Home > News > Top Stories > RingCentral Announces Innovations to Supercharge Enterprise Communications and Hybrid Work

Cloud App Management

RingCentral Announces Innovations to Supercharge Enterprise Communications and Hybrid Work

RingCentral, Inc, a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions, today announced a range of new capabilities to help organizations run and grow their business by enabling employees to communicate and collaborate effectively, securely, and productively from anywhere.

Nat Natarajan, executive vice president, Products and Engineering, at RingCentral, said, “RingCentral is continuing to innovate at a rapid pace and we’re focused on providing the capabilities that organizations need to run and grow their business. We’re moving from a pandemic which challenged organizations' basic ability to keep their people connected to a new era of organizational transformation, which requires highly integrated immersive video with team messaging and robust phone capabilities so people can be productive. Additionally, our focus on security gives customers the peace of mind that their communications are fully safe and secure, and an open ecosystem that enables them to co-create solutions to meet their business needs of today and the future.”

New security and compliance including Dynamic End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) and C5:2020 certification deliver the highest-levels of data protection and secure video meetings. Dynamic E2EE for video meetings allows users to start ad-hoc and scheduled E2EE meetings, and to dynamically turn E2EE on (or off) mid-meeting across mobile, desktop, and web browsers. Dynamic E2EE provides an extra layer of security and confidentiality in addition to RingCentral’s existing security and encryption to mitigate risk and protect sensitive meeting content. Dynamic E2EE open beta will start in September 2021, with general availability planned for October 2021. Learn more here. The C5 criteria (Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue) specifies minimum requirements for secure cloud computing and is primarily aimed at professional cloud providers, their auditors, and customers. Today, RingCentral is announcing that RingCentral Message Video Phone™ (MVP™), RingCentral Video Pro™, RingCentral Video Pro+™, RingCentral Engage Digital™, and RingCentral Engage Voice™ are compliant with C5:2020 from the Federal Office for Information Security in Germany (BSI Germany). For more information on the C5 certification,
Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at Metrigy, said, “E2EE is a critical requirement to support a Zero Trust security architecture. More than 40 percent of our research participants classify it as a 'must have' feature for their collaboration applications. RingCentral's Dynamic E2EE provides an additional layer of security to ensure that only authorized meeting participants have access to video and associated content.”

New Add-ins with popular third-party applications and developer tools

RingCentral Add-ins bring the applications users depend on into the RingCentral App, giving them a rich, embedded experience. From streamlining signatures to capturing engineering tasks, customers can have an interactive app experience directly within their messaging app, without toggling between multiple screens and applications. Along with over 250 apps in RingCentral’s App Gallery, there will be new Add-in Apps from Akazio, Asana, BugSnag, DocuSign, Github, Hubspot, Jira, Keeper AI, Prodoscore, RingClone, and Trello. As a commitment to innovation, the majority of the initial set of Add-ins will be built by RingCentral Labs, which is a nimble, internal program that empowers RingCentral employees to develop and share their own applications with its customer community. RingCentral Add-in integrations will be generally available in mid-October 2021, but developers can start building now.

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, said, “There’s no room for companies with walled gardens in today’s day and age and RingCentral is a great example of an organization that, by far, has the most open platform in the industry and is truly dedicated to improving workflows and enhancing productivity. With RingCentral Add-ins, developers will have an opportunity to build great integrations for their organizations, and employees will have the ability to work from a single application as opposed to having to toggle between multiple applications and wasting time that could be spent doing things that truly matter.”

New RingCentral for Microsoft Teams embedded dialer

RingCentral for Microsoft Teams brings robust, enterprise-grade phone capabilities directly to the Microsoft Teams app with the new embedded dialer. With RingCentral’s softphone now available within the Microsoft Teams app, customers enjoy the ability to seamlessly place calls, view call history, and view synced RingCentral contacts directly within the Microsoft Teams app, without needing the Microsoft Phone System license to enable external PSTN calling. Building on RingCentral’s existing offerings of Cloud PBX for Microsoft Teams - a direct routing integration, RingCentral for Microsoft Teams, and RingCentral for Microsoft 365, RingCentral provides customers with the flexibility and options they need to be successful using whichever tools they choose. The embedded dialer will be available in Q3. For more information download RingCentral for Microsoft Teams.

Jon Arnold, principal, J Arnold & Associates, said, “While Microsoft Teams includes several collaboration essentials, telephony isn’t one of them and calling is still one of the most important communications tools used by businesses globally. With the RingCentral dialer embedded within Teams, users now have access to all the calling capabilities they need directly within the Teams app so they no longer have to make do with a ‘good enough’ solution and toggle between multiple applications to get their work done.”

