RingCentral Announces New CEO and Sees Stock Plunge, Records 'Another Solid Quarter' with Latest Earnings, and Launches AI-Powered CCaaS RingCX and RingSense for Phone
It's been quite the week for RingCentral.
The company unveiled a new CEO in Tarek Robbiati as visionary leader Vlad Shmunis announced he was standing down after almost 25 years at the helm — a decision that saw RingCentral's stock plunge 18.6 percent on Tuesday.
Shmunis will transition to the role of Executive Chairman with a remit of driving RingCentral’s strategic product vision and innovation.
Shmunis said:
When I founded RingCentral two decades ago, we were a tiny, unfunded startup with an ambitious mission to improve how businesses around the world communicate internally and with their customers. From those humble beginnings, we have become a recognized leader in our space and one of the largest pure-play SaaS companies in the world."
Robbiati has been a member of the RingCentral Board of Directors since last December and was formerly Chief Financial Officer and EVP of Finance and Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Robbiati will be CEO effective August 28, 2023.
Robbiati’s CV illustrates almost three decades as a respected strategic and financial operator, renowned for his leadership roles within the telecom, media, technology and financial services industries.
In other RingCentral news, the company surpassed its guidance for the quarter, with total revenue increasing 11 percent year over year to $539 million.
In its earnings call for Q2 2023, RingCentral stressed that its focus on profitability is reaping the rewards sooner than estimated. Not only had revenues exceeded guidance, but operating margins had, too, with a non-GAAP operating margin of 19.4 percent — up 800 basis points year over year and a quarterly record for RingCentral.
RingCentral also launched two new solutions; the native, AI-powered contact centre solution, RingCX, and RingSense for Phone.
RingCX is an easy-to-deploy offering that combines RingCentral’s central UC services — including message, video, phone, SMS, and fax — with contact centre boosted by a generative AI feature set. The end product is a next-gen, AI-powered solution that provides a complete, native omnichannel experience and enhances customer journeys.
RingSense for Phone leverages AI to empower businesses to transform their voice conversation data into usable insights that can improve productivity and business outcomes.
- Read more about RingCentral's new CEO
- Read more about RingCentral's latest earnings
- Read more about RingCX and RingSense for Phone
Verizon is Shutting Down BlueJeans
Verizon is shutting down its BlueJeans video conferencing service.
In an email sent to BlueJeans' service members — and published by 9to5Google — on Tuesday, August 8, Verizon confirmed that BlueJeans' suite of products is being "sunset" due to an evolving and volatile market situation.
The first phase of the sunsetting is that BlueJeans Basic and free trial offerings will be discontinued as of August 31, 2023, and customers' access to the services will be stopped. Customers can still access those services until August 31.
"Thank you for being a valued user of BlueJeans by Verizon services," the email wrote. "We want to share that we have made the difficult decision to sunset our suite of BlueJeans products. BlueJeans is an award-winning product that connects our customers around the world, but we have made this decision due to the changing market landscape."
BlueJeans' enterprise customers aren't mentioned as being restricted by the August 31 deadline, so it can be assumed they will be provided with a more extended transition period to prepare for the end of BlueJeans' services.
Zoom Comes Under Flack for New TOS Allegedly Enabling AI Training on User Content, Opens New London Hub, Mandates Partial Return to Office
Zoom’s new Terms of Service (TOS) has prompted controversy this week, with critics alleging that an updated section enables the training of AI on user content without users being able to opt out.
