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Central Host, Inc., a Los Gatos-Calif.-based company providing managed hosting services and cloud-based computing solutions to business customers was recently acquired by 8x8 (News - Alert), Inc.

'Adding managed hosting and cloud computing services to our business service offerings is an ideal extension of our current business,' said Bryan Martin (News - Alert), chairman and chief executive officer of 8x8, Inc. 'We are excited to provide additional enterprise-class services to our customer base, giving us multiple best-of-breed offerings to sell to the same installed base. Central Host's customers are ideal targets for 8x8's communications services, and we believe that many of 8x8's existing customers will benefit from the performance attributes and disruptive pricing of the Central Host offerings. We look forward to discussing the synergies and benefits of this acquisition during our fourth quarter and full-year results earnings conference call on May 19, 2010.'

8x8 paid $1 million in cash and issued 432,276 shares of common stock not registered for sale to Central Host's sole shareholder, according to the terms of the deal.

'Central Host is thrilled to join the 8x8 team,' said Andy Schwabecher, Central Host's Founder and now General Manager of Managed Hosting and Cloud-Based Computing at 8x8, Inc. '8x8 runs one of the largest hosted business communication services in the world and is extremely successful in delivering one of the most critical and fundamental pieces of business infrastructure - communications services. By harnessing the strengths of this great team, I believe we have what we need to scale our cloud-based computing services to become the next major player in the managed hosting service market.'

Central Host has relocated to 8x8's Sunnyvale, Calif. headquarters and will combine its operations with 8x8's existing Network Operations Center (NOC (News - Alert)), sales, customer service and data center operations.