Video Transcription
Chris Frey:
The next one, the PBX used to have all kinds of things connected to it. We had all these switches, granted it's an IP phone system, but we still had things like analog phones, fax machines, overhead paging. What should customers consider when moving to a cloud solution regarding those types of devices?
Garry Simpson:
This again, I think back to your point of change, really comes in very important, which is those things have to be evaluated early on. We can in the cloud handle analog phones, fax machines, paging systems. Those are things that we can do, but it's important to make sure that the SE staff, the sales engineering staff, your sales people from the cloud, in this case RingCentral, really know what you're looking to do.
Because there are occasions where we do have to put hardware in to terminate analog lines or to connect to a fax machine or to set up paging. As long as we know about those things early, we can definitely accomplish them, but it is, to your point of change, something that you should consider well early to make sure that whatever changes that might occur because we do it in a slightly different way are comfortable to you and that it's going to work out the way you want.
I've been on a lot of installs where we can do high-density faxing for analog lines... I'm sorry, high-density analog for analog lines, for faxing we can put in systems to allow current fax machines to work, or for paging, we put in a SIP paging adapter to continue overhead paging. It all can be done, but it's important that it's done and discussed early.
Chris Frey:
With all this change, we have change to end user behavior, we have change in administrative behavior, there's potential change... And we're not talking big change. We're talking relatively minor changes. How do you feel that customers fair with all this change once they've made the move to a UCaaS environment with Ring? They look back at it say, "That wasn't that bad." Right?
Garry Simpson:
Yeah. There is change. The change is going to be difficult. All change is, doesn't matter what kind of change it is. I used to work for a guy who I love dearly and he used to always say, "If you don't like change, you're going to hate extinction." That is the truth of the matter, is that these things do change. It doesn't even matter if you go from one onsite phone system to another onsite phone system, change occurs.
What we found is that customers do find those change points, but generally in most cases what they're doing is they're finding out that the new world gives them new avenues, new opportunities, and they generally don't look back. Once they've moved into cloud and they're comfortable there, they generally don't go back to an on-prem system because they've gone through those changes, they've succumbed over any of those obstacles that were in their way, and it allows them to get into that new world and really do what they want to do.
It is there, but like I say, most customers once they get through it, they don't look back.
Chris Frey:
I think I can speak for all of us here that all the customers that we have moved into softphone only, the numbers that have come back and said, "I change my mind. I want a phone." I don't know how many of those there are, but it's got to be very, very few. Would you agree with that statement?
Garry Simpson (34:22):
I would agree with that, yeah. Again, going back to what I said earlier, it's because it's not just a phone anymore. The software gives you all these different avenues of communication. I think that's one of the reasons people like it, is once you've landed there, all of a sudden all these new avenues are open to you.