Since the beginning of the pandemic, companies have recognized the need to offer complete product suites across UCaaS and CCaaS as well as full integration with core client applications.
Now over a year later, this transformation has become a requisite for survival. Unsurprisingly, we have seen many strategic mergers and acquisitions in this space. A great example was Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack this past summer.
A more recent M&A announcement was made this week when 8×8 declared it’s acquiring Fuze.
What does this news mean for you as a client?
As with any M&A, there are some pros and cons to consider.
While both companies have: further expanded their global footprint, a healthy existing channel infrastructure, and a broader and more diverse R&D/Development team and infrastructure, there are some questions yet to be answered.
What will these platform integrations look like? Will they move all their clients over to one of the two existing platforms? Or will they try to pick and choose products from each company and create a whole new platform? In any case, each decision will most certainly have either short- or long-term impacts downstream for both you and your partners.
But don’t be discouraged. The way we see it, 8×8 and Fuze have a huge opportunity for differentiation if they continue to iterate and improve on integrations into clients’ existing technology stacks.
When it comes to the industry, we see the long-term trends for organizations, like yours, to fit software companies into either of two categories.
Either you work with:
1. Companies that can provide you with “external value”. Meaning, companies that can help you utilize their technology to better serve your customers.
OR
2. Companies that can provide you with “internal value”. Meaning, help you empower your workforce and save you time and/or money.
Both categories are driven by your interest in getting more out of what you already have. Less software to maintain, consolidation of tools for faster employee onboarding, and dashboards that help employee collaboration-in theory, should simplify your IT Model.
It will be interesting to see in which category the outcome of the 8×8 and Fuze acquisition will fall.