Welcome to the No Jitter Roll, the regular round-up of news dedicated to the communications and collaboration industry. This week, we look at recent executive changes made at cloud communications company 8x8, then we explore other announcements across the industry around RingCentral’s device-as-a-service (DaaS) offering and T-Mobile reselling Ooma’s POTS replacement.
8x8 Makes Leadership Changes: What’s Next?
Cloud communications provider
8x8 announced a series of leadership changes, which included industry veteran Dave Sipes being terminated as the company's CEO. He is to be replaced by Samuel C. Wilson, formerly 8x8's CFO. Additionally, Kevin Kraus, formerly the company's senior VP of finance, has been appointed as the interim CFO.
“We appreciate Dave’s leadership and contributions to the company during his tenure,” Jaswinder Pal Singh, chairman of the board, said in a company statement. “8x8 remains committed to delivering long-term value to our stockholders. We have confidence in Sam’s leadership and will work closely with him and the management team to ensure that this change is seamless for our customers, partners, employees, and stockholders.”
This announcement comes less than two week after press coverage of a rumor that UC provider RingCentral was considering purchasing 8x8. Like many technology and UC companies this year, 8x8's market value has fallen, which might make it an attractive purchase for RingCentral or another UC company, analyst and No Jitter contributor Zeus Kerravala explained in "
Why Ring Central Should and Shouldn't Buy 8x8" However, while an 8x8 acquisition would give RingCentral "consistent, year-over-year high growth numbers and cross-sell opportunities," the company would also have a "big challenge" integrating the systems, Kerravala said. Additionally, it could potentially complicate its contact center partnership with NICE, he added.
RingCentral Releases DaaS Offering
RingCentral released its device-as-a-service (DaaS) offering, which allows enterprises to opt for an
OpEx over a CapEx model for procuring devices for RingCentral MVP, Rooms, and Contact Center. Available for U.S. customers, RingCentral DaaS features a range of Logitech, Poly, Jabra, and Yealink devices, with headsets costing from $3.50-18.50 per month and RingCentral Rooms hardware between $96-336. As a part of the DaaS offering, RingCentral will help troubleshoot and replace hardware that is having issues.
“With device as a service, RingCentral customers–from SMBs to midmarket to enterprise–can now easily deploy hardware at a lower upfront cost. By procuring hardware with RingCentral, customers will no longer need to worry about dealing with multiple vendors for their hardware needs. This will save time and streamline procurement,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for Metrigy.
T-Mobile Now Offers Ooma POTS Replacement
Communication platform provider
Ooma announced that T-Mobile for Business is now offering its plain-old-telephone-services (POTS) replacement service, Ooma AirDial. The service provides a direct connection between Ooma's cloud-based phone service and T-Mobile's network, meaning that the connection doesn't traverse the public internet (a regulatory requirement for fire alarm panels and other life safety systems). Additionally, IT admins can manage deployments remotely through an online portal.
ICYMI: Other Top Stories on No Jitter This Week
If you are looking for more insight into the enterprise IT communications and collaboration industry, consider checking out these articles from some of No Jitter’s top contributors, including several articles from this week’s AWS Re:Invent event:
