Google Continues Quest for Enterprise with RingCentral Partnership

Google has formed a partnership with cloud phone and communication provider RingCentral to offer an enterprise solution package that competes with the combination of Office 365 and Skype for Business. RingCentral Office Google Edition will be packaged with Google Apps Unlimited for $30 per month per user.

Google generally does not partner with other software vendors, preferring to build or buy its way into markets, but in this case it has chosen to integrate RingCentral with Google Apps and Google Hangouts to provide enterprise communications which the companies said is richer and more robust than Office 365 and Skype.

“Google’s impact on the enterprise is significant as more CIOs and IT decision makers make the jump to the cloud and move away from legacy on-premise infrastructure,” said Vlad Shmunis, chairman, founder and CEO of RingCentral. “Our recognition as a leader in the Gartner 2015 Magic Quadrant for UCaaS Worldwide and our status in the ‘Recommended for Google Apps’ program can give enterprises the confidence in RingCentral as a high quality, reliable, and secure communications solution. Together with Google, we look forward to helping enterprises maximize their cloud investments with an unprecedented, integrated communications and productivity solution.”  

RingCentral custom built a new tier of RingCentral with WebRTC to fully integrate with Google products, allowing single sign-on access and calling from within Google Apps. Existing Google customers can add it for $20 a month.

The offering will initially be available through the channel, starting with premier Google for Work reseller Agosto. Availability in Canada and the UK will follow shortly after launch in the US in late summer.

RingCentral became publically traded in 2013 with a $90 million IPO.