Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) vendor 8×8’s acquisition $250 million acquisition of its competitor Fuze is the latest in a flurry of M&A activity in the collaboration and customer contact market.

Gary Barton, Principal Enterprise Technology and Services Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The pandemic and the move to hybrid working has heightened interest in any technology that can help a business stay connected, making the collaboration sector a hotbed for mergers and acquisitions (M&As). GlobalData expects this M&A trend to intensify, given the high value of the collaboration technologies market (including UCaaS), which GlobalData predicts will be worth $309 billion by 2025.

“8×8’s acquisition is primarily an attempt to achieve scale. 8×8 and Fuze are dwarfed by competitors such as Microsoft, Cisco, Google, and – to a lesser extent – Zoom. Unifying its revenues and research & development (R&D) budget with Fuze is a necessary move when competing against such giants.

“Both 8×8 and Fuze have grown at around the 20% rate recently. While this is a very healthy number, it is behind most of the largest players in the market. Investing in contact centers and customer experience will be vital to 8×8 as it seeks increased market traction – both through direct sales and channel partners.