 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott of Kataya, founder and CEO of JSA. Joining me today, we're excited to have Mr. Nick Palmer, who's the vice president of Enterprise Seapast Sales at 8x8 and Warren Rayburn, senior vice president of sales and marketing of Comstar Technologies. Welcome gentlemen. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you for having us here. Well, we are very excited to have you guys. Great conversation lined up for you today. For our viewers who may not already know, Warren, can you tell us a little bit about what makes the partnership between Comstar and 8x8 so unique? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for us at Comstar, the big push in 2020 with my arrival and subsequent to that in 2021 and beyond, we're looking to take our business and our client-based sub-market and to partner with a group like 8x8, you know, in terms of their brand recognition, you know, their work, you know, the magic quadrant, and otherwise with Gartner and the recognition they've received within the industry, you know, to tether ourselves to that type of branding and otherwise is extremely beneficial. I would also just compliment them from the standpoint of, you know, and invariably what we're here today to talk about with C-Pass, you know, the development time, energy, and effort that they put towards the platform, you know, frankly holds great appeal for us and enables ourselves on that journey and moving up market and giving ourselves some exposure in the enterprise space, which Nick represents. And talk about all this recognition, Warren. Comstar recently announced it's the first 8x8 channel partner to provide the company's robust C-Pass offerings in the marketplace today. Exciting stuff here. So tell us a little bit about C-Pass and what it means for your current and future customers. Yeah, thank you, Jamie. First and foremost, we're thrilled, you know, to have that distinction and certainly, you know, another avenue on the partnership front with 8x8 that, you know, we're very happy to bring to the marketplace and collaborate on moving forward. So for us, you know, the appeal on the, you know, on this front was really rooted in extending the freedom and customization and otherwise creativity to our base. You know, I touched on initially the desire to take our business up market and, you know, this certainly gives us an additional tool to have a conversation at the enterprise level, as Nick here represents for 8x8, you know, collaborating with him and his team to better penetrate our base and to render some greater, as I said, tools and otherwise for our clients. You know, what I would highlight in particular is, you know, we talk about the freedom and the customization piece and a lot of people ask me, okay, well, what's ultimately, you know, some of the key differentiators between C-Pass and U-Cass and, you know, I would say that U-Cass is more of an out-of-the-box solution, whereas C-Pass empowers the client to have more control and more say over their journey through the API methodology, development kits and otherwise, you know, being able to interconnect with CRM environments, billing engines and otherwise, you know, it provides for a more data-driven engagement. So equipping their back office to be more informed when engaging their customers, giving them greater latitude to communicate via voice, SMS, email and do so in a more seamless fashion, particularly as we all come to grips with, you know, continued work from home environment and otherwise and all of us transitioning between various media and so forth in our communication, it's, you know, it certainly allows for that freedom of flexibility that today's customer demands. So for me, the final point is, you know, overall avoiding technology ops lessons, you know, we still have a large group of customers, thousands, for that matter that are rooted with premise-based and in the premise-based PDF space. So taking this as a first step on their digital transformation journey without the, you know, potential pain and disruption of a physical forklift is absolutely huge. And so we're just, again, thrilled to be a part of this, thrilled to get out on the front foot with this technology and bring this to our base and many more, you know, hopeful subscribers to follow. Well said, well said. Nick, bringing you in here. Can you tell us more about how CPAS addresses pain points across critical industries like healthcare and even telemedicine specifically? Yeah. First of all, thank you to the whole ComSTAR team for being a great channel partner, going with the CPAS services with H8byte. So we are very thankful for that. And when you start thinking about, you know, a year ago as we were thinking about just before the pandemic hit, right? That's when this group was formed. So under H8byte, we have so many different assets around CPAS, video, video analytics, messaging, a whole suite of CPAS products. And when you start thinking about telemedicine or just healthcare, it's such a big topic, right? Or such a diversified portfolio of services which falls under healthcare. But what has kind of peaked the most during the pandemic or the last year is telemedicine. And when you start thinking about telemedicine, it could be an engagement between a doctor and a patient or it could be a healthcare coach. It could be a nutrition coach. It could be just a therapy coach. So it has taken many different forms. So where CPAS kind of helps in the digital transformation or engagement is around different channels it can provide. So let's think about the customer journey here. When you