8x8 has terminated the employment of CEO David Sipes with immediate effect.
In will step former CFO Samuel C. Wilson to fill the void.
After the announcement, many quickly jumped onto social media to share their disapproval of the news.
A former colleague of Sipes at RingCentral noted: "8x8’s loss…. He is a great leader!"
Another declared: “David Sipes is one of the industry’s good guys.”
Unfortunately, 8x8’s stock has tumbled in recent times. After reaching a market cap of almost $4BN - under Sipes’s leadership – it now sits at $480MN.
As such, many reports speculate that the board simply lost its patience with the decline.
Yet, there is perhaps more to this story.
"All of the comms vendors have seen the same [stock drops] during Sipes tenure," writes Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, on LinkedIn.
From my discussions with industry folks, this was about a difference in strategy. The board wants to move to a CC-first approach where Sipes has been focused on having UC lead XCaaS.
Of course, the move also elevated rumors of a RingCentral takeover. Yet, dig deeper, and Kerravala's argument gains momentum.
A Possible Change of Strategy for 8x8
Over the past 12 months, 8x8 messaging has centered on its XCaaS philosophy.
Such an approach aims to “erase the boundaries between UCaaS and CCaaS.”
In doing so, the vendor has begun to spin more contact center technologies into unified communications. Its Conversation IQ tool is an excellent example of this.
Many analysts have given plaudits to this approach. For example, Blair Pleasant, President & Principal Analyst at COMMfusion, stated:
XCaaS should be the lead - customers can start with UC and add CC, or vice versa, or at the same time. That's 8x8's differentiation.
Yet, such thinking perhaps clashes with current business priorities.
Indeed, AWS leads the CCaaS market in customer acquisition without any native UCaaS tools.