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Unified Communications Week in Review: Fusion, RingCentral, and Enterprise UC

By Ken Briodagh
Editorial Director

Let’s get Unified, and Communicate the newest Unified Communications Week in Review.

The role of enterprise IT teams has evolved dramatically in recent years, and now includes workforce effectiveness, security, compliance and productivity.  As a result, enterprises have new challenges in addressing Unified Communication & Collaboration (UC&C) strategies. In this article this week, we look at the top six considerations for enterprises in adopting a UC&C strategy.

At a time of mass migration to the cloud, vendors selling technologies supporting this trend are experiencing much the same as those selling pickaxes during the gold rush. Business is booming, and expectations are sky high, namely SD-WAN. This week, Fusion announced the acquisition of MegaPath, bringing the private company’s comprehensive portfolio of cloud services including SD-WAN UCaaS, security, cloud connectivity and more to an already robust Fusion arsenal. Put simply, the acquisition provides a highly scalable, customizable and robust back office OSS platform to support enterprise. 

It’s an exciting time for RingCentral. Gartner last year again named RingCentral (News - Alert) a Magic Quadrant worldwide leader in the Unified Communications as a Service space. RingCentral’s channel sales AVP Jeff Winnett spoke on a UC and telecom panel at MSP Expo. And this week the company announced its expansion in Asia Pacific with a new office in Australia, new RingCentral APAC leadership, and the addition of some important channel partners. RingCentral has tapped Ben Swanson as director of channels for APAC.

Cloud communications are picking up steam, as growing adoption rates are cementing the future of this transformative technology. Providers are positioning for future prosperity, and a popular method of doing so is through mergers and acquisitions. Fusion is a firm well versed in the facilitation of growth via acquisition, and this week finalized the purchase of Birch Communications Cloud and Business Services business.  The deal included 50 million shares of Fusion common stock and refinances Birch’s debt totaling $444 million, with a total value of the transaction around $600 million.