Nextiva Targets RingCentral, Doubles Partner Investment

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our most recent list of important channel-program changes you should know.**

NEXTIVA NEXTCON — Nextiva says its channel-partner revenue grew 100 percent year-over-year.

The company on Tuesday laid out multiple statistics that show the growth of its partner program, Nextiva’s revenues and the unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) industry in general. Nextiva channel chief Ira Feuerstein and president Tracy Conrad shared the numbers during the State of the Union partner keynote Tuesday at the NextCon conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nextiva’s Ira Feuerstein

Nextiva’s numbers show the unified communications market growing 20 percent year-over-year. The opportunity is incredibly ripe, with a UCaaS market penetration of only 8 percent. The company says it competes with 120 other UCaaS providers, with 10 exiting the market last year. Some of those competitors went out of business, while some were gobbled up by larger companies. Feuerstein and Conrad told the partner audience that they hope to stay the course in the midst of industry M&A.

“When you’re looking people in the eyes, and you’re talking to your customers (and so is somebody else), you want to make sure three years from now, five years from now – 10 years from now – they’re not being consolidated to another company, just another number to be disrupted in their business and/or partner relationship. So when you look at Nextiva and you have a partnership with us, that won’t be changing,” Conrad said.

Nextiva says it is slotted in sixth place in UCaaS after coming in ninth two years ago. RingCentral was first with 6.5 percent market share, followed by 8×8, Vonage, Verizon, AT&T and Nextiva. Feuerstein pointed out that all of those companies are public, except for Nextiva.

“I’m telling you right here, right now; I personally have a target on RingCentral,” he said. “There’s a big bullseye target on them, and we’re coming for them. We’re growing tremendously fast.”

Nextiva also touted the investments it has made in its partner program. The company has doubled its channel team, with 35 channel managers. Feuerstein called up a large contingent of 20-30 Nextiva channel personnel out of the audience and onto the stage. Feuerstein and Conrad said that investment has led to a 100 percent year-over-year revenue increase for the company’s partners. The company itself improved by 54 percent.

NextOS

The speakers reviewed Nextiva’s new and upcoming offerings for 2017, with an emphasis on the NextOS communications platform that the company recently started making available to select businesses.

Feuerstein calls the platform, which attempts to …