創新企業之星

鈴盛公司

公司收入：不詳

公司總部：加州圣馬特奧市

所屬行業：電信業

成立時間：2003年

員工人數：300

????2003年，當弗拉德?史姆尼斯成立互聯網電話系統鈴盛公司（RingCentra）時，人們提到“云”這個字眼兒時，更多想到的是“雨”，而不是計算機運算。史姆尼斯相信，借鑒財務軟件行業Netsuite公司和客戶關系管理（CRM）行業Salesforce.com網站的做法，通過實現互聯網電話服務的流媒體化，他有能力戰勝傳統的電話系統供應商。他回憶道：“我覺得，正確的解決方案是把電話系統納入云中。拋棄電話間或軟件許可證之類的東西，把它當作服務來提供就可以了。”現在，基于云計算的電話服務領域市場相當擁擠，鈴盛公司的競爭對手不僅包括小公司8X8，還包括行業巨頭威瑞森（Verizon）、阿爾卡特（Alcatel）和朗訊公司（Lucent）等。但是，史姆尼斯憑借精準定位已經在電訊細分市場占據一席之地：提供流化服務一攬子解決方案，重點鎖定員工人數不足200的企業客戶。目前，公司號稱擁有20萬個企業客戶，并已與美國電話電報公司（AT&T）簽約，轉售后者的服務。市場研究機構Infonetics公司的電信分析師黛安?邁爾斯說：“鈴盛公司很清楚自己的潛在客戶是誰，并且在保持簡單運作方面做的很好。”

????——理查德?麥吉爾?墨菲

????（翻譯 喬樹靜）

RingCentral

Revenue: Not available

Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.

Industry: Telecommunications

Founded: 2003

Employees: 300

????When Vlad Shmunis launched Internet telephony startup RingCentral back in 2003, the word "cloud" was more commonly associated with rain than with computing. Taking a page from NetSuite in the accounting software space and Salesforce.com in CRM, Shmunis bet that he could beat traditional telecom providers by streaming phone service over the Internet. "I felt the right solution was to take telephony into the cloud," Shmunis recalls. "Forget the box, forget the software license, just deliver it as a service." Today RingCentral competes in a fairly crowded market for cloud-based telephony, including smaller players like 8X8 as well as Goliaths like Verizon, Alcatel and Lucent. But Shmunis has carved out a distinct niche in the telecom market, offering streamlined service packages aimed mostly at business customers with fewer than 200 employees. Today the company boasts about 200,000 business customers and has signed up AT&T to resell its services. "RingCentral knows who its market is and has done a good job of keeping it simple," says Diane Myers, a telecom analyst at market research firm Infonetics.

????--R.M.M.