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8x8 Appoints Puneet Arora as Senior Vice President of Global Sales
[January 13, 2015]

8x8 Appoints Puneet Arora as Senior Vice President of Global Sales


8x8 (News - Alert), Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), a provider of cloud-based unified communications, contact center and collaboration solutions, today announced the appointment of SaaS (News - Alert) industry executive Puneet Arora as Senior Vice President of Global Sales, effective immediately. Mr. Arora will report directly to 8x8 CEO Vik Verma and will be responsible for leading 8x8's global, direct and channel sales organizations and managing new customer acquisition and existing customer penetration strategies.

Puneet Arora, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, 8x8, Inc. (Photo: Business Wire)

Puneet Arora, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, 8x8, Inc. (Photo: Business Wire)

Mr. Arora comes to 8x8 with a successful track record building, leading and scaling sales organizations for SaaS and enterprise software industry leaders such as Salesforce.com (News - Alert), Oracle and, most recently, LivePerson.

"Puneet is an accomplished sales executive whose demonstrated leadership and proven ability to capture market share with disruptive technologies like 8x8's will be invaluable as we build upon the solid initial foundation we have established in the midsize and distributed enterprise markets," said 8x8 CEO Vik Verma. "We remain in the early phase of an adoption cycle that Software as a Service CRM providers saw accelerate several years ago, and I believe 2015 will be the year Communications-as-a-Service adoption by the enterprise begins accelerating. Having been there before, Puneet will be a tremendous resource to 8x8 as we continue to drive profitable growth and market expansion during this exciting phase of our industry."

Mr. Arora was most recently Vice President, Head of North America Sales at LivePerson where he managed all aspects of demand generation, revenue creation and customer success across a diverse array of accounts ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. Prior to LivePerson, he managed Cloud CRM Sales for North America West at Oracle, where he was responsible for sales and customer success for the western third of the continent. Before Oracle, Mr. Arora was Vice President Corporate Sales at Salesforce.com where he led sales and customer success for the Southeast U.S. Earlier in his career, Mr. Arora spent over 10 years in leading enterprise software companies like BlueRoads Selectica (News - Alert) and Trilogy where he led a successful career as an Enterprise Sales executive leading teams and opening new markets.



"8x8 has played a pivotal role in the development and early adoption of groundbreaking cloud communications solutions, and I look forward to working closely with the rest of the senior management team, existing sales staff and channel partners to accelerate revenue growth in all of its key market segments," said Mr. Arora. "This truly is an exciting time to be involved in the UCaaS industry, and there is no company better positioned than 8x8 to capture the increasing demand we expect to see in 2015 and beyond."

Mr. Arora holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University and is pursuing an MBA from Babson College's Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business.


About 8x8:

8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT) is the trusted provider of secure and reliable cloud-based unified communications and virtual contact center solutions to more than 40,000 businesses operating in over 40 countries across six continents. 8x8's out-of-the-box cloud solutions replace traditional on-premise PBX (News - Alert) hardware and software-based systems with a flexible and scalable Software as a Service (SaaS) alternative, encompassing cloud business phone service, contact center solutions, and web conferencing. For additional information, visit www.8x8.com, or www.8x8.com/UK or connect with 8x8 on Google+FacebookLinkedIn and Twitter.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements include, without limitation, information about future events based on current expectations, potential product development efforts, near and long-term objectives, potential new business, strategies, organization changes, changing markets, future business performance and outlook. Such statements are predictions only, and actual events or results could differ materially from those made in any forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results and trends may differ materially from historical results or those projected in any such forward-looking statements depending on a variety of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, market acceptance of new or existing services and features, success of our efforts to target mid-market and larger distributed enterprises, changes in the competitive dynamics of the markets in which we compete, customer cancellations and rate of churn, impact of current economic climate and adverse credit markets on our target customers, our ability to scale our business, our reliance on infrastructure of third-party network services providers, risk of failure in our physical infrastructure, risk of failure of our software, our ability to maintain the compatibility of our software with third-party applications and mobile platforms, continued compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements, risks relating to our strategies and objectives for future operations, including the execution of integration plans and realization of the expected benefits of our acquisitions, the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, training and integrating new employees, introduction and adoption of our cloud communications and collaboration services in markets outside of the United States, and general economic conditions that could adversely affect our business and operating results. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, as well as other reports that 8x8, Inc. files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and 8x8, Inc. undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law, even as new information becomes available or other events occur in the future.


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