start kind of book and everyone has experienced in many ways one of the services but how kind of CPAS is powering underlying technology underneath that. So first one could be scheduling appointments or appointment reminders, right? Coming through an email is a great tool but text messages kind of come in very handy in those instances because the open rates of text messages is around 95% in less than five minutes, right? Emails, I don't want to even talk about those numbers, you know? And I said there are a lot of data and a lot of, you know, I would say analysis which is done by the gardeners of the world. But look at your own phone. You know, how many hundred emails you have and how many hundred text messages you have. So it's very effective channel. So that's kind of the beginning of the customer journey while booking. And then once you get into telemedicine application, what we have done is we have implemented something called WebRTC in our video technology. And what that is, it's a very standardized way of communication. WebRTC stands for Web Real-Time Communication. And it's become a standard of all the browsers and operating systems. What that means is that you don't have to install anything on your machine or on your mobile phone or your desktops or your iPads of the world or tablets to have that quick call with your doctor which could be five or 55 minutes. So the technology which is powering a lot of this video which we have coming from our JS platform helps and enables doctor and patient communication easy, you know, right? Before this it was install this, install that, you know, plugins and unplugs and what kind of all the issues we had to just have a simple call, right? So that's the first portion. And the second after that also we have analytical tools behind that which allows us to kind of identify if there were any issues during the call in terms of bandwidth or something of what needs to be fine tuned to make this engagement. And it's a very critical engagement when you think about healthcare. It's not a easy topic or something which you're like, hey, we're just having a fun call like, you know, happy hour call on one of the video conferences, but this is very something serious, very tangible. It has needs to be measured properly and we provide end to end tools. And in the end we have something called SMS engage which is a survey product which can be bolted. And as soon as the call is done you can send out a text message and we can design the surveys. Customers can respond to that and it's easily collected. So from the beginning to the end and in the end also we can say, hey, by the way, you have a follow-up, would you like to schedule? And this can be all done through text messaging as well. So we touch the patients and the doctor engagement at different points and this is just on a higher level. So all the CPAS APIs which we provide has been kind of used and consumed at different various pain points or to resolve some of these pain points in a customer journey in telemedicine. I love that. I love that. And taking the patient journey and now Warren moving into the business's environment, how does CPAS enable businesses to stay connected with their customers at any point to use and export that customer journey? How is this so vital in today's evolving environment and how are we addressing this with this new CPAS product? Yeah, great question. And I think there's a number of things that appeal to ComSTAR as it relates to this partnership on the CPAS front. On behalf of our clients, you think about it, for me at least, I start down that path of the security component and the way in which this environment is managed otherwise, the HIPAA compliance, you go all the way down the list, GDPR compliance and otherwise. So you're able to deploy this transformational strategy, this cloud-oriented strategy with the peace of mind that again, you have a backing of a network like 8x8 for that matter and the compliance elements and otherwise. So that's a big component for me. You're able to do this and you're able to do it securely. The uptime also, that's a major, major point that shouldn't be lost here in any conversation around CPAS to follow. I think it's four nines and three. I think it's 99.993% uptime. So that's absolutely tantamount to maintaining a positive customer experience. To Nick's example, think about the sensitivity of a medical consideration, consultative or otherwise, to know and go into that engage with the peace of mind that you can rely on the technology to make for that as little disruption as possible. And I would end by saying for us at Comstar, the ability to match that flexibility, that security and the uptime alongside of an offering at the edge that allows us to bridge together multiple WAN connections with our SASE offering. So ultimately giving clients access to two or more WAN link connections at the same time. You could do so remotely, secure VPN considerations and tunneling elements. So all of those things coming together to ensure that you're online and up as in an optimal fashion, you're doing so and engaging securely. And all the while going back to my initial point around it's overwhelming to some extent how much interconnectivity is available. As I said, Billing and CRM, I neglected to touch on the major chat environments that this solution is equipped to engage immediately off the bat. All of them that we think of on a daily basis for one SAP and others that we call on more revenue, all out of the box and ready to go. And then there's frankly more available as Nick alluded to with the APIs and otherwise. So that for me is