8x8 Appoints Kim Niederman As Senior Vice President Of Sales

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.