SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 7, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT), provider of innovative business communications and managed hosting solutions, today announced that Kim Niederman has been named to the position of Senior Vice President of Sales, effective immediately. In this role, Mr. Niederman will oversee 8x8's worldwide sales operations.
Mr. Niederman is an experienced senior executive with successful leadership track records at both public and private companies, including Cisco Systems, Wang Laboratories, Polycom, FORE Systems and LongBoard. Mr. Niederman most recently served as Senior Vice President of NComputing, Inc. and as President and CEO of Anagran, Inc.
"8x8 is excited to add an officer and sales executive of Kim's caliber to our senior management team," said 8x8 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bryan Martin. "We are at a significant stage in the development and scale of our sales operations, as reflected by the growth of our voice and managed hosting solutions for both SMB and larger enterprise customers. Kim has a proven track record of successfully scaling sales organizations and I look forward to working with him to take 8x8's market penetration to the next level."
From 2003 to 2007, Mr. Niederman was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and a corporate officer of Polycom, Inc. where he implemented a new channel strategy with a "high touch" solution enterprise sales model. During that time, Polycom's sales grew from $420 million to $920 million. From 1999 to 2002, he served as Co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of LongBoard, a startup company that deployed its proprietary softswitch technology to service providers worldwide, including Qwest, Worldcom, Sprint, Verizon, British Telecom, DoCoMo and NTT. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Sales at RadioLAN, Inc, Vice President of Sales at FORE Systems, Inc. and General Manager and Senior Director of Worldwide Sales at Cisco Systems. Mr. Niederman joined Cisco shortly after its IPO and executed, developed and managed strategic plans and business units which grew Cisco from less than $100 million in sales to over $2 billion during his tenure.
"8x8 has established a noteworthy presence in the small business market with a proven set of services that are being delivered to more than 23,000 business customers," said Mr. Niederman. "The company is now making inroads with larger customers, including the government, where the pricing model and feature set delivered by these technologies are very disruptive to legacy solutions. I believe that 8x8 is one of the few providers that is well positioned to expand into the voice and managed hosting market with a solution that will convert larger enterprise-class business customers to software-as-a-service solutions for voice, conferencing, video, cloud server and other information technology services."
About 8x8, Inc.
8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT) leverages its patented software technologies to deliver high quality voice solutions and integrated messaging and video to businesses of any size with employees in any location on a wide variety of business telephony, web and mobile platforms. 8x8 also offers managed hosting and cloud-based computing services. For additional information, visit , or connect with 8x8 on Facebook and Twitter.
CONTACT: Joan Citelli 8x8, Inc. (408) 654-0970 jcitelli@8x8.com
