As teams become more distributed and cross functional, companies need to support the communication needs of employees in the office and those who work from anywhere. A key part of this is providing an opportunity for large groups of employees to come together to discuss ideas, make announcements and share information with everyone at the same time. Teams need to meet together without limits on how many can participate and the flexibility for any user to host large meetings.

8x8 Work now supports large meetings allowing up to 500 active meeting participants. This means that up to 500 desktop users can actively participate in meetings by sharing their screen, presenting, and streaming their video. This capability, limited to desktop users, will extend to users on any device. By giving this capability to every user with an X Series license, we are making it possible for everyone to maximize their ability to collaborate with internal and external teams without having to upgrade their service. Users do not need to worry about the limits around attendees or whether they will be able to share their content to make meetings more memorable and interactive.

Key Functionality at Scale

Supporting 500 active participants and delivering key meeting management functionality makes 8x8 Work the best video meetings app for large meetings. Administrative tools like attendee sign in lobby and the ability to share host responsibilities makes video meetings easy to use in the 8x8 Work app while keeping meetings secure and well managed. Hosting meetings in this professional manner with the ability to engage so many people at once supports 8x8’s goal to continually deliver continuous improvement to communications tools that help you bring your teams together and meet the demands of your customers.

The most important interactions between your teams are on video. By allowing users to customize meetings with custom and virtual backgrounds and dedicated urls, meetings are more personal and engaging. With the ability to easily record and share meetings after they are held, meeting archives can hold useful institutional information that document how decisions are made and work is done within your organization. Combining these features with the ability to scale across 500 active participants makes these meetings even more valuable to your employees and company initiatives.

Company-wide Meetings for Everyone

High quality video meetings should be available to all users regardless of location. Even users who work remotely can set up and host a large meeting with up to 500 active participants and stream that meeting via YouTube to have an even larger audience. This can be especially useful in cases of large conferences, important company announcements or key broadcasts where you want to extend information and content to your customer or partner audiences. This ability to engage at scale is powerful and critical in a time where employees and customers are globally distributed.

No two users are alike, and we find that teams have users with vastly different workstyles and communication needs. While one user might be more mobile and remote, another might work in an HQ-only environment. Both users need to communicate without barriers. They both need to connect with their teams that work in environments outside of their own. By giving both types of users the ability to host large meetings without additional charges or switching their account, we eliminate friction and empower engagement for every user.

8x8 and Your Communications Transformation

Companies are in a stage where customer and employee needs are rapidly changing. We endeavor to help support the requirements to be flexible while providing the continuity that drives productivity. 8x8 video meetings reflect this philosophy by giving everyone a secure, reliable, high quality platform to host video meetings. To learn more about how 8x8 can optimize your communications, check out our most recent innovations or read about our XCaaS platform here.