RingCentral Unites SD-WAN and Unified Communications

RingCentral, a cloud-based communications provider, joined forces with a number of SD-WAN vendors and providers — including VMware (VeloCloud), CloudGenix, Riverbed, Cradlepoint, Windstream, and GTT Communications — to promote collaboration between its unified communications offerings and SD-WAN. This RingCentral SD-WAN partnership program is designed to ensure interoperability between RingCentral’s cloud communication and collaboration products and the SD-WAN offerings of the vendors in the program. These partnerships are not just certifications. Some of the partners are making it easier for customers to optimize their networks for RingCentral’s technologies. Windstream and VeloCloud, now a part of VMware, created specific application profiles for RingCentral customers. GTT and Windstream will also leverage these profiles as these service providers use VeloCloud for their own SD-WAN offerings. Additionally, the company is working with the SD-WAN vendors and providers involved to build joint sales engagements and enable mutual channel partners. RingCentral’s main product offering is its cloud phone system, Office, which provides cloud PBX, team messaging, video, and other cloud-enabled communications capabilities. SD-WAN offers an additional layer of network reliability to deliver these services, which require large amounts of bandwidth. In addition, SD-WAN helps deliver optimized unified communication services with reduced jitter, packet loss, and latency.