really how it meets that demand and ensures that that customer journey is a stable one and a secure one. That's a great transition to my next question actually, Nick. What role does C-PASS play in digital transformation that Key Buzz raised, particularly during the pandemic, but how are we helping businesses transform? Yeah, just to piggybacking on what Warren was saying around security and communication through WhatsApp, C-PASS literally breaks all the barriers when it comes to communication. And when I mean by barriers, it's around not only the way you can communicate, but also global communication, right? Customers and users are looking to communicate in their preferences or their channel of preferences, right? So what we provide here in digital transformation, digital transformation in my, it has a lot of definitions around how you view. Some people look at this thing as systems and processes. I see this thing more as starting with people, right? And how people are going to, you can have the best system and solution out there, but if your people are not used to it or not trained to it, your digital transformation is incomplete without that. So it all starts with that. And when you start talking about people, what comfort level do they have and how they want to communicate or how digitized they want to be in this scenario? I mean, look at us. Two years ago, video conferencing was not a big thing. It was there, but now you see people being on video and people cooking in the background and kids walking by and it's become a norm, right? So this is all digital transformation. People has bought this digital transformation into our everyday, whether it's personal or work-life. Talking about technology, how CPAS is powering digital transformation. So from security perspective, we of course provide a lot of encryption in our video and our other analytical tools, but also we can provide a simple two-factor authentication. A lot of businesses, when you talk about CPAS, is two-factor authentication. That's how 10 years ago, all these big companies have built their future or their fortune, I would say, on that. And so simple, you might have seen in the Ubers of the world or banking application or any of those things where you're trying to enter your phone number and you get a pin code or you lost your password or how many times we forget our password many times. So it's a simple technology, but it's been there and it's effective. It works out of box, right? When we kind of fast forward into other areas and I'm not touching on telemedicine, let's say LMS, education, right? Has become a big element on how we educate our kids these days. There was a joke, running joke on like now we had to, now that everything is opening, I think so we might have to train our kids how to be back in class. Because they are now used to kind of like being on Zoom and doing their own thing. So when you start thinking about these different applications, even within LMS could be mass notifications, video, video analytics, different tools, which we provide, that's one thing. When I was talking about cross-border or breaking the barriers, I'm talking about border barriers here also, where we have one something called a strat app API, which is very powerful because it's a single API which allows you to send a message through the channel of your choice. It could be WhatsApp, WeChat, which is very popular in China, Line, Kick, Facebook Messenger, Zalo, Viber and SMS. And there's an orchestration built inside this API. What that means is that you can send to one channel, wait for some time, if you don't get a response, try something different and so on. So this API is very powerful, but I like to call this thing as a breaking barrier cross-border powerful API, because guess what? Many people in Latin or in Asia, they don't use text messaging, they use WhatsApp. So now we are reaching out to customers in their channel of preference and the journey could start that customer services or even now WhatsApp is opening up to other non-transactional messages. Originally it was designed around only consumer-oriented support or customer query kind of messages. Now they're sending out, they're allowed, just recently, and I'm talking about just last week, they're opening up because they see this, that has become a more powerful engagement channel. And this is just a tip of, and I can go on and on, on how CPAS kind of a digital transformation, but I think so you get the picture where anytime people want to communicate, we can provide in that. We still have a wise API also. So you can have all different kind of APIs to communicate and the preferences of their customer. Unbelievable. Yeah, well said, breaking down those borders, right? Yeah. People as well as systems. Warren, can you tell us how CPAS will drive new revenue for ComStar while also playing into your client attention strategy? Yeah, thank you. So I would start, I mean, there's a number of trends before us in 2021. The one that stands out for me and one of our previous JSA roundtables, I was asked what I felt would be the most compelling trend in 2021. And for me, it's M&A, mergers and acquisitions. And Nick and I were having this conversation while going through the launch together. And for me, so often we're confronted with situations where a client will approach us through the renewal process and inform us that they've been acquired by another body or they're in the process of acquiring another group themselves. So from our attention standpoint or in that second example of potential cross-sell matter, for me, CPAS is the key to bringing all of those