8x8 Unveils Platform Combining Call, Collaboration, Conferencing, Contact Center

**Editor’s Note: 8×8 cracked our list of 20 top UCaaS providers offering products and services via channel partners. See who else made it.

8×8 says its new X Series communications platform is designed to help businesses “win in the new battlefield where customer experience is everything.”

8×8’s just-released X Series combines call, collaboration, conferencing and contact center offerings. With customers and employees interacting through one system of engagement, enterprises now can “optimize valuable moments of engagement with one set of data in one system of intelligence,” the company said.

8×8’s Bryan Martin

Bryan Martin, 8×8‘s CTO, tells Channel Partners the new platform will give partners “all the choices they need to help customers from small to medium and enterprise-level.” X Series will be available in the United States, United Kingdom and France this summer.

“Partners will be able to not only offer a platform model, but also be able to tailor the X Series communication, collaboration and contact-center solutions based on a client’s business needs,” he said. “In the most recently completed third quarter of fiscal 2018, ended Dec. 31, 2017, six of 8×8’s top 10 deals were contributed by channel partners, and overall channel bookings increased 50 percent year-over-year.”

Businesses are looking to eliminate point solutions, which solve one problem while ignoring related issues, and more are looking for intelligent, integrated offerings to enhance both the employee and customer experience, Martin said.

“Partners finally have the ability to offer this with 8×8’s X Series,” he said. “Now, interacting through one system of engagement, enterprises can optimize valuable moments of engagement with one set of data in one system of intelligence. With all the changes in the industry, channel partners are looking for a platform that is stable and will produce future revenue. The multi-tier enablement program provides sales training, technical training and customer support. We have resources to help premise[s]-based customers move to the cloud.”

The 8×8 channel strategy has been instrumental in winning large enterprise business, Martin said.

“Our channel partners play a critical role in helping our joint clients take employee and customer engagement to the next level,” he said. “Partners are now able to show that ‘I don’t know’ is eliminated from the resolution process as X Series brings the history, current context and internal experts all together during the initial interaction. The end results are faster time to resolution at a lower cost and a better experience for customers and employees.”

“8×8 X Series is the integrated platform that companies have been looking for to improve their employee and customer experience,” said Rachelle McCray, senior account executive at Packet Fusion. “As a partner of 8×8 it gives us the flexibility to address our customer’s specific business needs, whether voice, meetings, collaboration, contact center or a combination of all in one platform.”