8x8 (News - Alert), a provider of innovative business communications and cloud computing solutions, announced partnership with VCE, a virtual computing environment (VCE) company, to deliver cloud computing services to businesses utilizing the Vblock Infrastructure Platform.

VCE, which is formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, offers a fully integrated IT platform that combines the networking technologies from Cisco, storage solutions from EMC (News - Alert) and virtualization and management solutions from VMware.

With Vblock platform, 8x8 is able to accelerate deployment of cloud-based computing solutions that dramatically reduce the cost of IT and allow customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating and managing IT infrastructure, company officials said.

“8x8 is building its enterprise cloud service offerings with leading technology from industry cloud computing heavyweights like Cisco (News - Alert), EMC and VMware,” said Bryan Martin, chairman and CEO of 8x8, in a statement.

The Vblock solution, according to Martin, provides businesses with the confidence to entrust mission critical applications to the cloud. “We view this partnership as a major stepping stone towards our goal of becoming the preferred provider for all types of cloud services for businesses across the United States.”

8x8 recently acquired Zerigo, a Littleton, Colorado-based company providing virtual private servers, managed DNS services, and monitoring tools for cloud-based server operations.

The acquisition enables the company to add a comprehensive, easy-to-use and powerful provisioning mechanism to the Vblock platform, allowing for rapid and automatic deployment of flexible cloud computing services.

8x8 now plans to market these cloud services to larger enterprise and government customers as well as its traditional SMB customer base, leveraging new and existing channel relationships.

“VCE is very pleased to work with 8x8,” said Frank Hauck, president of VCE, in a statement. “Vblock platforms form the perfect foundation to build cloud infrastructures that support mission critical applications securely and confidently, while providing the agility and efficiency so important to today's enterprise IT operations.”

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