RingCentral has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as the recipient of “Top End-to-End-Encryption Solution Companies - 2023,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the CIOReview research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Michael Armer,  Chief Information Security Officer.

RingCentral
Ensuring Secure Communication and Collaboration

Michael Armer,  Chief Information Security Officer

CIOs and CISOs have a bigger role to play in today’s dynamic workplace collaboration landscape. The growing number of cloud collaboration applications and their information-sharing capabilities demand comprehensive due diligence in application purchasing decisions. The need to integrate communications, contact center, and API-enabled features, and to be able to access these applications from anywhere, compounds the challenges.

In this situation, IT, security, and business leaders must adopt proactive security measures to minimize data loss and mitigate business disruption. It is imperative to assess the security requirements and select a workplace collaboration application provider that has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to data security.

RingCentral, a premier provider of business cloud communications and contact center solutions, is ideally positioned to help organizations in fortifying their communication and collaboration.

A unified communications solutions expert, RingCentral offers a world-class cloud communications system, RingCentral MVP, which brings all conversations onto one easy-to-use platform while introducing security-minded features like end-to-end encryption across all communication modalities. Built with powerful intelligence, workflow automation, and flexible and scalable communication features, it allows clients to streamline their business interactions while prioritizing data security. From phone and video conferencing to SMS, fax, file sharing, task management, and analytics, RingCentral MVP offers a host of features that can be leveraged for seamless business communication and collaboration.

"We are customer obsessed, and our aim is to provide CIO and CISO teams peace of mind that they have enterprise-grade control over their data security and privacy for privileged conversations"

Beyond the business communications platform, RingCentral is renowned for its ability to help clients simplify customer interactions. Businesses can use its customer experience portfolio and AI-enabled tools to quickly resolve customer issues from anywhere, on any channel. It enhances agent satisfaction and makes it easy for customers to communicate through the channels most convenient for them.

A Scalable Approach to Security

“Our goal is to provide businesses with user-friendly, trusted, secure, and reliable services that enhance employee and customer experience,” said Michael Armer, chief information security officer at RingCentral. “We look at different aspects of security and best practices while providing the highest level of service.”

One of these best practices is end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for phone calls, messaging, and video meetings. E2EE revolutionizes the way businesses protect privileged conversations and strengthens their data security posture against third-party intrusion and attacks, making it the most sought-after security measure for CIOs and CISOs in the workplace collaboration landscape. It eliminates the need for businesses to rely on multiple applications for private, end-to-end encrypted communications that often lack compliance oversight. Users can steer clear of corporate policy circumvention or unauthorized applications that pose potential risks to sensitive information.

RingCentral’s E2EE ensures no third party, even RingCentral, can access an organization’s communication data. It provides clients with intuitive controls to turn their interactions into end-to-end encrypted conversations at individual and team levels.

“Our E2EE provides unrivaled security and privacy for privileged conversations, as well as protection against threats. It eliminates the need for multiple encryption products, modernizes the user experience, and alleviates privacy concerns surrounding confidential communications,” said Armer.

RingCentral is the only UCaaS provider to announce enterprise-ready, end-to-end encryption for all forms of business communications—whether a scheduled, spontaneous, or ongoing 1:1 conversation or a meeting with up to 50 participants.

“We are customer obsessed, and our aim is to provide CIO and CISO teams peace of mind that they have enterprise-grade control over their data security and privacy for privileged conversations,” said Armer.

Excellence at its Peak

Apart from ensuring security, RingCentral excels at eliminating the communication outages most businesses face due to their inability to maintain custom-built, on-prem solutions.

Pennsylvania-based Good2Go Auto Insurance, which specializes in minimum-limits car insurance for underserved drivers, faced a similar situation. It relied on an outdated and decentralized on-prem telephony infrastructure that caused inconsistent uptime. The solution also had limited functionality. For example, conference calls could support a small number of people, there was no built-in messaging capability, and making adjustments required coordinating with various vendors.

