8×8’s John DeLozier: Cloud, Third Wave Critical for Channel
Jumping on the third wave of communication and solving CIOs’ “I don’t know” dilemma are absolutely critical for partners to meet customers’ expectations.
That’s what John DeLozier, 8×8’s global channel chief, told attendees during his keynote Wednesday at Channel Partners Evolution. In June, he made the jump from CenturyLink’s channel chief to 8×8.
Customer experience is the new battlefield, DeLozier said.
“Today, we’re told 89 percent of CIOs think in the Fortune 1000 that they’re meeting customer expectations, but when you poll the customers, 8 percent say that they are,” he said. “There’s a huge gap between the customer and the CIO. This is your opportunity to jump in there and help them with that gap.”
DeLozier described three waves of communications. The first wave was on premises, which “was a good, good run.”
The second wave includes cloud products like messaging, CCaaS, UCaaS and video meetings.
“Wave 2 came along, virtualization hit all of us, so we had an opportunity to put some of that stuff in the cloud, with lower cost of ownership and maintenance,” he said. “For VARs, that was a little scary because weren’t going to get paid the same. I think we’ve gotten past that, too.”
But the second wave created problems for CIOs in that there’s “all these amazing point solutions that are disparate,” DeLozier said.
“We have all these silos and silos lead to ‘I don’t know’,” he said. “All of the business units in these companies need all these things, but they’re siloed. Wave 2 created these problems.”
The third wave is one system of engagement in the cloud, DeLozier said.
“X Series, 8×8’s platform, was invented for Wave 3 by our amazing engineering team,” he said “One hundred sixty five patents, it’s all ours. Learn how that can help you in this Wave 3, CIO dilemma.”
If partners aren’t on board with cloud, “you’re missing the boat,” DeLozier said. Early adoption is over from a cloud perspective, he said.
“You have an opportunity to take these customers up the stack and up to this wave 3,” he said. “I’m telling you, if you’re not playing in that space and focusing in on wave 3, you’re missing the boat.”
