Leading cloud telecoms service provider 8x8 has announced the appointment of Dejan Deklich as Senior Vice President of Global R&D.
Deklich joins the Californian firm from Big Data software developer Splunk, where he spearheaded engineering of the company’s core Splunk Enterprise product, as well as developing the company’s next generation cloud platform.
Prior to that, Deklich was chief technology officer at Merced Systems, before its takeover by Israeli voice recording, data security and surveillance specialist NICE Systems Ltd. As CTO of Workforce Management at NICE, Deklich again led the evolution of the company’s cloud strategy and migration to cloud based systems.
Deklich’s credentials certainly fit well with 8x8’s position as a global leader in cloud based telecommunications systems and services. Positioning itself as a provider of ‘Enterprise Communications as a Service’ (ECaaS), a suite of cloud based solutions combining telephone, contact centre, conferencing, collaboration and analytics, 8x8 has almost 50,000 customers operating in over 100 countries across six continents.
"It's an honour to join 8x8, a company that plays an essential role in helping organizations of all sizes communicate and collaborate to drive increased business productivity and customer experience," said Deklich.
"With its differentiated suite of integrated unified communications and collaboration, contact centre, and analytics capabilities combined with its leading deployment expertise and reliable high-quality global network, 8x8 is well positioned to capture a greater share of the cloud communications market."
Deklich’s appointment as 8x8’s strategic head of R&D opens up the fascinating possibility that the business is looking to strengthen the ‘Enterprise’ part of its preferred title, drawing not only on his expertise in developing cloud-based software solutions, but perhaps his experience with Big Data as well.
The blurring of traditional lines between UC and enterprise software is already a well established trend, most noticeable in the alignment of UC with collaboration platforms. Numerous telecoms companies now position themselves as ‘UC & C’ developers. The fashion for major enterprise software specialists like Microsoft and IBM to include UC functions in their collaboration products has led some to worry that traditional telecoms companies risk being pushed out of the market by their larger enterprise cousins.