New capabilities for RingCentral MVP bring effortless productivity for everyone

RingCentral is delivering a range of new capabilities including:

Video: New immersive video enhancements improve in-meeting experiences:
  • Presentation modes: New presentation modes use artificial intelligence (AI) to make presentations more immersive, engaging, and fun with first-of-its-kind presentation modes that enable users to put themselves behind their content, making it more engaging. Users can also place themselves in a virtual conference room to provide a common experience wherever they are.
  • Touch-up appearance: RingCentral offers a new “touch-up appearance” capability on the web, mobile, and desktop app that adds a bit more fun and polish to video meetings by turning on the “touch up my skin” feature. On the mobile app, users can soon put on virtual makeup, color their lips, spruce up their eye lashes, and whiten their teeth.
  • Auto-framing: Users are now the center of attention no matter where they are on camera with the new AI-based auto-framing capability.
  • Breakout Rooms: Breakout Rooms help meeting hosts split up participants into different groups, all within the same meeting, enabling focused collaboration during in-person brainstorming and small group discussions.
  • Availability: Breakout Rooms will be generally available in September 2021, while the new presentation modes, touch-up appearance capability, and auto-framing capability will be generally available by the end of the year.

Team messaging: New ‘Team Huddle’ enhances ad-hoc collaboration and augments corporate services with a live video room
With the new Team Huddle capability for RingCentral team messaging, team members can create ad-hoc collaboration experiences tied to their team channels enabling them to easily pop-in and out of meetings. Team Huddles replicate “drop-ins” for use cases such as virtual IT service desks, HR benefits Q&A rooms, all-day events, and more. It is available immediately to all RingCentral MVP and RingCentral Video Pro/Pro+ customers.
Phone: Introducing Mobile HeadsUp Display (HUD) to bring sophisticated desk phone capabilities on the go
RingCentral is the first-to-market mobile and desktop HUD functionality, making advanced phone capabilities, for users such as receptionists and admins, more mobile than ever before. Typically only available on proprietary desk phones or desktops, customer can now easily view colleagues' real-time availability and manage multiple incoming calls with the capability to answer and transfer an incoming call, add users to a current call, chat with a colleague directly, or pick up a call on behalf of colleagues with permission - from a desktop or mobile device.

Availability: HUD will be coming to the RingCentral Mobile App by the end of this year, putting the power of our enterprise-grade phone system right into customers’ pockets.
Lastly, organizations can now centrally add and manage free and paid users.
Alongside RingCentral MVP, our full-featured UCaaS offering, customers can also make sure the rest of the org has access to video, messaging, and limited outbound calling with RingCentral Video Pro (free) and RingCentral Video Pro+ ($11.99/mo/user) with a centralized admin portal, and a single contract. This allows teams to better work together — all in one, single mobile and desktop app. As a result, organizations can replace all communication silos with the most powerful unified communications platform available. You can add team members for RingCentral Video Pro (free) or RingCentral Video Pro+ ($11.99/user/mo) today.

About RingCentral
RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of business cloud communications and contact center solutions based on its powerful Message Video Phone™ (MVP™) global platform.

Spotlight

More featured news

Spotlight

Related News

Cloud Infrastructure Management

The Manufacturing Sector Experiences More Attacks in the Cloud than Any Other Industry

PR Newswire: | January 19, 2024

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, today revealed additional findings for the manufacturing sector from its survey of 1,610 IT and security professionals across more than 100 countries. According to the survey, 64% of companies in the manufacturing sector suffered a cyberattack during the preceding 12 months, which is similar to the finding among organizations overall (68%). However, it turned out that the manufacturing sector experiences more cloud infrastructure attacks than any other industry surveyed. Among manufacturing companies that detected an attack, 85% spotted phishing in the cloud compared to only 58% across all verticals; 43% faced user account compromise in the cloud as opposed to 27% among all industries; and 25% dealt with data theft by hackers in the cloud compared to 15% for organizations overall. "The manufacturing sector relies heavily on the cloud to work with their supply chain in real time. This makes their cloud infrastructure a lucrative target for attackers — infiltrating it enables them to move laterally and potentially compromise other linked organizations, as happened to one the world's top meat processing companies. Credential compromise or malware deployed via a phishing email is just the beginning of the attack," says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix. "The attack surface in the cloud is always expanding, so it's critical for manufacturing companies to adopt a defense-in-depth approach," adds Ilia Sotnikov, Security Strategist at Netwrix. "First, they must rigorously enforce the principle of least privilege to limit access to sensitive data, which ideally includes just-in-time access to eliminate unnecessary entry points for adversaries. They also need to gain deep visibility into when and how critical data in the cloud is being used so that IT teams can promptly spot potential threats. Finally, they need to be prepared to minimize the damage from incidents by having a comprehensive response strategy that is regularly exercised and updated." To learn more about security trends, check out the complete 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report. About Netwrix Netwrix makes data security easy. Since 2006, Netwrix solutions have been simplifying the lives of security professionals by enabling them to identify and protect sensitive data to reduce the risk of a breach, and to detect, respond to and recover from attacks, limiting their impact. More than 13,500 organizations worldwide rely on Netwrix solutions to strengthen their security and compliance posture across all three primary attack vectors: data, identity and infrastructure.

