8x8's New Cloud UC Platform Gets Widespread Release

**Editor’s Note: Read our list of 20 top UCaaS providers offering products and services via channel partners.**

8×8 Tuesday said it’s ready to take a bigger bite out of the $40 billion enterprise communications market with the formal introduction of its X Series, which the company says is the first cloud platform that combines voice, video, collaboration and contact center.

Now available in the United States and United Kingdom, X Series aims to help companies transform enterprise communications with one cloud solution for voice, video conferencing, contact center, team messaging and collaboration across mobile and desktop devices.

First introduced in March, the platform now is generally available.

John DeLozier, 8×8’s global channel chief, tells Channel Partners it’s a “transforming day for enterprise communications in general and certainly big news for 8×8.”

8×8’s John DeLozier

“One of the main things that 8×8 brings to market is the fact that this is all of our own technology, we’re not borrowing from anybody,” he said. “We invented it. We have 150 of our own patents around our own IT and continue to lead the market space. X Series is all about market need; it’s all about an opportunity in this UCaaS space and we’re jumping all over it.”

X Series has gained early adoption and success particularly across midmarket and enterprise organizations in a wide variety of industries, including retail, health care, manufacturing, technology and the public sector, according to 8×8.

“There [are] all of these disparate systems out there,” DeLozier said. “There’s all of this opportunity. There [are] all of our former competitors and current competitors that put all of these on-prem things in place around those technologies. We have the opportunity to just take all of those things and put them in a more cost-effective way in the cloud, and that’s what we’re doing. So 8×8 is going to lead that charge.”

8×8 will train partners on how to communicate and educate their customers, “and we’re going to continue to be right there beside them,” DeLozier said.

“Sixty percent of all enterprise deals have some kind of mix of UCaaS … which really validates this growing demand for X Series, and the partners play a huge role in this,” he said. “We will absolutely attack those sectors — retail, manufacturing, health care, high tech, etc. In fact, lots of those verticals are already adopting X Series based on their history with us, but we think there will be more. It’s just an amazing marketplace for us to go play in.”

8×8 X Series includes multiple plans tailored to meet different business needs, from basic cloud telephony to an integrated voice, video conferencing, contact center, team messaging and collaboration platform.

“We are really excited about the channel and their involvement with X Series moving forward,” DeLozier said. “We think the channel absolutely is one of the premier vehicles to take this technology to the world and we’re going to continue to enable our partners to do so.”

“As the largest restaurant franchise operator in the United States with more than 460 Applebee’s restaurants across 23 states, we needed to modernize our legacy communications infrastructure to address the rapidly evolving way in which today’s employees and consumers interact,” said Jeffery Kent, Flynn Restaurant Group’s senior vice president of IT. “8×8 is the ideal partner to help us move our communications to the cloud, both at speed and at scale. With X Series, we will finally have strong analytics and reporting capabilities across all locations to quickly identify trends and improve our employee and customer engagement.”