Leading provider of video, voice, chat, and contact centre solutions 8×8 recently announced their acquisition of CPaaS provider, Wavecell. The purchase (worth approximately $125 million) will provide 8×8 with an established platform in the CPaaS space, allowing them to grow their cloud-based portfolio, which already has pillars in the CCaaS and UCaaS environments.
The decision to buy Wavecell will significantly accelerate 8×8’s continued growth in the cloud space, expanding its international presence and opening the door for new cloud communications opportunities. Additionally, the acquisition will help 8×8 to expand in the Southeast Asian market, where Wavecell already has a significant foothold.
Stepping into the CPaaS Market with Wavecell
The purchase of Wavecell gives 8×8 the power to increase its impact on the cloud communications space, adding CPaaS to its portfolio for the first time. 8×8 will now have an even more impressive portfolio for its fully-owned end-to-end cloud communication platform.
Wavecell, launched in 2010, provides a complete CPaaS package, with a cloud-based API platform featuring chat applications, SMS, video interaction, and voice APIs to enable enterprise-critical applications like application-to-person messaging, multi-factor authentication and omnichannel customer journeys at scale.
Now that the market opportunity in CPaaS is growing at a rapid rate, the acquisition of Wavecell will ensure that 8×8 can quickly provide the services that customers want to users around the world. According to the CEO of 8×8, Vik Verma, the company is excited to be welcoming Wavecell into the 8×8 family, while they embrace a solution that gives them significant market presence around the world.
Offering Enterprise-Class APIs to Customers
With Wavecell, 8×8 will be able to dive head-first into the CPaaS environment, providing customers with enterprise-class APIs. These APIs will ensure that organisations in the 8×8 community can easily add real-time solutions for communication into their processes, including SMS, chat applications, video, and voice. The integration of a wide selection of APIs and data into a single platform for CPaaS gives customers of 8×8 a unique ability to engage with their end-users in an immersive omnichannel environment, where they can get an overview of the full customer journey.
Wavecell has also designed a strong enterprise developer community over recent years, which has leveraged its SDKs and APIs to enable their organisations to take part in enhanced digital transformation initiatives. 8×8 will now be able to support the same enterprise developers, application providers, and customers who want to be able to quickly and natively integrate enterprise applications with 8×8 video, messaging, and voice services.
The CEO and co-founder of Wavecell, Olivier Gerhardt, said that the company is thrilled to become a part of the 8×8 team. According to Gerhardt, 8×8 is one of the world’s leading platforms for cloud communication, and now is the perfect time for the company to be leveraging the global demand for UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS solutions.
Growing Market Reach
Along with a new opportunity to compete in the CPaaS market, 8×8’s decision to purchase Wavecell has also helped the company to expand its international appeal. Wavecell is responsible for offering global coverage for multi-channel communications to more than 190 countries, thanks to relationships with network operators and business partners like WhatsApp.
The Wavecell carrier-grade infrastructure ensures that customers can reliably and securely share more than 2 billion messages a year across multiple channels. The acquisition of Wavecell will, therefore, give 8×8 incredible opportunities to expand their own carrier relationships to hundreds of additional carriers, ensuring a more robust global service delivery for enterprise customers wherever they may be.
