Lately at UC Today, we’ve recognised a positive trend towards the use of strategic partnership to enable brand and business growth. The evidence is everywhere, from the expanded partnership between Slack and Salesforce, to the new collaboration between Avaya and RingCentral.
Now, three of the world’s leaders in technology are joining forces to provide a new and improved way to help businesses make the move from legacy to cloud-based solutions. 8×8, Poly, and ScanSource are combining their respective expertise to give companies the extra support they need in making the next step for their digital transformation. The joint global program aimed at legacy on-premises businesses is called CloudFuel. The solution aims to accelerate the process of ensuring that organisations have the cloud technology that they need to meet the demands of a new cloud-based communication environment.
The partnership between Poly, 8×8, and ScanSource marks the first time that a frictionless and comprehensive replacement and cloud migration solution can be offered to the entire VAR channel. The solution will combine award-winning CCaaS and UCaaS functionality on the 8×8 single technology platform with best-in-class equipment from Poly, and powerful incentives for ScanSource resellers.
Working Together on a New Cloud Future
As the marketplace continues to evolve, and businesses of all sizes see the value in the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, it’s partnerships like this one that are delivering true growth. The cloud offers a host of exciting advantages to organisations today, including improved efficiency, reduced costs for IT, and support for actionable insights. With the right cloud transformation, companies can maximise their uptime, improve their resiliency, and give their employees the immersive communication tools that they need.
According to leading analysts Frost and Sullivan, the move from on-premises environments into cloud-focused communications is happening at an accelerated rate, regardless of organisational size. Around 82% of businesses surveyed by Frost and Sullivan are now reporting that they have moved or are planning to move to the cloud. Despite this, there are still more than around 350 million on-premises seats to consider globally, with less than 10% completely migrated. This means that there’s a huge opportunity in the marketplace for businesses to help companies make their transition.
For the period between 2018 and 2023, Gartner believes that contact centre agents around the globe will be using CCaaS at a growing rate of 19.8% CAGR. The on-premises environment for contact centre infrastructure is also predicted to decline by up to 7.5% in the same period.
The CloudFuel program designed by three of the world’s market leaders in communication plans to transform the way that people move to the cloud. The program will come through the extensive network provided by ScanSource, with more than 35,000 resellers. This solution will offer access through relationships with thousands of customers worldwide and comes with access to the full 8×8 X series, as well as stand-alone solutions. The offering is built on top of the best reliability and voice quality in the cloud and comes with integrated analytics, migration tools, data access, and deployment services. As part of the full-service offering, customers will also receive incentives when they purchase Poly equipment. There will be access to excellent pricing, leasing terms, and a buy-back program for their on-premises tools.
Discovering the Power in Partnerships
According to the CEO for 8X8, Vik Verma, the company has been helping companies to replace and upgrade legacy on-premises solutions for many years. The new collaboration with ScanSource and Poly means that 8×8 can take their cloud offerings to the next level. Uniting these industry leaders together with a joint purpose to help people transition to the cloud, is sure to have a huge impact on the marketplace.
The Senior Director of Technical Operations for the Colibri Group, Bayard Carlin, said that the brand’s previous system for on-premises telephony simply couldn’t deliver the crucial integrated contact centre that they needed. The company moved to 8×8 to access a more immersive UC and Contact Centre solution. Moving into this new environment led to a 30% saving in costs and less complexity in the way that people worked every day.
The CEO and Chairman of ScanSource, Mike Baur, said that the new strategic partnership allows value-added resellers to deliver 8×8 cloud communication services alongside their preferred business models, which gives them more ownership over the customer relationship. This allows VARs to manage the complete solution for their customers. Poly’s President and CEO, Joe Burton, also noted that the new partnership will allow the brand to make the migration process to cloud as simple as possible for their customers.
