RingCentral Enhances Channel Program, Hires Channel Veep

RingCentral has enhanced its channel program and appointed Zane Long as vice president of channel sales.

Long brings more than 13 years of channel experience to the RingCentral team, having previously served as vice president of Vonage’s Global Strategic Partner Group and Cbeyond’s national vice president of channel sales. He has spent his career developing business relationships with distributors and master agents in the channel community.

One of Long’s first initiatives will be to expand RingCentral’s master agent program, including adding a master agents tier, which will increase the number of sub-agents quoting and selling RingCentral products. Secondly, he will focus on enhancing the global channel presence by working with RingCentral distributors to gain access to new global partners.

“Enterprises of every type are realizing that cloud communication solutions are best positioned to support the modern workforce,” said Long. “As we see increased demand from our customers in the U.S. and abroad, engaging and working with the channel on a global scale will be absolutely critical to RingCentral’s continued growth. RingCentral has long been a pioneer in bringing the benefits of interoperability and cloud-based business communications to the enterprise, and I’m excited to help support our channel partners in this expansion.”

RingCentral’s channel sales program had a record year in 2015, driven by relationships with partners such as TechData, Westcon-Comstor, IngramMicro and Jenne. RingCentral will focus on launching additional strategic distribution partnerships in 2016.

To better serve current and future partners, RingCentral will be adding and redesigning existing channel manager roles to match the demands of the current channel landscape. One key differentiator in RingCentral’s channel program is its collaboration policy. For opportunities that would involve 50 or more users, RingCentral dedicates a subject matter expert to join the partner team and work with them to close the deal: full provisioning, implementation and customer service will come from RingCentral—while the commission goes to RingCentral partners.

“Our entire company is determined to make 2016 the year we substantially enhance our partner program into a world-class channel program that would be the model for other cloud-based companies,” said Ryan Azus, senior vice president of worldwide sales. “As a company, we plan to invest and work closely with channel partners to ensure our mutual success.”