Read More

Cloud Storage

TRG Screen Announces Acquisition of Xpansion for Reference Data Usage Management

PR Newswire: | January 25, 2024

TRG Screen, the leading provider of enterprise subscription spend and usage management software, today announced it has acquired Xpansion, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for reference data usage monitoring in the financial services industry. The acquisition of Xpansion will further solidify TRG Screen's position as a global market leader in market data management solutions. Xpansion – established in 2013 – is focused on empowering data operations teams to proactively manage their usage, control costs and optimize data workflows. Xpansion's offerings include Xmon, Xprocess and Xplore, and provide real-time analytics, giving clients unprecedented transparency, visibility and control into their reference data usage. This deal consolidates TRG Screen's unique position as the only provider of enterprise subscription management capabilities spanning the whole spectrum of market data optimization, from spend and inventory tracking, through to usage and enquiry management, exchange reporting and compliance. "Xpansion and TRG Screen have been partners for many years. Bringing Xpansion into the TRG Screen family is a very logical next step for both companies, given our strong relationship and shared view that the industry demand for integrated usage management solutions is going to continue to grow," said TRG Screen CEO Leigh Walters. "Xpansion is an established firm with excellent customer satisfaction and retention, and highly experienced and industry respected leadership. We are very excited at the opportunities this acquisition brings." "We are thrilled to be joining TRG Screen," said Xpansion co-founder and CEO Amjad Zoghbi. "Reference data usage is one of the most complex aspects of market data management, and managing it correctly is essential to maintaining contractual compliance and ensuring clients are right-sizing their usage based on actual consumption and business need. I'm very pleased that Xpansion's customers, and team, will now be part of the best-of-breed solution with the industry's leading provider of market data management solutions." The acquisition demonstrates TRG Screen's ongoing commitment to servicing the needs of market data consumers, vendors and exchanges. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. About TRG Screen TRG Screen is the leading provider of enterprise subscription management solutions. Founded in 1998, TRG Screen is uniquely differentiated by its ability to monitor both spend and usage of data and information services including market data, research, software licenses, consulting and other corporate expenses. TRG Screen's solutions provide its customers with full transparency into their vendor relationships and their subscription spend and usage, enabling them to optimize their enterprise subscriptions. TRG acquired Priory Solutions in 2016, Screen Group in 2018, Axon Financial Systems in 2019, Market Data Insights in 2020, and Jordan & Jordan's Market Data Reporting (MDR) business in 2021 and with these acquisitions is now positioned as the global market leader in the financial, legal, and professional services markets. TRG Screen's product portfolio includes subscription spend, usage, enquiry and compliance solutions. For more information visit trgscreen.com. Follow TRG Screen on LinkedIn, @TRG Screen, and on Twitter, @trgscreen. About Xpansion Xpansion delivers next-generation reference data solutions that empower financial institutions to streamline their reference data operations, reduce costs, enhance data quality, and improve data discovery. With a focus on customer satisfaction, continuous innovation and quick time to value, Xpansion is a trusted partner for financial institutions in the buy- and sell-side as well as solution providers in the industry.

