July 31, 2013 -8x8 Inc., Issued New Distributed Conferencing Patent by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

8x8 Issued New Distributed Conferencing Patent by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Jul 31, 2013

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- 8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT), provider of innovative cloud communications solutions, today announced that it has been awarded a new patent related to its conferencing technologies. On July 30, 2013, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued United States Patent number 8,498,725 entitled "Systems and Methods for Distributed Conferencing." This patent relates generally to methods and systems for distributed conferencing in a collaborative environment.

Many collaborative groups and associations rely on holding conferences to advance their work and disseminate information. While attending a conference meeting in person allows the attendee to experience and participate in the meeting as intended, remote participants (e.g., attending over the Internet) often are subjected to a much lower quality experience due to pre-distribution of older versions of presentation slides, poor audio quality, transmission interruptions due to server crashes, and so forth. These factors diminish the ability for remote participants to attend the meeting in real time in any meaningful way. In current systems for distributing "live" conference meeting content to remote participants, the content is gathered and managed by a central server. As such, any problem experienced by the server affects all of the meeting contents routed through the server. For instance, server-related disruptions such as a server crash will affect all of the content provided to that server.

8x8's invention relates to distributed conferencing systems and methods that reliably provide local meeting content to remote participants. In accordance with various example embodiments, a plurality of authorized source units generate media content responsive to and representative of respective content for a meeting. In response to the generated media content, one or more data streams are developed at each authorized source, each stream being a separately-decodable real-time representation of at least a portion of the media content generated at the respective authorized source. The separate data streams are transmitted by each authorized source to a common multicast IP group address for retrieval or access by remote participants.

Since its establishment in 1987, 8x8 has been awarded eighty-nine (89) United States patents covering a variety of voice and video communications, signaling, processing and storage technologies.

About 8x8, Inc.

8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq: EGHT) empowers business conversations for more than 33,000 small and medium-sized businesses with cloud communications services that include hosted PBX telephony, unified communications, call center software and video conferencing solutions. The company has been delivering business communications services since 2004 and has garnered a reputation for technical excellence and outstanding reliability. In 2012, 8x8 was named a market "leader" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) in North America and was recognized as the No. 1 Provider of Hosted IP Telephony by Frost & Sullivan and Synergy Research Group. For additional information, visit www.8x8.com, or connect with 8x8 on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

8x8, Inc.
Joan Citelli, 408-654-0970
jcitelli@8x8.com

Source: 8x8

8x8 Inc VOIP E-Rate Program Offers Subsidized Phones for Schools & Libraries

Do you know of a K-12 school, library or school district that needs affordable phone service or telecommunications upgrades? Did you know that 8x8 can provide significantly discounted phone, fax and Web conferencing services to these organizations?

That’s because 8x8 participates in the federal E-rate program, which is paid for by a tax called the Universal Service Fund, a $2.25-billion government fund that subsidizes telecommunications modernization and upgrades at qualifying educational institutions. The Universal Service Administrative Company administers the fund and determines how much the program will subsidize for each application, based on need and other factors.

8x8’s entire service fee qualifies for a discount, and we have seen subsidies of up to 90% approved for our services to K-12 schools and libraries. For example, St. Matthew’s Lutheran School in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin recently used the E-rate system to replace an aging PBX that was literally demolished by a bolt from the blue, when lightning struck the school.

E-Rate Program Subsidizes Phone Service Costs for St. Matthew’s

George Zaferos, business manager at St. Matthew’s, began looking for a hosted PBX solution that would reduce the school’s up-front costs. He contacted 8x8, and he says that from his first conversation with the team there, he felt that 8x8 was a good fit.

“8x8 knows how to scale to meet the needs of smaller organizations,” he says. “The technology is easy to use and manage, and the cost is phenomenally competitive, especially compared to do-it-yourself phone systems.”

“8x8’s participation in E-rate allowed us to add features and capacity to our phone system and still keep our costs down,” says Zaferos.

See how 8x8 VoIP phone service helped St. Matthew’s School cut costs and get more features.

As Zaferos’s experience shows, this is a great way for schools and libraries to get access to 21st-century communications services at a significant discount. If you know of a school that could benefit from this program, call me at 408-654-0842 or send me an email at huw.rees@8x8.com to learn more.