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Phil Sorgen Heads to RingCentral

Longtime senior Microsoft partner and sales executive Phil Sorgen has moved to RingCentral Inc.

Sorgen took on the role of Chief Revenue Officer at Belmont, Calif.-based RingCentral earlier this month.

The publicly traded company specializes in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions with an emphasis on the voice end of the space. The company's flagship product, RingCentral Office, is a cloud-based PBX system. The company also offers products for meetings and webinars. Integrations with Microsoft Office products and collaboration services have made Microsoft a key longtime technology partner for RingCentral.

That partnership was somewhat complicated in April when RingCentral launched RingCentral Video, a voice, video, screen sharing and team messaging platform that coincides with the COVID-19-related global surge in remote work. However, with launch integrations with Microsoft Teams and Office 365, the move was more of a direct shot across the bow of Zoom, which had previously provided the video technology for RingCentral Meetings.

In roughly two decades at Microsoft, Sorgen's highest-profile role was as global channel chief -- formally the corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group -- between 2013 and 2016. He shifted laterally to the U.S. subsidiary, where he was most recently CVP for the Microsoft Enterprise Commercial Group, a key sales management role encompassing both internal teams and partner engagement. Previous roles at Microsoft included CVP for the U.S. Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partner (SMS&P), President for Microsoft Canada and General Manager of Enterprise Partner Group National Sales.

"Phil's leadership is defined by his deep customer and partner relationships, a customer-first mindset and a track record of building sustainable growth businesses at [global] scale," said Anand Eswaran, president and COO at RingCentral, in a statement. "As we continue to enable our customers to thrive during these unprecedented times, Phil will lead the way in driving a powerful partner and customer ecosystem and take us through our next growth phase."

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 13, 2020


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