8x8 2015 Annual Report Download - page 7

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 7 of the 2015 8x8 annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 107

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107

4
Hardware/Software Vendor, Carrier and Sub
-
Carrier Complexity.
Establishing connectivity and communications through the myriad of
hardware and software vendors, carriers, sub-
carriers and international carriers is becoming ever more complex. Companies need reliable
connectivity without complex configurations that require long lead times to implement and extensive IT oversight to manage.
4
Device Proliferation / BYOD. The exponential growth of mobile devices has resulted in BYOD in the workplace and, as a result, has
increased companies' need for communications and collaboration services in order to improve employee productivity. Furthermore,
companies need to manage and secure voice and data while protecting customer privacy.
4
Globally Distributed Enterprises and Workforces. Companies of all sizes and their employees are distributed globally and need to
support communications and collaboration across locations and between employees on a unified system that can be easily deployed and
work reliably.
4
Applications Requirements. As companies look to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive environment, ERP applications help
improve efficiency while CRM applications help manage and streamline customer interactions and HCM applications facilitate
communication with companies' employees. Many of these applications provide additional benefits and improved productivity when
integrated with a communications and collaborations suite, allowing employees to communicate information quickly.
4
Compliance. Government regulations and compliance procedures add complexity to the already difficult task of managing
communications for dozens or hundreds of employees. Companies need a way to secure voice and data communications, prevent
fraudulent use of communication services and comply with privacy protection regulations.
4
Cost of Deployment . In addition to these complex requirements, chief information officers are facing increased budget scrutiny and a
need to implement a scalable solution at an affordable cost.
Shortcomings of Existing Solutions
The current market is primarily comprised of two categories of solutions that are proving unable to adequately address today's business
communications and collaboration requirements:
4
Legacy Providers. Legacy providers typically provide on-premises solutions that require a long, complicated and high-touch sales and
setup process with proprietary hardware. These on-premises solutions are difficult to deploy and expensive to maintain in multiple
locations for a globally distributed workforce. In addition, the legacy solutions do not provide the mobility, resiliency and business
continuity capabilities required by customers. Legacy on-premises providers can only effectively provide service to groups of employees
and the complexities of their deployment model make seamless employee communication in a distributed environment cost prohibitive.
BYOD demands from employees further complicate the delivery of a companywide communication system. The result is a patchwork
communications systems with security risks that stretch across the organization. Security compliancy in this environment is impossible
and information insecurity increases the chances of legal costs and theft of intellectual property.
4
Point Solution Cloud Providers. New cloud providers have emerged to address the need for rapid provisioning and simple deployment
of communications or collaboration software. However, these solutions are typically targeted at specific application silos and do not
currently provide a comprehensive communications and collaboration suite.
The 8x8 Solution
The 8x8 unified cloud communications solution addresses the shortcomings of legacy and point solution cloud services through its pure cloud
Software as a Service offering. At the core of our service are two technologies that deliver highly available UCC functionality that has been pre-
integrated to CRM providers. Our Infrastructure Manager abstracts complex global interconnectivity between VoIP (Voice over Internet
Protocol) and traditional PSTN (public switched telephone network) providing customers with a phone system that can reach any phone in the
world whether wireless or wireline. Our Integration Manager integrates with third-party applications, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft
Dynamics, NetSuite, Zendesk and many others, to provide integrated applications functionality within our communications and collaboration
services. To date, we have been awarded 104 United States patents related to technology developments in these and other areas. Our solution
provides the following key benefits:
3