A sudden shift to remote work during the pandemic exposed the real limitations of their telephony infrastructure and the need to digitally transform to the cloud for facilitating unified communication. Apart from spotty uptime and reliability,
maintaining on-prem architecture is a costly endeavor. Along with the capital expenditures required for the PBX, including servers, operational expenses are necessary for maintaining them. Seeking a cloud-based solution that could offer enterprise-grade uptime and reliability, Good2Go Auto Insurance adopted RingCentral MVP.

Our goal is to provide businesses with user-friendly, trusted, secure, and reliable services that enhance employee and customer experience

RingCentral employs multiple layers of network and service redundancy across the globe to ensure customer phone systems are always on. It has a track record of delivering 99.999 percent uptime SLA for RingCentral MVP for over five years, which equates to less than 78 seconds of downtime per quarter, including scheduled maintenance. Rolling out RingCentral MVP immediately resolved Good2Go’s telephony downtime issues and eliminated outages.

“The RingCentral platform supports 400,000 customers and millions of users. Our network is designed to handle 4X capacity and is currently managing over 35 billion minutes of voice traffic per year, assuring CIOs and CISOs that their unified communications and contact center solutions are always on,” said Armer.

Innovations-Driven Future

Dedicated to driving client success, RingCentral has woven innovation into its DNA. It continually enhances its product portfolio to ensure an intelligent and connected experience for clients. The launch of its AI platform, RingSense, earlier this year, brings the advantages of AI into the communication landscape.

RingCentral’s first solution to launch, RingSense for Sales, syncs with CRM and productivity tools, to bring together the full context of customer interactions. It analyzes customer interactions and provides sales reps with the intelligence to adapt, respond, and upskill for closing deals. It delivers summary scores, enabling sales leaders to focus on key moments that require attention, instead of searching and sorting the content across calls, emails, and video meetings.

RingSense for Sales allows sales teams to unlock AI-powered revenue intelligence to automate sales tasks and beat sales goals every quarter. With access to insights they never had, every team member gains a competitive advantage. The proactive insights, automated next steps, and winning playbooks allow sales reps to stay ahead of deal risks and bring in the right players at the right time with customized trackers. These trackers monitor trends around products, competitors, and positive or negative deal signals. Through AI-driven personalized coaching, sales playbooks, and libraries that highlight and replicate best practices from top performers, managers can reduce ramp time and ensure optimum productivity from the beginning of the sales role.

“Integrating AI into the communication ecosystem eliminates the time and resources spent on repetitive tasks, such as taking notes, providing actions, posting conversations, or enabling coaching and training,” said Armer.

Facilitating intelligent meetings and automatically highlighting critical moments of the buyer journey allows clients to identify and fix pain points, as well as bridge the gap between sales, operations, and marketing.

RingSense for Sales was conceived in RingCentral’s innovation lab, similar to its other products. The company fosters a culture of innovation that empowers individuals to share their ideas and contribute to the progress of products. After significant brainstorming sessions, it applies business case methodology to test if the concept can be converted into reality. Listening to customers is another crucial way for RingCentral to understand market needs and improve its products.

“Customer feedback fuels our innovation journey,” said Armer. “Many product ideas were born through our customer advisory board, and we continue to be transparent and open to their feedback and opinions.”

RingCentral

Ned Segal Elected to RingCentral’s Board of Directors

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

BELMONT, Calif,: RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of AI-first global enterprise cloud communications, video, webinars, hybrid events, and contact center solutions, today announced that Ned Segal has been elected to the Company’s Board of Directors, effective as of the Company’s 2023 Annual Meeting of Shareholders which was held on December 29, 2023. Segal has also been named a member of both the audit committee and nominating and corporate governance committee of the Company’s Board of Directors.

