End-to-end managed SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) firm Aryaka has announced a global technology partnership with integrated cloud communications platform provider 8×8. They aim to tap into a growing online digital business world that is supporting huge growth in remote working.

The partnership is designed to enable organisations to enhance cloud communications performance across the WAN for improved employee productivity and customer experience, which, says Aryaka, is even more important in the current dynamic work-from-anywhere environment.

This was highlighted in Aryaka’s recent fourth annual global State of the WAN report, which found that as the number of remote workers increases across the globe, productivity and remote application performance have become more important for organisations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

It also found that 45% of UK businesses said slow application performance led to a poor user experience for remote and mobile users, and this was a significant issue facing IT and support teams. Accessing and integrating cloud and software-as-a-service applications was found to be one of the most pressing issues for UK IT departments, cited by 39%.

“We are living through unprecedented times that require enterprises to accelerate the move to an online digital business and support massive growth of remote workers,” said Ghassan Abdo, research vice-president, worldwide telecom, virtualisation and CDN at IDC. “SD-WAN, together with cloud communications and collaboration, is a great choice to support this new digital economy and address the need for a massively distributed and remote work environment.”

To that end, the partnership will see Aryaka extend the 8×8 Open Communications Platform’s performance across its managed SD-WAN service. The 8×8 enterprise communications platform – including voice, team chat, meetings and contact centre solutions – will be combined with Aryaka’s managed SD-WAN service to allow enterprises to maximise IT infrastructure investments and prioritise communications traffic across the network.

Joint customers will be given optimised access to 8×8’s regional unified communications as a service (UCaaS) points of presence by leveraging the Aryaka backbone, eliminating the packet loss, latency and jitter that can occur using the public internet, and impact cloud communications user experience. Also, the two companies say customers will benefit from real-time insights into traffic management that includes monitoring and reporting on 8×8 performance.

“As a leader in the managed SD-WAN space, we are excited to be partnering with an acknowledged enterprise communications leader to offer our joint customers and partners a solution that leverages each of our strengths and directly addresses one of our key use cases,” said Matt Carter, CEO of Aryaka. “This is truly a 1+1=3 offering that creates the first truly global SD-WAN-enabled UCaaS and contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) platform that addresses the digital transformation needs for enterprises of all sizes across the globe.”

Going forward, the companies will co-market their combined technology, and 8×8 will also resell Aryaka’s managed SD-WAN service, bundling regional and global managed SD-WAN services with 8×8’s UCaaS and CCaaS offerings. This will include introductory service bundles.  

Vik Verma, chief executive officer at 8×8, said: “8×8 is committed to helping global organisations meet their work-from-anywhere objectives that increase business responsiveness and resilience while enhancing employee productivity and customer experience.

“Extending the 8×8 Open Communications Platform with SD-WAN will provide enterprises with highly stable and productive employee, partner and customer interactions across the globe. We already have an impressive track record of successful joint deployments with Aryaka at some of the most demanding global enterprises, and the expanded partnership will take the relationship to the next level.”