Through the acquisition of Singapore-based Wavecell, a specialist in Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS), 8×8 is expanding its product portfolio beyond its core Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) .
The Lowdown: The $125 million acquisition of the 9-year-old company gives 8×8 expanded capabilities in cloud-based communications and API-based services. Wavecell’s platform includes capabilities for providing extensible communications services, including SMS, messaging, voice, and video APIs for enterprises and developers.
The Details: Wavecell is a growing developer of CPaaS, which provides solution providers, developers, and businesses with the capability to create a variety of different communications channels, including application-to-person messaging, tools for supporting omnichannel customer journeys, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to communications resources.
The Impact: Via the acquisition, 8×8 will offer its partners and customers a full communications service platform that includes CPaaS, UCaaS, and Call Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS). Additionally, Wavecell will help 8×8 expand its global market presence and sales capacity, particularly in Southeast Asia. According to IDC, the CPaaS market will reach nearly $11 billion by 2022.
The Buzz: “The market opportunity in CPaaS is growing rapidly, and this acquisition enables us to quickly provide these services to our customers around the world,” said Vik Verma, CEO of 8×8. “8×8 is now the only cloud provider that owns the full, global-scale, cloud-native technology stack offering voice, video, messaging, and contact center delivered both as prepackaged applications and as enterprise-class APIs. We’re excited to welcome the Wavecell employees to the 8×8 family. We now have a significant market presence in Asia and expect to continue to expand in the region and globally in order to meet evolving customer requirements.”
“We are delighted to become part of 8×8, one of the world’s leading cloud communications platforms. Now is the right time to leverage the global expansion of UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS services to better serve our customers’ growing demand for communication services and to continually drive greater innovation,” said Olivier Gerhardt, CEO and co-founder of Wavecell.