Read More

Cloud Infrastructure Management

The Manufacturing Sector Experiences More Attacks in the Cloud than Any Other Industry

PR Newswire: | January 19, 2024

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, today revealed additional findings for the manufacturing sector from its survey of 1,610 IT and security professionals across more than 100 countries. According to the survey, 64% of companies in the manufacturing sector suffered a cyberattack during the preceding 12 months, which is similar to the finding among organizations overall (68%). However, it turned out that the manufacturing sector experiences more cloud infrastructure attacks than any other industry surveyed. Among manufacturing companies that detected an attack, 85% spotted phishing in the cloud compared to only 58% across all verticals; 43% faced user account compromise in the cloud as opposed to 27% among all industries; and 25% dealt with data theft by hackers in the cloud compared to 15% for organizations overall. "The manufacturing sector relies heavily on the cloud to work with their supply chain in real time. This makes their cloud infrastructure a lucrative target for attackers — infiltrating it enables them to move laterally and potentially compromise other linked organizations, as happened to one the world's top meat processing companies. Credential compromise or malware deployed via a phishing email is just the beginning of the attack," says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix. "The attack surface in the cloud is always expanding, so it's critical for manufacturing companies to adopt a defense-in-depth approach," adds Ilia Sotnikov, Security Strategist at Netwrix. "First, they must rigorously enforce the principle of least privilege to limit access to sensitive data, which ideally includes just-in-time access to eliminate unnecessary entry points for adversaries. They also need to gain deep visibility into when and how critical data in the cloud is being used so that IT teams can promptly spot potential threats. Finally, they need to be prepared to minimize the damage from incidents by having a comprehensive response strategy that is regularly exercised and updated." To learn more about security trends, check out the complete 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report. About Netwrix Netwrix makes data security easy. Since 2006, Netwrix solutions have been simplifying the lives of security professionals by enabling them to identify and protect sensitive data to reduce the risk of a breach, and to detect, respond to and recover from attacks, limiting their impact. More than 13,500 organizations worldwide rely on Netwrix solutions to strengthen their security and compliance posture across all three primary attack vectors: data, identity and infrastructure.

Read More

Cloud Storage

TRG Screen Announces Acquisition of Xpansion for Reference Data Usage Management

PR Newswire: | January 25, 2024

TRG Screen, the leading provider of enterprise subscription spend and usage management software, today announced it has acquired Xpansion, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for reference data usage monitoring in the financial services industry. The acquisition of Xpansion will further solidify TRG Screen's position as a global market leader in market data management solutions. Xpansion – established in 2013 – is focused on empowering data operations teams to proactively manage their usage, control costs and optimize data workflows. Xpansion's offerings include Xmon, Xprocess and Xplore, and provide real-time analytics, giving clients unprecedented transparency, visibility and control into their reference data usage. This deal consolidates TRG Screen's unique position as the only provider of enterprise subscription management capabilities spanning the whole spectrum of market data optimization, from spend and inventory tracking, through to usage and enquiry management, exchange reporting and compliance. "Xpansion and TRG Screen have been partners for many years. Bringing Xpansion into the TRG Screen family is a very logical next step for both companies, given our strong relationship and shared view that the industry demand for integrated usage management solutions is going to continue to grow," said TRG Screen CEO Leigh Walters. "Xpansion is an established firm with excellent customer satisfaction and retention, and highly experienced and industry respected leadership. We are very excited at the opportunities this acquisition brings." "We are thrilled to be joining TRG Screen," said Xpansion co-founder and CEO Amjad Zoghbi. "Reference data usage is one of the most complex aspects of market data management, and managing it correctly is essential to maintaining contractual compliance and ensuring clients are right-sizing their usage based on actual consumption and business need. I'm very pleased that Xpansion's customers, and team, will now be part of the best-of-breed solution with the industry's leading provider of market data management solutions." The acquisition demonstrates TRG Screen's ongoing commitment to servicing the needs of market data consumers, vendors and exchanges. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. About TRG Screen TRG Screen is the leading provider of enterprise subscription management solutions. Founded in 1998, TRG Screen is uniquely differentiated by its ability to monitor both spend and usage of data and information services including market data, research, software licenses, consulting and other corporate expenses. TRG Screen's solutions provide its customers with full transparency into their vendor relationships and their subscription spend and usage, enabling them to optimize their enterprise subscriptions. TRG acquired Priory Solutions in 2016, Screen Group in 2018, Axon Financial Systems in 2019, Market Data Insights in 2020, and Jordan & Jordan's Market Data Reporting (MDR) business in 2021 and with these acquisitions is now positioned as the global market leader in the financial, legal, and professional services markets. TRG Screen's product portfolio includes subscription spend, usage, enquiry and compliance solutions. For more information visit trgscreen.com. Follow TRG Screen on LinkedIn, @TRG Screen, and on Twitter, @trgscreen. About Xpansion Xpansion delivers next-generation reference data solutions that empower financial institutions to streamline their reference data operations, reduce costs, enhance data quality, and improve data discovery. With a focus on customer satisfaction, continuous innovation and quick time to value, Xpansion is a trusted partner for financial institutions in the buy- and sell-side as well as solution providers in the industry.

Read More

More featured news