 Live from Orlando, Florida, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, covering Enterprise Connect 2016. Brought to you by Oracle ZDLRA, Vonage and CafeX. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Jim Burton. Hello everyone, welcome to Enterprise Connect 2016. This is theCUBE's Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal noise. We're live here in Orlando for special coverage of Enterprise Connect 2016. I'm John Furrier with Alan Mazur, the CEO of Vonage, former Googler, really transforming Vonage into a cloud, big time player in the unified communications, which is changing really into digital transformation. Alan, welcome to theCUBE. John, thank you very much. This market really is on fire. I mean, unified communications. We've seen that, I would say, kind of stagnant over the years, but now with cloud and the technologies with mobile and in memory, all these cool under the hood advancements. Unified communications is where all the action is. So tell us, what's so transformative about this space? Well, it is, you know, it's interesting. And the move to the cloud has happened, obviously, you know, pick your acronym, whether it was CRM or HRM software, what have you. And communication is just inevitable that it's moving to the cloud. And what you have now is it's hit a tipping point that, you know, the growth rates are really fast. And also if you look at, you know, like any new disruptive technology, it comes from the bottom up. So it started on sort of the micro business and SMB side, but it's moving up. And now it's in truly large enterprise. So our strategy has been to serve the full range of companies, whether they're the micro business side, all the way up to truly large enterprise and multi thousand seats. And we referred up 2015 as our transformational year because we made extraordinary progress moving from our roots in residential, now over to the business side. So Vonage has really made a name because I was a pioneer, certainly in the voiceover IP space, as a disruptor. Disrupting the telcos, the I-Lex, the last mile, whatever you want to call it. But now we're seeing disruption where IT is being disrupting because most companies really are deploying IT, in some cases don't even have IT with cloud native technologies. This move to the cloud really is moving IT to a different role. How do you see that playing out and what is Vonage doing in particular today to take advantage of that trend? So the move to cloud is, again, this is a seismic shift in our industry. When I came in from Google a year and a half ago, we had just begun this pivot into the business side because the move to cloud was sort of, again, it's transforming everything. We've now done four additional acquisitions. So from a dead stop a little over two years ago where we were 100% residential, now we're about a third business where the business side is growing much quicker than the residential side. And ultimately you're going to come to know Vonage as business more than its residential roots. If you will, leveraging our past as a VoIP pioneer and a disruptive technology and we kind of invented the VoIP category 15 years ago. And we're really doing that again in the business side. And it's not just UCAS, it's not just the fact that the communications, your video, voice, and text has moved to the cloud. The beauty of that by having it on IP is that it makes everything device agnostic. You're not tethered to one device, whether it's a landline phone or even a cell phone. The fact that it's IP based is that it's device agnostic. It works across all your hardware, regardless of operating system. And then you marry that with other cloud services beyond communications, whether it's infrastructure as a service, virtual desktop, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, et cetera, et cetera. So those are a slew of services that we provide. And the whole set of services are then integrated in with other elements of your, of the workflow tools that businesses use, whether it's Salesforce or Google for Work or Office 365, et cetera. And you get this integration which is really changing the way people work and the way companies operate. You know, one of the things that's exciting is this whole consumerization of IT. It's been kind of like the cliche, if you will, over the years. But now more than ever, you're seeing the consumer technology, certainly since the iPhone was launched in 2007. Now, still kind of in its teen years, it's only not even 10 years old. You're seeing what's going on with the consumer technology, mainly around software and mobile apps, now with cloud. So it's also some of the things you mentioned is consumer features, and it sounds complicated, but it has to be easier. So what are you guys doing to make it easier for the customers? Because at the end of the day, everyone wants voice. They want it all integrated. They don't want a siloed approach. All right, first of all, coming from our consumer roots, where we understand how to delight consumers in making technology very simple, which is the key thing in order to be successful in that market. That's the consumerization trend you speak about. Again, from my Google days, people are familiar with using their Gmail as an example, and they bring that into the organization. It's the same way here. You have to understand the UI and UX that is appealing to consumers, and that's what consumerization is all about, bringing it into the enterprise. Many, many years ago, we'd look back and enterprise was feature rich, but it wasn't very sort of friendly, ergonomically friendly, or consumer friendly. We understand that really well, because of our consumer roots, so that the solutions that we have appeal to that individual, as well as to the whole corporation. Yeah, we love talking with you. You're a tech athlete, as we say, that bring a sports metaphor in here where the ESPN of tech and you're a tech athlete. But when you think about the two folks out there, the digital builders in this digital transformation, or the doers, we love to implement stuff, they're actually trying to figure out architectural plans for the next five years, and actually the pressure is, what's the plan for the next one year? And so for the folks out there that are watching, there's two really two camps, Cloud Native, Clean Sheet of Paper, I don't really have an IT department, I'm doing stuff in the cloud, and then there's legacy. So both of those categories are really in demand for new solutions. What do you say to those two types of people? You know, look, I think it's a big world out there, and so there's different ways to address the market. When I think about, you know, you still have IT departments, it's just the roles changing. You know, the notion, if you sort of think about the whole notion of outsourcing the hardware and the data centers and such to, you know, public cloud solutions like AWS or Google, that's a trend, obviously that is here in a huge way, and it's going to continue to accelerate. It just doesn't mean that IT goes away by any stress imagination, it's just the roles change as you move to a cloud infrastructure. The beauty of it is that it encourages, everyone can move more quickly. You can spin up a solution and spin down a solution instantaneously. So we believe fundamentally that the cloud is this, you know, seismic shift in computing that is, you know, sort of better for all. It really quite frankly is. I mean, you know, at it's simplest you can go to a company and you can say, it's less expensive, you eliminate the hardware, et cetera. But the reality, this is about workflow changes. This is changing the way people operate and the way companies operate. You bring in, because of the cloud, because