are still required.” And that’s just one example of where the company’s R&D opportunities lie.
Where the action is.
Right now, RingCentral’s India Innovation Hubs are actively seeking talented developers and engineers of varying experience levels – particularly people with deep knowledge of operating systems. If you’re interested in getting your hands on the sorts of challenges that will change the way the world communicates, the path forward is wide open.
“[There’s] a lot to learn, experiments to be done, and exciting R&D work of all kinds to do,” says Wamorkar. “I’m excited about what’s next – but I’d be even more excited if I were just starting out.”
Originally published Mar 08, 2022
