After selling HipChat and Stride to Slack Technologies, Atlassian is today taking a step back from the video communications market. Indeed, the company has sold its Jitsi platform, which can be used for videoconferencing, to 8×8 Inc., a major provider of online business meeting services.
The acquisition is somewhat unusual as Jitsi is not a commercial product. Jitsi is an Atlassian open-source project that is mainly the building blocks for the development of communication platforms. Companies like Comcast and Highfive use the technology and this was also the basis for Atlassians Stride.
Jitsi divested
At the same time, it’s not surprising that Atlassian wants to get rid of Jitsi. The company acquired it in 2015 with the declared aim of strengthening its communication portfolio. But now that it rejects all kinds of communication techniques like HipChat and Stride, it was also time to make a decision about Jitsi.
As part of the deal, of which it is not known how much money will be involved, 8×8 will take over the entire project and hire the team of Atlassian developers who maintain the code. More than half a dozen projects go to the developers of 8×8. These include Jitsi Meet, a web-based videoconferencing app and Videostream that makes it easier to stream meetings.
Jitsi’s developers claim that the team will be completely intact and will continue to work as an independent group, so in operational terms it will function more or less in the same way as under Atlassian. Users and developers of Jitsi will not notice any impact, although we do expect that thanks to continuous funding and support, there will be more new features and possibilities for the project.
Fierce competition
Parts of Jitsi must be integrated with the 8×8 measurement platform. It is a way for 8×8 to be able to compete better with Slack, among others. It is attracting an increasing number of companies and enabling them to switch from traditional communication platforms for teams.
Slack is currently focusing on competition with Gmail and Outlook, which it is doing through the acquisition of mail service Astro. It allows users to read and reply to mails without leaving Slack’s interface.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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