TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named 8x8 Virtual Office Pro, a cloud communications solution, as the recipient of the 2010 Unified Communications (News - Alert) magazine Product of the Year Award.

Officials with 8x8 Inc. said that Virtual Office Pro is a cloud-based unified communications (UC) solution that enables business users to access essential collaboration services and tools, including hosted IP-PBX (News - Alert) phone service with unlimited calling, Internet messaging, Web conferencing with video, call recording and archiving, video chat and more – through a single online portal.

"8x8 (News - Alert) has proven it is committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace," said Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, in a statement.

"Unified Communications magazine is pleased to grant a 2010 Product of the Year Award for 8x8 Virtual Office Pro and we look forward to seeing more innovative solutions from 8x8 in the future," said Tehrani.

Launched in July 2007, Unified Communications magazine is devoted to educating enterprise decision makers on why and how they need to deploy unified communications (UC) solutions.

"We are excited to be at the forefront of the cloud communications movement with our 8x8 Virtual Office Pro integrated voice, video and data solution," said Debbie Jo Severin (News - Alert), chief marketing officer at 8x8.

"8x8 thanks TMC for its continued recognition of our efforts to deliver the industry's most innovative and reliable solutions which are designed from the ground up to enable today's increasingly mobile and distributed businesses to function efficiently and seamlessly from any worldwide location," said Severin.

8x8, Inc. 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.

Recently, Infobright, the open source analytic database company, announced that 8x8, Inc. has deployed a powerful, integrated business intelligence (BI) solution that runs on the Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) analytic database.

Using IEE in conjunction with ETL and reporting tools from open source BI provider Pentaho, 8x8 has been able to combine multiple sources of critical business data into a single engine for integrated analysis.

In other cloud communications news, Polycom, which offers solutions such as HD Voice IP phones and video conferencing systems, and Telesphere (News - Alert), a cloud communications leader who powers Polycom solutions with its platform, put out a case study called “Hosted VoIP: What does that mean to my business?”

According to the two companies, this means a lot for businesses from everything to cost savings, increased efficiencies and advanced features.

“With Hosted VoIP, you get the benefits of outsourcing the management of your phone system, which means you’ll need fewer resident experts to handle things,” states the report. “What’s more, Hosted VoIP expands communications and productivity by providing a range of advanced features and functionality. And it does so without straining your budget.”