David Lee recently joined RingCentral as a vice president of product management. He’s worked at WebEx, Yahoo, Box and as an aerospace engineer – so if anyone is qualified to work on cloud products, it’s him (pun intended). Here’s David on why he is coming on board:
In the nearly 14 years I have spent in tech, I have been privileged to witness, participate in and contribute to the cloud revolution that global businesses are enjoying today. Over that time, the nature and jargon of hosted enterprise services have changed, but many of the core winning factors have not.
Whether it’s called ASP, SaaS or cloud, the companies that come out on top all share some basic formulas. It’s not rocket science, but when I look for new professional opportunities, I look for these trends being fulfilled:
- Deliver NEW value, not just rip-and-replace.
In the early days of ASP, the value mantras were capital expenditures and cost savings. Vendors that focused exclusively on delivering those values often found it difficult to compete and keep customers as their needs matured. Inherent to the success of my previous company, Box, was its ability to deliver value above and beyond what hosted services like FTP, Sharepoint, and Documentum could: a hyper-mobile, social, and constantly updated product that IT can deploy and govern. - Performance and uptime.
Delivering new value isn’t enough. Many cloud service providers forget that – like it or not – customers can only leverage the value-added nature of the cloud when their table-stake requirements are fulfilled. Companies that focus on basic performance and uptime at a global scale are the ones who win. WebEx often beat out its competitors based on the stability, speed and worldwide reach of its MediaTone network alone. - Follow the consumers.
The consumerization of enterprise software is not just a marketing catch-phrase, it’s reality. Knowledge workers today are involved not just in using technology, but also in choosing the best technology that’s available. Consumer software has always thrived on its ability to cater to the constantly morphing needs of its users. Enterprise cloud companies like WebEx and Box who are on top of consumer trends (both deployed iPad apps on launch day and sought to maintain high app store ratings) become thought leaders in the space.
When I decided to join the RingCentral team, it was very clear that this was a company that understood these basic tenets of successful cloud service. I am super invigorated about helping this well-positioned team to conquer the cloud business communication market.
Originally published Sep 12, 2013, updated Aug 07, 2020