Are you seeing partners bundling up unique communications solutions for their end customers?  

Yes, some of the partners have gotten on that bandwagon [because] it’s really what the market is saying and asking for. People want, I think, best of suite over best of breed. These disparate companies that have all these point solutions and are partnering here and there for the rest; I think customers and partners really truly are into one hand to shake and one platform of solutions, but also be able to measure them. That’s 8x8 -- not only do we offer UC and CC and messaging and video, we also offer the analytics to measure, whether it’s the receptionist’s phone, to a contact center agent in an omni-channel scenario, we can tell you what’s going on across the board.

We have that one platform, and we have an analytics package that comes with it that in my opinion, is second to none. We see customers wanting to take advantage of that, and partners are taking that data and making it their own. We can evaluate things like the tone of someone’s voice in a contact center call or how [long] someone took to answer the phone, and we see partners taking that data and using it to their advantage and even market it. They can say “as a partner, we can come in and help you be more efficient because we know your habits, and here’s how.” The partners that are signing up to make a commission; great, there’s a place for them. But the partners that are really thriving are the ones that are doing things like this.