Business description of RingCentral-Inc from last 10-k form

PART I.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and can be identified by terms such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “potential,” “predicts”, “projects,” “should,” “will,” “would” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about:

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We discuss these risks in greater detail in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect.

Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Overview

We are a leading provider of software-as-a-service, or SaaS, solutions for business communications. We believe that our innovative, cloud-based approach disrupts the large market for business communications solutions by providing flexible and cost-effective services that support distributed workforces, mobile employees and the proliferation of “bring-your-own” communications devices. We enable convenient and effective communications for our customers across all their locations, all their employees, all the time, thus enabling a more productive and dynamic workforce. RingCentral Office, our flagship service, is a multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution that enables our customers and their employees to communicate via voice, text, HD video and web conferencing and fax, on multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones.

Traditionally, businesses have used on-premise hardware-based communications systems, commonly referred to as private branch exchanges, or PBXs. These systems generally require specialized and expensive hardware that must be deployed at every business location and are primarily designed for employees working only at that location and using only their desk phones. In addition, these systems generally require significant upfront investment and ongoing maintenance and support costs.

Our solutions have been developed with a mobile-centric approach and can be configured, managed and used from a smartphone or tablet. We have designed our user interfaces to be intuitive and easy to use for both administrators and end-users. We believe that we can provide substantial savings to our customers because our services do not require the significant upfront investment in on-premise infrastructure hardware or ongoing maintenance costs commonly associated with on-premise systems. Our solutions generally use existing broadband connections. We design our solutions to be delivered to our customers with high reliability and quality of service using our proprietary high-availability and scalable infrastructure.

We primarily generate revenues by selling subscriptions for our cloud-based services. We focus on acquiring and retaining our customers and increasing their spending with us through adding additional users, upselling current customers to premium service editions, and providing additional features and functionality. We market and sell our services directly, through both our website and inside sales teams, as well as indirectly through a network of over 1,500 sales agents and resellers, including AT&T, which we refer to collectively as resellers. We have a differentiated business model that reduces the time and cost to purchase, activate and begin using our services. We generally offer free trials to prospective customers, allowing them to evaluate our solutions before making a purchasing decision.

We have a diverse and growing customer base comprised of over 300,000 businesses across a wide range of industries, including advertising, consulting, finance, healthcare, legal, real estate, retail and technology. To date, we have focused our principal efforts on the market for small- and medium-sized businesses, defined by IDC as less than 1,000 employees, in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. We are making investments in an effort to address larger customers. We also believe that there is an additional growth opportunity in international markets.

Our Solutions

Our cloud-based business communications solutions provide a single user identity across multiple locations and devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones, and allow for communication across multiple channels, including voice, text, HD video and web conferencing and fax. Our proprietary solutions enable a more productive and dynamic workforce, and have been architected using industry standards to meet modern business communications requirements, including workforce mobility, “bring-your-own” communications device environments and multiple communications channels.

Our solutions are delivered using a high-availability and, scalable infrastructure and are designed for easy self-service activation, provisioning and management with minimal technical expertise or training required. Our solutions scale easily and rapidly, allowing our customers to add new users regardless of where they are located. They are generally affordable, requiring little to no upfront infrastructure hardware costs or ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs commonly associated with on-premise systems. RingCentral Office, our flagship offering, is a multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution. We sell RingCentral Office in three editions: Standard, Premium and Enterprise. We also offer RingCentral Professional, primarily an inbound call routing service with additional text and fax capabilities targeting smaller deployments, and RingCentral Fax, an Internet fax service that permits sending and receiving faxes over the Internet.

We believe that our solutions provide not only the core functionality of existing on-premise communications solutions, but also additional key benefits that address the changing requirements of business to allow business communications using voice, SMS, fax and HD video and web conferencing. The key benefits of our solutions include: