8×8 To Swallow Contactual

Communications provider 8×8 Inc.on Monday announced an agreement to acquire Contactual, a privately-held provider of cloud-based call center and customer interaction management solutions, in an all-stock deal.
8×8 said it would issue up to 6.7 million shares of common stock to acquire Redwood City, Calif.-based Contactual.
The company also said it would offer Contactual’s call-center solutions to its channel partners as part of 8×8’s recently launched channel program that gives partners the option to resell a broad range of cloud-based services, including VoIP services , conferencing, video and cloud computing.
“Today, many of our largest customers are already subscribing to hosted call center services utilizing the Contactual platform, and we are seeing increased demand for these services from our large, channel-originated prospective customers,” 8×8 Chairman and CEO Bryan Martin said in a statement.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based 8×8, which has been reselling Contactual’s call center technologies over the last four years, expects the acquisition to close before the end of the month.
The deal is just 8×8’s latest acquisition. Earlier this summer, 8×8 acquired Zerigo Inc., a Littleton, Colo.-based company providing virtual private servers, managed DNS servers and monitoring tools for cloud-based server operations.