Alcatel-Lucent helps Ring2 achieve another

year of high growth for its conferencing service

CASE STUDY MARKET: SERVICES COUNTRY: UNITED KINGDOM

The Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch 8460 Advanced Communications Server (ACS) is at the core of
Ring2’s unique, award-winning conferencing solution and service offering.
 Case study • Services • United kingdom
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 its
award-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 flexible 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.
Ring2’s 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
2 • Ring2 conferencing
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, with
a 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 world’s 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. Ring2’s 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. Ring2’s 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 company’s Co-CEO and Co-Founder,
explains: “I think we’re 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-Lucent’s OmniTouch 8460 ACS is a scalable and robust
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software-based development
platform that deploys media-blended applications—voice, video, data,
and presence—to 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
 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. RING2’S RECIPE
The XML APIs allow for integration of telephony, audio FOR SUCCESS
conferencing, and web collaboration into any web-based
application, as when launching a browser window from an online BUILD UPON ALCATEL-LUCENT’S
shopping site or a CRM application to start an instant messaging STANDARDS-BASED ARCHITECTURE
(IM), web collaboration or conference call. The standards-based SIP platform enables
significant customization possibilities. Tailor
RING2 AND ALCATEL-LUCENT: PARTNERING TO CUT your winning solution to the demands of your
COSTS AND SPEED INNOVATION unique market.
Ring2 selected Alcatel-Lucent in order to reduce time to market
(TTM) and development costs for its unique conferencing KEEP TECHNOLOGY SIMPLE FOR
solution. According to Flavell, “Back in the run-up to our 2006 YOUR CUSTOMERS
launch, we were a young, entrepreneurial company with limited Work with end users to develop targeted
resources. We needed to work with a core mixing platform and service offerings that solve their everyday
partner that could guarantee rapid TTM. OmniTouch 8460 collaboration challenges.
ACS reduced our TTM by 60% and meant we could keep our
development team and costs at a manageable level.” INCREASE FLEXIBILITY TO SPEED TIME
TO MARKET
Ring2 was keenly aware that being the first to market with such Ring2 saw a 60% reduction in development
a solution would mean rapid call volume growth, especially from time with OmniTouch 8460 ACS, thanks to its
the professional services market. The OmniTouch 8460 Advanced flexible APIs.

LEVERAGE ALCATEL-LUCENT’S
NETWORK-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

Ring2 conferencing • 3
 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 a
simple, 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 we’re 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
provider’s 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-Lucent’s customizable
OmniTouch 8460 ACS, in combination with Ring2’s
A robust, scalable platform and quick
time to market were Ring2’s main
priorities when selecting
Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniTouch 8460 ACS
for its conferencing offerings.
www.alcatel-lucent.com Alcatel, Lucent, Alcatel-Lucent and the Alcatel-Lucent logo are trademarks of Alcatel-Lucent. All other trademarks are the property
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Copyright © 2009 Alcatel-Lucent. All rights reserved. 06/2010
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-Lucent OmniTouch Unified Communications suite.
As such, it lays the foundation for many existing Alcatel-Lucent
communication applications, including OmniTouch 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 the OmniTouch 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 provider
in Europe and the US, delivers unique services that address
longstanding challenges that have plagued the conferencing
industry. Ring2’s 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.