8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT) further established itself as a player in the lucrative yet complex communications public sector supply chain by being added to both the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule 70 and NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP IV).
By gaining presence on these two contract agreements, federal, state and local government agencies will be able to purchase the service provider's IT products and services.
Working with partner immixGroup, 8x8 will offer its suite of cloud-based voice (VoIP PBX, contact center, SIP trunking), unified communications (fax, Web conferencing, call recording) and cloud hosting (SaaS, IaaS, hosted vBlock) services. All of 8x8's VoIP services that are available on the GSA Schedule 70 and NASA SEWP IV contracts are bundled with Polycom IP phones and Phybridge POE solutions.
Cloud services are clearly an attractive piece of what the service provider brings to the table as government agencies work to transition to cloud-based technologies under the federal government's CloudFirst policy.
While the agreement with immixGroup is new, 8x8 is hardly a newcomer to the public sector, as it is already selling its wares on the GSA Networx Enterprise contract through its relationship with Level 3 (NYSE: LVLT), a prime contractor.
For more:
- see the release
Special report: The most important M&As of 2011
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