iBoss
Visionary Cybersecurity Company iboss Relies on RingCentral to Support Global Collaboration and Growth
RingCentral has reduced onboarding time to one-third to one-quarter of what it was previously, so it lets us scale very easily.
Christopher Park
CIO, iboss
During iboss’s first decade (2003-2013), founders Paul and Peter Martini applied for patents and refined their revolutionary approach to cybersecurity. The next four years have been a whirlwind of global expansion and technological transformation, epitomized by the introduction of the company’s Distributed Gateway Platform in 2016.
The platform’s widespread success has earned iboss numerous awards, including being named a visionary in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for secure web gateways. iboss’s customers include state governments, educational and medical institutions, and large commercial enterprises.
PBX was out of step with company’s vision and progress
Christopher Park, iboss CIO, set up the company’s first phone system during the bootstrap years. “It was an open-source PBX that was good for a startup,” Park recalls. Over time, he brought in additional tools for web conferencing, screen sharing, and online chats.
A number of factors made it clear to Park that it was time to upgrade to a new communications solution. One was the PBX system itself. The servers required maintenance and no longer fit with the company’s move toward a cloud- and SaaS-based IT infrastructure.
The bigger driver was the company’s global expansion (EMEA, Latin America, and APAC) as well as the opening of additional offices across North America. Onboarding each new employee required Park’s team to set up accounts in as many as five different communications solutions—the phone, two conferencing solutions, and one or two different chat applications. With the exception of the phone system, it was also necessary to buy licenses for these tools for each employee, meaning communications costs were growing almost as fast as the company itself.
INDUSTRY
High Tech
HQ
Boston, MA
YEAR FOUNDED
2003
EMPLOYEES
200-300
One platform replaces five non-integrated solutions
Park resolved all of those concerns by replacing the previous communications system with the cloud-based RingCentral platform, consisting of RingEX™ for telephony, RingEX™ for online meetings, and RingCentral Video for team messaging and collaboration.
“Now onboarding is just a matter of creating one RingCentral account and the employee gets chat, phone, video conferencing and screen sharing,” says Park. “RingCentral has reduced onboarding time to one-third to one-quarter of what it was previously, so it lets us scale very easily.”
There are cost savings too, such as the elimination of the licensing fees for the chat and conferencing solutions ($12,000/year for one chat application alone). Also, employees who travel internationally can use the RingCentral Mobile app to reduce phone charges since many of their calls can be made for free through Wi-Fi connections.
Having RingCentral automatically pop up in Salesforce and Zendesk helps improve the productivity of our sales and support teams.
Christopher Park
CIO, iboss
Integrates with key applications
One of the reasons Park selected RingCentral was its integration with two of iboss’s business-critical applications, Salesforce® and Zendesk®. “Having RingCentral automatically pop up in Salesforce and Zendesk helps improve the productivity of our sales and support teams,” says Park. “It’s also a great way for us see how much time an employee is on the phone, for example, or how much time a customer is taking up in support. The RingCentral reports are great, and it’s the integration that gives us that visibility.”
Soon after deploying RingCentral, Park brought in an identity management system that integrates with RingCentral. Employees leverage Single Sign-on to securely access RingCentral from any device. “One reason we brought in an identity management system was to make our employees’ lives easier by having one password and Single Sign-on,” Park explains. “The other was the ability to tighten security with two-factor authentication.”
Communications across iboss have improved significantly since Park introduced RingCentral. Having access to a range of phone options—desk phones, softphones, and the Mobile app—as well as a phone directory already populated with extensions, simplifies phone use. Issues where quick responses are needed are typically handled in RingCentral Video, which is used across the organization. “RingCentral Video is definitely better than sending an email and having to wait for an answer. With RingCentral Video the answers come fast, and the work keeps moving forward,” says Park. RingEX ties the company’s offices together by making video conferencing easy to do. “Employees are very comfortable with RingCentral,” Park concludes.