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8x8 (News - Alert), Inc., used ITEXPO West this week in Los Angeles as the venue at which to introduce version 2.0 of its Virtual Office Pro.

"We are very pleased to provide version 2.0 at no additional cost and, due to our web-based delivery, no annoying downloads to our current VO Pro subscribers," said 8x8 Chief Marketing Officer Debbie Jo Severin (News - Alert). "The new features incorporated in 8x8 Virtual Office Pro 2.0 make it even easier and more productive for a business to access and manage all of its communications needs in the cloud, without having to purchase any on-premises equipment, including the business phone that normally sits on an employee's desk."

Virtual Office Pro, initially introduced in January of this year, is 8x8’s hosted unified communications offering. Virtual Office Pro 2.0 hits the market today.

New with this release is integration with social networking; softphone upgrades that allow for call forwarding, call transfer, three-way calling and other desk phone-like functionality; enhanced call queuing for simple call center applications; improved fax capabilities (folks can now customize fax cover sheets, and put multiple documents in the same fax); and video chat, said Huw Rees (News - Alert), vice president of business and channel development at 8x8.

While that’s all great, Joan Citelli, director of corporate communications at 8x8, said the coolest thing about Virtual Office Pro is that it offers customers a wide variety of functionality, including unlimited local and long-distance calls, faxing, call recording, archiving, chat, mobile applications and more, for just $49.99 a month. Rees adds that some people pay that much for web conferencing alone.

He adds that this year has seen increased adoption of UC and hosted PBX (News - Alert) in the enterprise market and the federal government markets.

“The move to UC is going to accelerate in 2011,” Rees continued. “We’re really [seeing it] start to take off. People can see the value. The feature sets…and the ease of use have reached a point where any business can see the benefits of using these solutions.”