things under one corporate umbrella arguably. It quips us to in turn, perhaps downplay the existing environment being an influencing factor in those organizations coming together and rather unite them under this CPAS consideration ultimately. So you can bolt on, you can have various back office considerations, various software tools at your disposal. And as Nick has reinforced here, it ultimately gives you the ability to bring all those things together. The exchange of information as you link together disparate billing systems or disparate CRM environments and equipping now arguably call center representatives who've worn different hats under different logos, now bringing them all under one umbrella. I also get back to the platform agnostic angle. As I mentioned earlier, having thousands of premise-based PBX clients still under our care, to be able to then now go to them and say, let's get on this first step together on your digital transformation journey. And it's all, again, from a security standpoint I touched on earlier, the analytics that are available, the call stats, the ability to generate campaigns as well to equip them to drive new revenue, arguably. I mean, this tool covers and checks a lot of boxes from a business development standpoint. So that's another element that I'm enamored with. And then finally for us, it's complimentary of so many Cloud voice solutions we have deployed historically. So whereby at CommStar we have five different voice partners, frankly, 8x8 is, we've added thousands of seats over the last six months with 8x8. That is by and large, far and away, pardon me, our largest growth segment in the business currently. So to take it from that standpoint, but also look at what we have available to us with cross-selling upsell in these other areas, and not be limited by other platform considerations. Now again, we bring that in over the top. So for us, it really removes a lot of limitations, a lot of barriers. And I would argue it's not all that dissimilar from what we're discussing with our clients. I think even as Nick touched on telemedicine, I would wrap up by saying, we're developing messaging around how this impacts certain verticals. And a quick one is education for me, the ability to send out mass notification through a variety of mediums, SMS, email components, paging integration, all of the above. And then obviously the calling component of it as well. And that's powerful. Sadly with today's environment that we find ourselves in, it's a necessity. And for me, again, this opportunity with CPAS solves that problem. And vertically speaking, many, many others. And we're just really scratching the surface of it from a messaging and application standpoint. Clearly, CPAS is streamlining these omnichannel communications. It's incredible. And Nick, I'm not sure. Just to be fair, Warren gave a great CPAS versus UCAS definition. Did you have one that you wanted to conclude with here? Well, yeah. So if you've been kind of watching the media, you know, the new concept or the new go to market, which we have from our new CEO DayScipes is around XCAS. So it's a customer experience as a platform. Right. So we want to get away from the U and the C and the other C passes. But what is it we can do as a company to bring this customer experience as a platform? Right. So our definition around what that exactly means, right? So it all means down to a customer experience, either we are delivering through our unified communication through our contact center. And those are, I would call them as boxed solutions, right? They do what they are designed to do with some flexibility around modules and APIs to integrate with your backend or other systems. And anything which is not available in those can be accomplished using CPAS, right? So the edge use cases, there will be always something with somebody will come to you and say, I wish this came in pink, you know, just using an example, but I want to send out mass notifications, but I also want to have a survey after this. And I also want to do the survey through text messaging and an IVR. I want to give them an option. Or you know what, in that text message, if they're not happy, I want to send them a link to do a video call right away without any, any going back and forth, right? And they can instantly have that because of the WebRTC concept, right? So think about CPAS as the Lego pieces of the communication. You know, like a kid, I like to build things around Lego pieces and, you know, everything. So this is like, you're designing your own communication or the product or an application, which will suffice your business needs or business processes. So the XCAS, which we are super excited about at 8x8, includes all that concept, which is going to make customer experience as a platform. So that's our, I would say, new definition around, you know, the the passage of our platforms as a service. Well, you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, XCAS. Love it. Okay, one final question for each of you, Warren. I'll start with you. What else is coming up in 2021 for Homestar? Well, you know, there's, there's quite a bit, you know, again, I think, you know, our focus, as I, as I mentioned, you know, enabling this organization to go further up market. That is at the forefront of our development process, while also at the same time, interesting enough simplifying our environment, you know, we're a 30 plus year organization. So over the years, we have, you know, we've done anything and everything to keep our, our clients happy. And in the sense that, you know, at the same time, pardon me, we've also overextended