of not being tethered to single solutions, you bring in levels of collaboration and you change fundamental workflow, you make companies more productive and more profitable. That's the focus that Vonage is coming to this with and we're doing this with our, you know, coming from our roots in consumer technology where we understand how to make the UI and UX, you know, taking something which is ultimately very complex in the background, but very simple to the user. Yeah, and it would be safe to say, everything as a service is the trend that you guys are taking. Absolutely, absolutely. Talk about unified communication or UC as a service and because that's kind of a loaded term, it kind of means a new thing now. There's old school unified communications and there's new school unified communications. The new school is unified communication as a service. What does that mean? It really is, it's as simple as communications, people generally think of communications as voice. Communications is far more than voice. It's multimodal, meaning it's voice, video, text, presence, and a whole other set of features. The fact that you've unified it, think about where we've come from, where you had a, you know, the former PSTN network where you might have had a landline phone connected to a proprietary network or even a proprietary cell network, you know, take your cell carrier, doesn't matter, Verizon, Sprint, whomever, but it was a proprietary network. You unify that because now communications are fully multimodal and they go across all your devices and all your operating systems and it changes the way you work. And then as I mentioned before, you tie that into your other workflow tools that the company's using all day every day. If you think about a Microsoft solution, Office 365 or a Google solution, Google for work, integrating in with those solutions or your Salesforce solution on the CRM side or your help desk solutions, that's what our communication platform has worked into. That's the notion of it being unified. And that's really the craze we're seeing with APIs and services. That's the notion, so I guess, you know, we hear microservices is another big buzzword, so essentially the walk away is, think of things as a service, think of things as API, think of them as software, and think of them from the simplest of these standpoint. That's exactly right. What you're no longer tethered to the hardware, so it's software based. The API economy, which is an enormous trend, you sort of think of UCAS, unified communications, and now you're thinking about CPAS, communications platform as a service. And the notion of software has now been extended to an API so that the APIs are embedded in other applications or in the web itself so that you have a communication layer inside your mobile app, inside your web app. There's a whole new set of trends happening about contextual communication, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a very, very exciting time. World's moving really, really quickly. We're at the forefront of it, having a great time and growing really quickly. And it's the impact on the developers as well, don't you think? I think it's absolutely. I mean, it's just the way in that they're gonna work. Just again, if you're, you know, think about if you're a mobile developer as an example. You know, you're now working with APIs or other solutions that you're bolting into as opposed to writing your code sort of, you know, on a greenfield basis right from the, you know, from the ground up. Now you're working with existing APIs that hook you into very deep functionality that you don't have to write. Yeah, and basically the developer doesn't have to be an expert in unified communications to get the job done. They can just simply write to the API and, you know, all of a sudden they have that solution. Okay, talk about the focus of the company. Obviously you're on board, you're here, big splash here, I know you guys have a big push here at Enterprise Connect. What is that big push? Why this show? Why now? And what's the vision for the future for you guys? So Enterprise Connect is a very important show to us. The decision makers are here, the analyst community, the consultants, et cetera, et cetera. Clearly Vonage is out trying to establish its name in the enterprise market. Our strategy, as I said at the outset, is to serve the full range of businesses from small to the very largest. Matter of fact, we just announced our Q4 results a couple weeks ago, and we have 20% of our revenue are coming from customers with more than 250 seats, so really large companies. And we're seeing a lot of activity in very large enterprises. So as we've made this pivot from our roots in residential, which continues to be a very important element of our business, into the UCAS for business side, you know, for, you know, being here is critically important. These are sort of the decision makers and the movers and shakers. We obviously want to present Vonage as that brand, which is going to be, is already virtually the largest in the space and growing the fastest, you know, that we're here to stay in the business side and we want our visibility to be sort of very prominent. Well, congratulations. I just want to point out to the folks watching that in this market there is the haves and haves nots as the ones who can actually make the digital transformation and the ones that can't. There was even speculation coming into the event that Microsoft was looking to buy Slack, and yet Skype for Business is giving a keynote here. And that's just an example of, whether you call it a vote of no confidence or whatever, it's a move where the new software platforms have to be existed. You guys have successfully transformed and continue to grow. What can you share with the folks out there that you guys have done in this transformation to be successful and what advice would you give? Because you don't want to be on the other side of the street where it's like we can't make it on our own, we got to go buy something. So, you know, obviously you do acquisitions for growth that's organic and inorganic through M&A, but you don't want to do a rip and replace because you can't make it. How did you guys make it and how are you guys making it today? So our strategy in the business side has been pretty clear cut where we want to serve the full range of the market from small companies to large. Our decision was to go at that with two purpose built solutions. So we have a proprietary solution which services mostly the SMB market and then we've got a more enterprise grade solution for mid-market and up. That's based on BroadSoft as the core soft switch. It's our view that when you service, you don't want to take the same solution to go after a five line customer as a 500 line customer. So we're going after with very purpose built solutions. What we're seeing is tremendous growth at both ends of that pyramid, either the very small companies and the very large. And so if you look at the results that we've had, you know, we've now just posted our second consecutive quarter revenue growth. We posted $895 million in revenue last year. Our highest profitability in four years, $144 million of EBITDA. And we've projected and actually guided Wall Street, and obviously we're at New York Stock Exchange Public Company, we've guided Wall Street to yet again greater growth in 2016 and greater profitability. So it's all hinging on continuing to execute on this business side and it's going very well. Well congratulations. How does it feel to be a public company these days? It's treating us well, so it's fine. Well, I'm the CEO here on the ground with theCUBE here live at Enterprise Connect. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.