“We are excited to welcome Ned, a seasoned executive with more than 25 years of technology, finance and capital markets experience, to the RingCentral Board,” said Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral’s Founder, Chairman, and CEO. “As Twitter’s former CFO, Ned presided over significant growth and success, while navigating a period of tremendous complexity and organizational change, through the sale of the company. He will bring a rigorous and financially-driven approach to our boardroom, with a focus on helping RingCentral continue to deliver sustainable, profitable growth.”

“I’ve known RingCentral and Vlad for more than a decade,” said Segal. “I’m a big believer in founder-led technology companies and see massive opportunity for RingCentral to continue to change how people leverage the cloud to be more productive and communicate more effectively. I look forward to working with Vlad and the rest of the Board as the company executes on its strategy while driving value for shareholders.”

Segal is a seasoned financial executive having previously served as Chief Financial Officer of Twitter, Senior Vice President of Finance of Intuit, a business and financial software company, and Chief Financial Officer of RPX Corporation, a former publicly traded company that provides patent risk management and discovery services. Earlier in his career, Segal held various positions at Goldman Sachs, notably as Head of Global Software Investment Banking. Segal currently serves on the Board of Directors of Beyond Meat, Inc.

RingCentral Wins the Overall Best of Enterprise Connect 2024 Award; Winners Announced in Four Other Category Awards

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

ORLANDO - Enterprise Connect, announces RingCentral wins the Overall Best of Enterprise Connect award. RingCentral won for RingSense AI, a personal AI helper that provides real-time note-taking, enhances detail recall with GPT's semantic search, and unlocks insights from all conversations.

The finalists for the Overall Best in Enterprise Connect award include:

• Cyara: Cyara Botium Fact Checker, an all-in-one automated quality assurance platform equipped to optimize, maintain and monitor chatbots, voicebots and conversational AI.

• Five9: Five9 AI Insights, a generative AI-powered customer experience insights application that delivers accessible and actionable conversational insights faster and with less effort than ever before.

• Genesys: Genesys AI Experience, which integrates cutting-edge generative AI capabilities, accelerating agent productivity and empowering companies to effortlessly unlock innovation.

• MiaRec: MiaRec Automated Quality Management and Coaching, which uses generative AI technology to automatically score, summarize, and categorize 100 percent of contact center calls.

• NICE: NICE Enlighten Actions, a conversational AI interface that enables businesses to identify and impact, in real-time, the drivers of Customer Experience, Employee Experience, and operational costs and efficiencies.

• Vonage: Vonage Protection Suite, which proactively blocks suspicious traffic, accesses real-time fraud assessment data for global numbers, and/or implements a turnkey, omnichannel 2FA solution with fraud protection and customizable automatic failover.

Enterprise Connect also announces winners for four Category Awards:

• Best Innovation in Customer Experience: Genesys, for Genesys AI Experience, which integrates cutting-edge generative AI capabilities, accelerating agent productivity and empowering companies to effortlessly unlock innovation.

• Best Innovation for Meetings/Conferencing: Barco, ClickShare Bar Pro, a premium, carbon-neutral video bar that enables effortless wireless conferencing in medium-sized meeting rooms with any video conferencing platform, and Yealink, Yealink SmartVision60, integrating AI technologies like voice control, identity recognition, transcription, and multi-stream IntelliFrame into video conferencing for medium-sized Microsoft Teams rooms. (tie)

• Best Innovation for Systems Management: Upwork, Upwork Enterprise Suite, a comprehensive set of tools for enterprises looking to streamline workforce management and become more cost-efficient, innovative, productive, and growth-oriented, and Vonage, Vonage Protection Suite, which proactively blocks suspicious traffic, accesses real-time fraud assessment data for global numbers, and/or implements a turnkey, omnichannel 2FA solution with fraud protection and customizable automatic failover. (tie)

• Most Innovative Use of AI: Cyara, Cyara Botium Fact Checker, an all-in-one automated quality assurance platform equipped to optimize, maintain and monitor chatbots, voicebots and conversational AI; and Genesys, Genesys AI Experience, which integrates cutting-edge generative AI capabilities, accelerating agent productivity and empowering companies to effortlessly unlock innovation. (tie)

Eric Krapf, General Manager, Enterprise Connect said, “Each year we have the honor to celebrate the most innovative technologies in the enterprise communications and customer experience industry. We congratulate all of this year’s winners for their superior innovations.”

