VoiceCon Orlando 2009

8x8 Pursues Bigger Quarry with Virtual Office Enterprise Service

| Mar 31, 2009 | Business Network Services - U.S. | Show Update

| Analyst: Brian Washburn

Current Perspective: Moderate/Positive Vendor Importance: Low Market Impact: Very Low

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Event Summary

March 30, 2009 -- Hosted VoIP services specialist 8x8 released 8x8 Virtual Office Enterprise, a large business version of its hosted IP PBX voice service for customers concentrated at one address or distributed across multiple locations. 8x8 Virtual Office Enterprise draws on additional network redundancy and feature enhancements to the 8x8 Virtual Office service. 8x8's network is now redundant across three independent data centers, each connected to redundant IP access providers.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on 8x8's launch of Virtual Office Enterprise, because the VoIP provider has scaled its systems to serve customer sites of any size, and customers of all sizes will benefit from added redundancy that will prevent outages inside its carrier cloud. 8x8 will not become a big enterprise player, but it can now take advantage of any large customers that come its way looking for inexpensive network-hosted voice service.

• Vendor Importance: Low to 8x8, because the service provider does best in the SMB space, where companies have tighter budgets and are more willing to take some risk with their telephone service. 8x8 Virtual Office Enterprise does not introduce new services over its existing Virtual Office service targeted to SMBs, but it works together with that service as well as the rest of its VoIP product line, with one bill and one number for customer support.

• Market Impact: Very low on the business voice market, especially large national and global providers of enterprise-class voice services, because 8x8 is a small competitor, and Virtual Office Enterprise is a product aimed to win customers looking to reduce their voice services costs. Most enterprise customers will look to businesses that bundle voice with access, and potentially other services, and wrap the package in comprehensive SLAs – an offer which an “over the top” provider such as 8x8 cannot match.

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Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

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