z ring2 alcatel

8/8/2019 z Ring2 Alcatel

1/4

The Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch 8460 Advanced Communications Server (ACS) is at the core of

Ring2s unique, award-winning conferencing solution and service offering.

Alcatel-Lucent helps Ring2 achieve anotheryear of high growth for its conferencing service

CASE STUDY MARKET: SERVICES COUNTRY: UNITED KINGDOM


2/4

2 Ring2 conferencing

Case study Services United kingdom

smartphone applications. Users can manage scheduling in just a

couple of clicks, directly from Outlook like any other meeting.

As soon as their first guest joins the call, the host receives an alert

to their PC and/or smartphone. Prompted by this alert, witha single click they can view a real-time list of everyone who has

joined their meeting. The user can then easily join the call from a

phone of their choice, add missing participants, mute participants

with distracting background noise, record the call and even assign

billing codes passed directly to end-of-month invoices.

FULL SUPPORT FOR SMARTPHONES

Most importantly, Ring2 offers the worlds first conference calling

service with full in-call control from smartphones. Support is

currently offered for BlackBerry and Windows platforms, and the

company is launching a version for iPhone in Q3 2010.

The smartphone version of the controller is increasingly important

as so many conference calls are made away from the desk. Research

from Wainhouse suggests that 40% of calls are made from meeting

rooms, where users benefit from a private, quiet environment and

high-quality speakerphone. Ring2s own research suggests that

only 30% of calls are actually made from the desk. As a result,

when a Ring2 user receives an alert to their smartphone, they can

confidently join the call wherever they happen to be. Ring2s mobile

control application is presently used on 61% of calls by users who

have the application, demonstrating its ease-of-use and value.

ADDRESSING CUSTOMER NEEDS YIELDS HIGH

GROWTH

Ring2 is achieving extraordinary growth rates in a highly competitive

market. Steve Flavell, the companys Co-CEO and Co-Founder,

explains: I think were achieving this kind of growth because so

many conference callers relate to the pain points that our service

uniquely addresses: they like the simplicity and usability of our

conferencing experience.OmniTouch 8460 ACS helps Ring2 meet

customer needs in a couple of key ways, notes Flavell. It enables us

to offer and emphasize a higher level of underlying voice quality and

consistency, and its flexible APIs allow us to be fast to market with

our own innovation.

HOW SIP IMPROVES THE USER EXPERIENCE

Alcatel-Lucents OmniTouch 8460 ACS is a scalable and robust

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software-based development

platform that deploys media-blended applicationsvoice, video, data,

and presenceto enterprises and service providers.

The flexible and feature-rich SIP and XML APIs enable the rapid

development of a wide range of real-time applications and services

for hosted and premise-based deployments across wireless and

DRIVING BUSINESS GROWTH BY SOLVING

FAMILIAR BUSINESS PROBLEMS

Ring2 is a pioneering business conferencing services company

with offices in Europe and the US. In 2006, it introduced itsaward-winning conferencing service, with the Alcatel-Lucent

OmniTouch 8460 Advanced Communications Server (ACS)

platform for media mixing at its core. Building upon OmniTouch

8460 ACS and its f lexible XML application programming

interfaces (APIs), Ring2 has developed a proprietary, user-centric

solution for conference management and control from Outlook,

the web and smartphones. Their solution addresses longstanding

problems and frustrations that have plagued the conferencing

industry and provides a smoother experience for both the call

host and participants.

Today, Ring2 is managing stacked OmniTouch 8460 ACS ports

in both the US and UK to support over 7 million minutes of

monthly usage. They have leveraged their technology partnership

with Alcatel-Lucent to achieve phenomenal business growth:

following three-digit growth in 2008, Ring2 recorded 130%

growth in 2009, recording triple-digit growth in each of 2008

and 2009 and negligible churn rates, virtually unheard of in this

industry.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO IMPROVE USABILITY

Reservationless dial-in services still dominate the audio-

conferencing market due to their simplicity for the end user.Wainhouse Research reports that only 6% of audio conference calls

include data sharing. Mainstream users remain reluctant to use web

conferencing, whether out of intimidation or inexperience.

Yet many dial-in services also present their own set of challenges that

users have come to accept. These include problems with access codes;

being unable to keep track of participants on calls; adding missing

participants; and the inability to mute distracting background noise.

Most service offerings on the market have attempted to address these

issues, for example, by providing touchtone control commands or

non-integrated web-based tools. However, these limited solutions

tend to have usage rates of under 1%. Users do not know what the

touchtones are and are reluctant to experiment for fear of disrupting

the call. Non-integrated web pages require usernames and passwords,

which are generally too cumbersome to remember seconds before

they host a conference.

Ring2s unique solution maintains a familiar reservationless dial-in

system at the heart of its service, but improves usability by providing

the host with simple tools to schedule, join and control their

conference calls all integrated with Outlook, the web and


3/4

Ring2 conferencing 3

Case study Services United kingdom

wireline networks. The SIP APIs within ACS can control voice

participants and user presence for example when creating sub

conference rooms for private conversations within a contact center

scenario.