ourselves slightly. So we're retracting some things in areas for simplifying things for staff. And again, it couldn't have been better timed in terms of the arrival of CPAS for us, because it gives us a lot of options in terms of, you know, if it's, if it's legacy or sunsetting certain environments or otherwise, you know, providing options for clients to graduate into new areas and advance their own business at the same time. So for us, it's really hyper focused on growth, simplifying our environment. And, you know, we couldn't be more thrilled with the partnership with 8x8. Sincerely, you know, been there to support us every step of the way through our evolution, you know, giving us the tools and otherwise to, to continue to progress and succeed. You know, I touched on the seed ads that we've had, and I only envisioned much more that to follow here with Nick's help and the team at large at 8x8. So, you know, we're anxious to see folks here over the course of the next several months. I think I would only wrap up by saying, you know, now with, you know, thankfully, the vaccine period in the rearview mirror and getting back out into the wilds. We'll see everybody at IT Expo later this month, hopefully channel partner there to follow. And, you know, just some mutual events, co-sponsored and otherwise with our friends at 8x8 to get the word out. So we're very, very excited for 2021 and beyond. Wouldn't be surprised to see us also launch into the M&A space ourselves. We picked up and proud to partner with an organization in the Buffalo Market. So continue to focus on, you know, our tier two and tier three city targets. That's, you know, for us strategically, you know, we want to bring more opportunity and more engagement opportunities that that diversify the carrier experience and otherwise and some of those what we feel to be underserved marketplaces. So Buffalo was September 2020, and we're hopeful of bringing some additional talent into this organization organically and organically here over the next several months. So very exciting time here and we're looking and looking forward. Exciting stuff. All right, Nick, 8x8, what do you have in store for the rest of 2021? First of all, thank you for the great partnership which, you know, we have between the two companies. So we are really thankful for that and looking to help you on your expansion where we can. 2021 has been very exciting for us in terms of not only the that people are getting vaccinated, it's opening. I think so the digital transformation and a lot of the products and processes which we have kind of helped grow in this pandemic is are here to stay. Meaning if you look and watch any of the media, that's what they're saying, right? So I think it will help accelerate and actually fine tune on how people are working to the fact that, you know, we keep on running into sudden product requirements and exciting products are coming on the API side also. Healthcare industry is a little bit, I would say acquainted, a little bit older, but still has some very rigid requirements. So we are actually going to announce something exciting pretty soon, which is going to help accelerate in that industry. Our video jazz platform is keeps on maturing, which is what we did with our video technology. Actually, I didn't emphasize on that was to make the video adding video much easier with few line of codes. Everybody else out there provides like a very low level API, whereas we want to just give you full few line of code. And you can embed that. So it's great. So people are rolling our products much faster than six, nine months. So we are talking about less than a month rollout. So super excited about that. Our analytics product, you know, works with, it's an aware body see analytic product, which works with Amazon connect, which is a contact center solution. So we are agnostic to that as a CPAS player, but we'll keep on adding more and more like this, where we feel that there is no tool of which kind of really helps you analyze the video and voice. So more to announce announcements coming in 2021 in terms of partnership. And then we'll just keep on maturing our SMS and voice and other products as the market needs. So the team is kind of more focused on going after this niche out of box use cases, which, you know, UCAS or CCAS does not focus on. So thank you again for having me here on this call and super excited to partner with you on future projects as well. Thank you guys. I'm feeling so optimistic listening to you both. It's like we're coming out of this pandemic tunnel and seeing a bright horizon. So before we go, where can our viewers go to learn more for a start with you, Warren? Yes. So please check us out. It's www.comstar-usa.com. And we actually with the help of our team here at JSA just launched a new website in December. So thrilled with the outcome there and encourage everybody to go check out the new book and feel the ComStar technology. So thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Warren. And Nick, where can we go? Yeah, you can find us on 8by8.com. And if you want to go specifically into the CPAS services, just click on product and you'll see APIs underneath that. And we will take you to a lot of different API product pages. Thank you guys so much for your time and insight here and the partnership together, bringing such great innovative products to the marketplace, really emboldening those companies to take that digital transformation necessary if they happen already. So thank you, gentlemen, and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. As always, stay safe and happy networking.