Winners were announced during an awards presentation at Enterprise Connect 2024. Enterprise Connect 2024 takes place March 25-28, 2024 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL and digitally. For more information and to register, visit www.enterpriseconnect.com.

Enterprise Connect AI

AI is moving fast and IT leaders are scrambling to keep up. Omdia estimates that revenues will grow from $6.7bn in 2023 to $62.9bn in 2028. With this robust growth, IT leaders need to know how AI can help make their end users more productive, contact centers more profitable, customer experiences more powerful and IT operations more cost-effective. Enterprise Connect announced that it will host a new event, Enterprise Connect AI, which will take place this coming October in Santa Clara, CA.

The Summit will provide up-to-the-minute, in-depth, vendor-neutral content via three conference tracks -CX, Productivity and IT Management - to help tech leaders leverage AI to advance their enterprises.

Critical topics to be covered include:

• Personalizing the Customer Experience with AI

• Agent Assist…or Replacement?

• Getting Your Data AI-Ready

• Confronting the Real-World Costs of Generative AI

• Working with Your Enterprise’s AI Governance Team

• Personal Assistants: Who’s Using Them? Who’s Getting ROI?

• Using AI to Manage Your IT/Communications Infrastructure

• Top Ten AI Applications for CX Today...and Tomorrow

RingCentral Enhances Avaya Cloud Office with RingSense AI and Microsoft Teams Integration

Thursday, May 16, 2024

New Hybrid Solution Empowers Customers to Combine Existing Avaya Investments with Enhanced Collaboration Capabilities, such as AI Video Calling and Messaging, from RingCentral

Cloud contact centers are on the verge of total transformation with new-age AI solutions. At Avaya ENGAGE, two leading cloud business communications solutions providers expanded their partnership to enhance multi-channel customer experience. RingCentral and Avaya, a global leader in customer experience and communications solutions, announced an expansion of offerings for Avaya customers. The new integrations include a new hybrid solution of RingCentral’s AI-powered cloud business communications solution with Avaya Aura telephony, providing enhanced collaboration capabilities.

Never Miss a Beat: Collaboration Made Easy with AI-powered Video Calling and Messaging Features

The new hybrid offering allows users within the same organization to seamlessly collaborate with each other, whether individuals are using Avaya Aura or Avaya Cloud Office telephony solutions. Customers gain additional value from their existing investments in Avaya’s solutions by combining them with RingCentral’s video calling and messaging features, including RingSense™ AI — RingCentral’s core AI platform. This hybrid solution, which is exclusively available through this partnership, also provides Avaya’s enterprise customers with the choice to utilize their existing Avaya Aura Platform or cloud-based Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (ACO) for call control functionality, enabling a seamless user experience across messaging, video and phone.

Latest from RingCentral: RingCentral Announces Return of Vlad Shmunis as CEO

Alan Masarek, Avaya CEO, said, “Our expanded partnership with RingCentral enhances communications and collaboration experiences for our global customers. This integration further demonstrates our commitment to innovation without disruption. We are empowering our customers to operate where and how they want – on-prem, private cloud or public cloud – without missing a beat.”

Top End-to-End-Encryption Solution Companies - 2023

Company
RingCentral

Management
Michael Armer,  Chief Information Security Officer

Description
RingCentral is a leading provider of best-in-class solutions for unified communications and customer experience. It ensures data security with end-to-end encryption, which is part of its platform’s DNA. It offers a leading business cloud phone system to every business size across all industries, including financial services, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, and automotive.

RingCentral Ensuring Secure Communication and Collaboration