The XML APIs allow for integration of telephony, audio

conferencing, and web collaboration into any web-based

application, as when launching a browser window from an online

shopping site or a CRM application to start an instant messaging

(IM), web collaboration or conference call.

RING2 AND ALCATEL-LUCENT: PARTNERING TO CUT

COSTS AND SPEED INNOVATION

Ring2 selected Alcatel-Lucent in order to reduce time to market

(TTM) and development costs for its unique conferencing

solution. According to Flavell, Back in the run-up to our 2006

launch, we were a young, entrepreneurial company with limited

resources. We needed to work with a core mixing platform and

partner that could guarantee rapid TTM. OmniTouch 8460

ACS reduced our TTM by 60% and meant we could keep our

development team and costs at a manageable level.

Ring2 was keenly aware that being the first to market with such

a solution would mean rapid call volume growth, especially from

the professional services market. The OmniTouch 8460 Advanced

RING2S RECIPEFOR SUCCESSBUILD UPON ALCATEL-LUCENTS

STANDARDS-BASED ARCHITECTURE

The standards-based SIP platform enables

significant customization possibilities. Tailor

your winning solution to the demands of your

unique market.

KEEP TECHNOLOGY SIMPLE FOR

YOUR CUSTOMERS

Work with end users to develop targeted

service offerings that solve their everyday

collaboration challenges.

INCREASE FLEXIBILITY TO SPEED TIME

TO MARKET

Ring2 saw a 60% reduction in development

time with OmniTouch 8460 ACS, thanks to its

flexible APIs.

LEVERAGE ALCATEL-LUCENTSNETWORK-BASED SOLUTION

A low TCO hosted service with no equipment

purchase costs benefits budget-conscious end

users from all market sectors.

THE ALCATEL-LUCENT AND RING2 SOLUTION

Server stacks in US and UK

26,000 provisioned users per stack

VoIP or TDM

7 million minutes of use per month, with

continuing triple-digit annual growth rate

Service billed on a per-minute basis at

regional market rate

Unique, integrated web and smartphone

tools to solve common conferencing

frustrations

Target market: corporate and SME

Target channel: resellers, including wireless

operators


4/4

www.alcatel-lucent.com Alcatel, Lucent, Alcatel-Lucent and the Alcatel-Lucent logo are trademarks of Alcatel-Lucent. All other trademarks are the propertyof their respective owners. The information presented is subject to change without notice. Alcatel-Lucent assumes no responsibility for inaccuracies contained herein.Copyright 2009 Alcatel-Lucent. All rights reserved. 06/2010

Case study services United kingdom

Communication Server has the scalable, rapidly deployable

toolset needed to serve this market. Ring2 was able to leverage

proven Alcatel-Lucent technology to get to market quickly with asimple, flexible, robust and massively scalable solution.

Five years into this relationship, ACS has proven itself as a very

robust platform for service providers and enterprises, continues

Flavell. At Ring2 were really using only a small part of the ACS

capabilities at this time, but what makes ACS so appealing and

sets it apart from the competition, is that it meets the service

providers need for a future-proof solution with next generation

capabilities for a potential range of unified communications

products and services.

CAPITALIZING ON A RARE MARKET OPPORTUNITY

FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS

There remains a relatively untapped opportunity for wireless

operators and other telecommunications service providers to

increase average revenue per user (ARPU) and penetrate the large

enterprise market by introducing improved conferencing and

collaboration services. Alcatel-Lucents customizable

OmniTouch 8460 ACS, in combination with Ring2s

differentiated solution and service offering, facilitates rapid entry

into this multi-billion dollar market.

As a media and applications server,OmniTouch 8460 ACS is part

of the Alcatel-LucentOmniTouchUnified Communications suite.

As such, it lays the foundation for many existing Alcatel-Lucent

communication applications, includingOmniTouch 8660 My

Teamwork, a conferencing and collaboration suite tailored to

businesses of all sizes and carrier providers.

With ten years of software development expertise,OmniTouch

8460 ACS is a scalable and robust SIP, software-based development

platform with proven performance reliability and scalability.

Customers benefit by integrating theOmniTouch 8460 ACS

blended media applications into their existing business workflow

processes to optimize their investments and improve efficiencies

around a familiar user interface. For carriers, enterprises, service

providers and system integrators, the feature-rich SIP and XML

application programming interfaces (APIs) enable the rapid

deployment of competitive real-time applications that solve existing

challenges for their customer base.

ABOUT RING2

Ring2 Conferencing, a business conferencing services providerin Europe and the US, delivers unique services that address

longstanding challenges that have plagued the conferencing

industry. Ring2s customers benefit from a solution and service

that offers an in integrated experience with Outlook, web and

smartphone tools, resulting in smoother calls and improved

visibility, security and control. Ring2 has won numerous

awards, including recognition from Frost & Sullivan, CNET,

Red Herring, FOSE, allblackberry.com and the Comms

Business Awards. The company is a member of the BlackBerry

Independent Software Vendor Alliance Program, has a global

licensing relationship with BT, and is an Alcatel-Lucent

technology partner.

A robust, scalable platform and quick

time to market were Ring2s main

priorities when selecting

Alcatel-Lucents OmniTouch 8460 ACS

for its conferencing offerings.

z ring2 alcatel

Documents