8x8 Visit With Huw Rees

If it's Wednesday, it must be San Jose...

 

Or in this case, more specifically, Santa Clara.

 

My colleagues and I just stopped in to see our friends at 8x8, who were gracious enough to spend some time with us on this cloudy day.

 

Things are moving steadily forward at 8x8, and according to Huw Rees, Vice President of Business and Channel Development, the firm continues to execute on its strategy of selling their Virtual Office services into the small and medium sized business (SMB) market space. Rees told us that they are focused on ramping up sales of their virtual trunking products and Microsoft Response Point services, as well as expanding their channel strategy to build a larger channel to serve ever larger customers, working up to the "M" of the SMB.

 

8x8 serves customers from 5 employees to several hundred employees, but according to Rees, the average customer tends to the smaller end of that scale. The goal of the channel expansion is is to grow the number of larger customers.

 

Anecdotal evidence points to a trend where larger organizations are more comfortable with using hosted communications services, and 8x8 is certainly in a position to serve this market.

 

We also went on a tour of the 8x8 facility, and we saw the variety of elements that go into making a successful VoIP service provider, including the NOC or network operations center, the QA testing workspace, the higher-level support call center, and the shipping/receiving dock, which according to Rees sees such volume, that 8x8 is the largest FedEx customer in Santa Clara.

 

We also got a glimpse into some of the exciting things that will be coming down the pike from 8x8, and I look forward to sharing those with my readers as soon as I am able to.