8x8 soared to the top of the pack in the communications environment in the last few years, becoming the world's first communications cloud to combine UC, collaboration, contact centre, and analytics. Focused on developing a solution that brings all avenues of communication together, 8x8 ensures that everyone can make the most out of their unique communication stack, whatever that may mean to them. With the X Series, businesses can finally eliminate information silos and access real-time intelligence in any environment, all while paying for only the tools they need to use.
But, where did 8x8 start out, and what lead it to become one of the most innovative companies in the communication environment? I sat down with one of the original founders of 8x8, CTO and Chairman, Bryan Martin. For years, Bryan has been a tech visionary for 8x8, helping the organisation to patent some of the most disruptive and pioneering telecom technologies. Bryan led 8x8 as CEO from day one as a VoIP pioneer, to its current position as the provider of a leading UCaaS solution.
In my conversation with Bryan, I was able to fully explore the long history of 8x8 and how the platform has evolved over the years. Here's what you need to know about the mindset and thought processes behind the "X" of 8x8.
Tell us About the Beginning of 8x8 and How You've Grown?
Bryan told me that the roots of 8x8 began in creating technology for the communications industry. When he first joined the company, for the first decade or so, they were focused on providing solutions to companies like Alcatel Lucent, and even Cisco. "People would take what we created and sell it on to their end users. A lot of the things we developed had to be invented and created with a set of standards. It took time, but when we transitioned into being a service provider, it meant we had our own technology stack."
By developing a unique technology stack, 8x8 was able to access a considerable advantage. The company could price its software however it wanted, but it also meant that it had the opportunity to go out and innovate whenever a new problem appeared on the market. They weren't limited to waiting for a new patch from the companies they were working with. "Now we stick to this strategy of owning everything we provide. If we don't have the solution to something, we'll acquire or create it."
One interesting thing that Bryan noted is that from day one; there are parts of the 8x8 environment that have never had to change. For instance, the way that the company does failover means that they've only had 3 major failures during the history of the company - caused by natural disasters for the most part. "From day one, we felt that the high availability of our services was essential, so we architected it into the core of what we do. We've updated what we offer but haven't had to make significant changes to some of the fundamental architectures."
How Important is X Series and the Microservices Strategy?
On the other hand, 8x8 has also re-platformed all of the applications and solutions it offers so that it can deliver options to clients in modern ways. Moving to applications that run in the cloud through microservices meant that 8x8 could create the unique concept of the X Series, which delivers a host of combined experiences across contact centre, UC, and collaboration.
For 8x8 and Bryan, the microservices architecture is a crucial part of what makes 8x8 so special. From day one, the company has focused on innovation and providing the right shared services as a platform.
"There's an underlying platform now that all of our customers can access, with these different applications running on top. Everyone gets the same experience of those applications too, regardless of where they access them from"
The microservices environment allowed 8x8 to address any weak links in their architecture and provide their customers with unlimited scalability. "There are plenty of companies out there that are operating on an environment that has a hard limit of around 2,000 users. If they want to put a new server down after that, disconnections and silos start to occur."
On the other hand, microservices provide a 100% scalable environment that allows companies to continue building and evolving, however they see fit, all without compromising on customer or user experience.
What Keeps You Up at Night?
I was interested to find out what kind of challenges have been the most significant for Bryan and the 8x8 team. Bryan told me that they've always been invested in creating the best environments for their customers. 8x8 has embraced both Google Cloud and AWS in a large and strategic way. This means that most of the portals and applications that their customers use are supported by vast and reliable providers. However, 8x8 still has its own services and data centres located around the world to do the routing along with other critical applications and processes.
This means that 8x8 can maintain as much control as possible over the communication data moving through their data points. "Our ability to measure and manage what's going on at every point in our services and tell servers where they need to route data more reliably means that we can avoid letting customers down. Our global intelligent reach ensures that we can change the route that media takes to provide the best levels of reliability."
It's not just the redundancy of 8x8 that puts customer's minds at ease either; it's also the amazing security solutions that start at the core of the company's technology. "We're always developing our security strategy, learning from mistakes made over the years." Martin told me that toll fraud is an issue that all communication providers have had to worry about over the years. The business has the right tools in-house now to detect fraud and figure out what's going wrong. At the same time, there's a massive set of procedures and processes that 8x8 uses with its people too.
"These things need to be controlled not just at a technology level, but with the people too. To avoid being kept up at night by various security and redundancy issues, I work constantly through the day on making sure that 8x8 can always support the next biggest company, with new evolutions and innovations."
The Rise of Video Communications
There are many new and exciting innovations happening in the communication world today. One of the most thrilling new developments is in the world of video communications. This is just one of the areas that 8x8 is very well known for. I asked Bryan how 8x8 is keeping up with the rate of change, and he told me that one crucial aspect is the scalability of the 8x8 technology.
"The flexibility and scalability of our technology today is incredible. With our upcoming launch of the new Meetings experience we will be able to support up to 50 contributors in any meeting - people who have full meeting controls and share content. However, we will also allow people to stream to an unlimited number of viewers too. These people can't actively participate in the meeting, but they can watch."
