Video Transcription
Chris Frey:
You mentioned softphone, that's a great lead into my next question. I know we see the trending rise in softphone use. You probably have a slightly different perspective or see it on a larger scale or level than what we see. What is your opinion on the future of softphone?
Garry Simpson:
Well, it's interesting. The period of time that we've just been through with COVID really changed a lot of things. In the past, you would always hear that, "My users aren't comfortable with change and they want a desk phone on their desk and they want to be able to pick up the handset and make a call." COVID really taught us that, hey, if we need to work in a softphone world, we can do it, and users of all ilks can do it. I think that's one of the big changes.
The other thing is that the softphone really has morphed into being more than just a softphone. Nowadays you're talking about maybe chat, text, fax, video meetings, paging, analog devices. You're having a lot more types of communications than just purely a phone call going through a piece of software. Now the desk phone becomes less of a vital device because these other modes of communication are just as important for me to speak with people.
Text being one of the ones that... I always joke, I don't talk to my kids anymore. I text them, even if they're in the same house with me. The software becomes really critical because I may be calling people, but I might turn around two seconds later and text somebody or receive a fax or get into a video meeting. That really has taken that softphone trajectory and really exponentially moved that curve up.
Chris Frey:
It's interesting. My daughter got her first phone not too long ago and she would only FaceTime and/or send an SMS and she couldn't understand the idea of dialing a phone number to actually call me. That just breaks my heart as a phone guy. The ShoreTel on-prem PBX was... Right? Tagline. It was brilliantly simple.
Garry Simpson:
Yes.
Chris Frey:
Had a pretty easy-to-use interface from an administrative standpoint, easier than most PBXs that I had encountered. It's where I learned and got my chops in the business. What can customers expect when moving to a cloud PBX from an administration standpoint?
Garry Simpson:
I think this is one of the things that really appeals to a lot of customers coming from the ShoreTel/Mitel world, is that the same concept of keep it simple stupid that we had in the old days of let's make it so that it works and it's not hard to manage or hard to maintain, that really lives on in RingCentral. The concept is if we can get in and do what we need to do and get out, then communications management becomes less of an issue.
I don't have to spend all day trying to figure out how to get a user configured or sites connected or new telephone numbers added. Any of those things really have become much easier. The other thing too is that the interface itself, because it is the cloud, has changed. A lot of that middleware of analog lines, PRIs, T1s, SIP trunking, all of that goes away. Now you've got an interface that's even easier because it doesn't have that middleware piece that you have to worry about.
It really only has the two pieces of the end user, what tools do they need? And the administrator, what tools do they need? I think a lot of people moving to... I know this from firsthand experience, moving from ShoreTel and/or Mitel to RingCentral can see that same design philosophy and really appreciate that when they get in there to manage the system, it's not hard to do so. In a lot of cases people can do it themselves.