Atlassian sells video conferencing tool Jitsi to 8×8

The enterprise software company Atlassian has announced it will sell off its open source chat and videoconferencing tool Jitsi to 8X8.

The news comes after the company began its exit from enterprise chat earlier this year with its plan to shut down HipChat and Stride and sell their IP to Slack.

Neither Atlassian nor 8X8 has disclosed the terms of the deal though 8X8 has revealed that it plans to integrate Jitsi with its own conferencing solutions. The tool will become a part of 8X8 Meetings but it will still remain open source after the acquisition is complete.

Jitsi's tech and engineering teams will also be making the move to 8X8 including the team's lead Emil Ivov.

Atlassian moves away from enterprise chat

Atlassian first acquired Jitsi and its parent company BlueJimp for an undisclosed sum in 2015. The company planned to added video communications to HipChat and then Stride which launched in 2017.

However, now both of these products will be discontinued on February 15, 2019 as Atlassian works to move in a new direction with less of a focus on enterprise chat and more on tools for developers and customer care including Jira, Trellow and GitHub competitor Bitbucket.

The market for enterprise chat applications has become overcrowded and this is why the company has instead chosen to focus on business building and operating productivity tools.

Ivov praised Jitsi's new parent company in a blog post announcing the news, saying:

“Today 8×8 announced it has acquired the Jitsi team and our technology from Atlassian. This is a great thing and will only help to keep Jitsi’s momentum with renewed investment. The Jitsi team will remain 100% intact and will continue to be an independent group. Operationally things will work much the same way as they did under Atlassian. Jitsi users and developers won’t see any impact, though we do expect with continued funding and support you will see even more new features and capabilities from the project!”

Via TechCrunch