Enterprises Across All Industries Recognizing the Need for Global Telephony Capabilities Seamlessly Integrated with Microsoft Teams without Changing the Employee Experience

8×8, Inc., a leading integrated cloud communications platform provider, today announced growing adoption for 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams, which is successfully delivering an enterprise-class, easy-to-administer global telephony direct routing solution for businesses and organizations while keeping the Microsoft Teams experience unchanged for end users. As Microsoft Teams usage continues to skyrocket around the world, reaching 115 million daily active users in October according to Microsoft, enterprises have recognized the strategic and operational importance to seamlessly integrate it with a single, reliable global voice solution to enable operate-from-anywhere employee and customer communications.

“The very deep integration that 8×8 has developed treats Microsoft Teams as a first-class citizen, and vice versa. There is no bait-and-switch here. 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams actually enables and betters a ‘pure’ Microsoft Teams solution,” said Dave Michels, founder and principal analyst at TalkingPointz in a recent report about 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams. “8×8’s services are delivered seamlessly and transparently to end users via the Microsoft Teams app. The experience is more seamless than cloud-bot integrations. It even outshines Microsoft’s own UCaaS offer in multiple ways, including reliability, global availability, analytics, and versatility.”

8×8 is seeing strong momentum for 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams and:

• Added hundreds of new customers and tens of thousands of seats across multiple countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific in the last quarter, ending September 30, 2020.
• Signed new customers including:
  • A UK local district council, providing services and support for more than 120,000 residents as well as businesses and visitors.
  • Case Paper, one of the largest privately-held US distributors and converters of paper and board for the printing and packaging industries.
  • AmerCareRoyal, a US supplier of disposable products used in the food service, janitorial, sanitation, industrial, hospitality and medical industries.
  • Orix Australia, one of the world’s leading fleet management, novated leasing and rental companies in Australia.
• Recently deployed 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams at MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, a global leader in transportation and logistics and one of the world’s largest shipping lines in terms of container vessel capacity, providing 15,000 employees with a single, global telephony solution with advanced features they can use directly from any Microsoft Teams interface, including desktop and mobile apps.
• Announced a strategic channel partnership with Pax8, a leading Microsoft supplier to the MSP community.

“Through our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we offer our partner ecosystem education, enablement, and support so they can easily add in-demand solutions and grow and maximize their Microsoft business,” said Ryan Walsh, Chief Product Officer and Channel Chief at Pax8. “Microsoft Teams is a tremendous growth driver for our partners, and 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams presents a significant market opportunity for both Pax8 and 8×8 to help empower the modern partner to accelerate business growth and drive revenue.”

8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams provides direct routing capabilities allowing Microsoft Teams users to make and receive calls on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) right from the native Teams apps. Leveraging 8×8’s global infrastructure, including regional, Microsoft-certified Session Border Controllers (SBC) across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams provides organizations with full PSTN replacement and global calling plans in 42 different countries worldwide. Other popular features include:

• Full-featured, centralized user management interface to synchronize Microsoft Teams users on the 8×8 telephony platform across the organization with a single click.
• Inbound and outbound calling from/to the PSTN, and to any Microsoft Teams extension.
• Enterprise calling features, including ring groups, call queues, transfer, voicemail, hold, and cloud call recordings.
• Global Calling Plans with unlimited calling plans to up to 47 countries, and direct inward dial (DID) and toll free numbers in more than 120 countries.
• Tight, out-of-the-box integrations with more than 25 third-party business applications, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365, to automatically log all calls with the ability to attach details, recordings and speech analytics to any customer record.
• Native 8×8 Contact Center support, enabling cross-functional collaboration between agents and functional area experts on Microsoft Teams apps.
• Comprehensive call recordings, reporting and analytics, including Speech Analytics and Quality Management, across all PSTN calls using the 8×8 communications platform.

“Organizations around the world are rapidly adopting Microsoft Teams for all their employee collaboration requirements. They also realize the importance of integrating it with business-critical solutions and services, such as enterprise applications, contact center, and global telephony,” said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, Inc. “Leveraging the 8×8 Open Communications Platform, and specifically the 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams direct routing solution, enables enterprise IT leaders to mix-and-match capabilities, and seamlessly integrate global voice communications into Microsoft Teams workflows, enrich essential business apps with native voice calling, and get deeper insights. This helps organizations meet their unique business needs, allowing employees and customers to stay productive and engaged from anywhere.”