A new app purchased by 8×8 is being positioned as the breakthrough product which could see team collaboration platforms replace email.
The US cloud communications specialist picked up the Sameroom.io when it purchased parent company LeChat last quarter. Sameroom.io does something which to date has not been widely available when using team collaboration software – it allows different apps from different vendors to talk to one another.
Team collaboration and business class chat applications have long been tipped to eventually replace email in the workplace, thanks to more intuitive, user-friendly handling of conversation threads, ‘live’ chat and support for functions like real time file sharing and video.
However, a sticking point has always been that, unlike email, different platforms have not been able to operate with one another. So if you use Slack, you can only talk to other people on Slack, if you use Skype for Business or Google Hangouts, you can only collaborate with contacts on those platforms. By contrast, email allows you to communicate with anyone with an email address, regardless of which email service they use.
Taking Team Collaboration Outside
As enterprise focused messaging applications continue to proliferate, this situation has increasingly come to be seen as unsustainable. Once you might have been able to pick a platform and decide that everyone in an office uses that one. But that restricts use purely to internal communications.
If you get a new client or partner and members of your team need to work closely with colleagues in that company, the likelihood is they will be using different collaboration apps. One or the other then has to download a new product, and before long you are running several different platforms for several different partnerships.
Sameroom.io solves all of that at a stroke. As long as everyone has Sameroom.io, it doesn’t matter what messaging app they use, they can all still connect.
The strategic acquisition of Sameroom.io could be a disruptive masterstroke from 8×8. While rival developers continue to churn out collaboration platforms en masse without a thought for interoperability, 8×8 has decided not bother with its own contribution. Instead, it has taken a different tack altogether, targeting a recognised shortfall in the UCaaS market.
8×8’s muscle in the cloud UC market can be expected to greatly increase the reach of what to date has been a clever but decidedly niche product.
Open Cloud Strategy
Allowing chat apps to talk to one another is part of a wider ‘open cloud’ strategy announced by 8×8. It is also releasing a new set of APIs, as well as making its own Script8 programming tool available to customers. This will give 8×8 clients the ability to customize the communications services they receive to suit their own needs, including making them interoperable with other software platforms.
8×8 has always placed a big emphasis on making its products compatible with other platforms, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Netforce plus Microsoft and Google programmes. The new APIs and direct access to the scripting tool will allow customers to choose and shape their own interactions, taking flexibility in UCaaS to new levels.
