If you want to play in the big leagues today, you've got to let users communicate and collaborate on the fly. Escalating from instant message to voice call or video chat should take no more than a click, and adding new participants just a tap, tap, tap. The audio and video quality better be superlative, content sharing a breeze, and mobility a given.
8x8 wants in on the game, and is bolstering its Virtual Office cloud-based phone system to make sure it's got what it takes. "The meeting experience is still very complex today, sometimes taking 10 to 15 minutes to start a meeting. We want to break that down to truly a touch of the finger," Enzo Signore, 8x8 CMO, told me earlier this month in an interview at Enterprise Connect.
At the event, the cloud communications provider announced it is extending its standard Virtual Office desktop video conferencing and collaboration experience with high-definition (HD) technology and full mobile collaboration via a product it calls Virtual Office Meetings, or VO Meetings.
Mobility-enabled collaboration is certainly a big trend, as we saw at Enterprise Connect and as various industry watchers have pointed out time and again on No Jitter. Differentiation for 8x8 will come in part through its implementation approach, Tina Liu, senior product marketing manager for Virtual Office, told me during a quick briefing and demo from the show floor. Rather than forcing the use of distinct directory, IM/presence, calling, and video conferencing apps to create the collaborative experience, as do some vendors, 8x8 is "bringing it all together" in VO Meetings. Users get all-in-one desktop and mobile (for iOS and Android) messaging clients with integrated directory and click-to-call and click-to-video conference capabilities, as well as plugins for Outlook and Google calendars. "Right then and there you can start screen sharing content, as well," Liu said.
Mobile collaborators get the full meeting experience via HD 720p video, as Liu demonstrated for me by initiating a collaboration session with Signore. Even with barely one bar of Wi-Fi strength, the quality was near picture-perfect to the eye. "Traditionally, mobile collaborators were receivers of information - maybe they'd join a meeting, but audio only, and maybe they'd be able to see some content. But now they can actually share content [via cloud apps like Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive] and initiate meetings as well," Liu said.
To further improve the collaboration experience, 8x8 said it is using HD 1080p video on the desktop and supports Ultra HD 4K composite resolution in VO Meetings. The HD video pairs with the company's end-to-end 99.999% uptime SLA and minimum 3.0 voice quality MOS to create highly reliable and immersive collaborative sessions, Liu said.
VO Meetings will be available this spring, with the mobile collaboration capabilities coming in the summer, 8x8 said.
With VO Meetings, as well as next-generation contact center capabilities also announced at Enterprise Connect, 8x8 hopes to further secure its presence in the midmarket, Signore said. Half of the company's revenue today comes from midmarket customers, up from 42% a year ago, Signore said.
The midmarket segment, comprising companies ranging in size from 250 to 1,000 employees, represents a "massive" opportunity -- not only for 8x8 but its competitors, of course, he added. "Whoever wins the midmarket will be the long-term leader with a large installed base of loyal customers and a springboard into the true enterprise market."
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