8x8 has acquired LeChat, maker of Sameroom, an interoperability platform that enables cross-team messaging and collaboration in the enterprise.
The acquisition strengthens 8x8's play in the team collaboration market by providing interoperability between more than two dozen team collaboration clients as part of the just launched 8x8 Communications Cloud, which combines unified communications, team collaboration interoperability, contact centre and analytics in a single, open and real-time platform.
Vik Verma, CEO of 8x8, stated: "With Sameroom, our customers will enable their internal teams and external partners to collaborate across different team messaging apps of their choice, creating an open, more seamless communications and collaboration environment that is compliant with corporate policy. This new technology is the key to delivering messaging capabilities to all of 8x8's services.
"This convergence of two healthy and thriving markets - communications and collaboration - is going to change the way employees, customers and partners use and consume communications intelligence, making them better informed, more productive and more effective than ever before. The days of a fragmented communications landscape are numbered."
Sameroom brings to 8x8 experience in building and launching high-scale, commercial group messaging solutions, as well as knowledge of leading team collaboration apps.
Andrei Soroker, co-founder of Sameroom, added: "8x8 understands that true unified communications and collaboration requires a new and open approach to team collaboration, which is why Sameroom was acquired. With this move, Sameroom will now be able to help more companies enable team collaboration as the technology becomes core to the 8x8 Communications Cloud."
8X8 also announced a number of new business application integrations aimed at enhancing business workflows by making real-time communications, collaboration capabilities and intelligence available for third-party cloud applications, all customisable via an Open Cloud approach to fit individual enterprise needs.