Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors

Statements contained in this annual report on Form 10-K, or Annual Report, regarding our expectations, beliefs, estimates, intentions or strategies are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. For example, words such as "may," "will," "should," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue," "strategy," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "intends," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual results and trends may differ materially from historical results and those projected in any such forward-looking statements depending on a variety of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to-

• market acceptance of new or existing services and features,
• success of our efforts to sell to and support mid-market and larger distributed enterprises,
• changes in the competitive dynamics of the markets in which we compete,
• customer cancellations and rate of churn,
• our ability to scale our business,
• our reliance on infrastructure of third-party network services providers,
• risk of failure in our physical infrastructure,
• risk of failure of our software,
• our ability to maintain the compatibility of our software with third-party applications and mobile platforms,
• continued compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements in the United States and foreign countries in which we make our software solutions available,
• risks relating to our strategies and objectives for future operations, including the execution of integration plans and realization of the expected benefits of our acquisitions,
• the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, training and integrating new employees,
• introduction and adoption of our cloud software solutions in markets outside of the United States, and
• general economic conditions that could adversely affect our business and operating results.

The forward-looking statements may also be impacted by the additional risks faced by us as described in this Annual Report, including those set forth under the section entitled "Risk Factors." All forward-looking statements included in this Annual Report are based on information available to us on the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made in this Annual Report, which attempt to advise interested parties of the risks and factors that may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Our fiscal year ends on March 31 of each calendar year. Each reference to a fiscal year in this Annual Report, refers to the fiscal year ended March 31 of the calendar year indicated (for example, fiscal 2017 refers to the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017). Unless the context requires otherwise, references to "we," "us," "our," "8x8" and the "Company" refer to 8x8, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

A leading provider of enterprise cloud communications solutions, 8x8 helps businesses get their employees, customers and applications talking, to make people more connected and productive, no matter where they are in the world.   From a single, proprietary platform, which we refer to as the 8x8 Communications Cloud™, we offer unified communications, team collaboration, contact center, analytics and other services to our business customers on a Software-as-a Service (SaaS) model.

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While organizations of all sizes have started to migrate from legacy, on-premises systems to cloud communications solutions like ours, the adoption of cloud communications by larger businesses has increased markedly in recent years and will, we believe, drive the next phase of cloud communications growth. Small businesses were the first to transition their communications to the cloud several years ago, often based on its cost effectiveness, ease of deployment and inherent flexibility. Now, larger businesses that have adopted cloud-based solutions for other applications and processes are increasingly looking to modernize their communications in a similar fashion. We believe this adoption is being driven by the convergence of several market trends, including the increasing costs of maintaining installed legacy communications systems; the fragmentation resulting from use of multiple on-premises systems, which has worsened as workforces have become more distributed and international; and the proliferation of personal mobile devices in the workplace.

Our solutions offer businesses a secure, reliable and simplified approach for businesses to transition their legacy, on-premises communications systems to the cloud. Our comprehensive solution, built from core cloud technologies that we own and manage internally, enables 8x8 customers to rely on a single provider for their global communications, contact center and customer support requirements. Combining these services allows our customers to eliminate information silos and expose vital, real-time communications data spanning multiple services, applications and devices — which, in turn, can improve productivity, business performance and customer experience.

Our customers are spread across more than 100 countries and range from small businesses to large enterprises with more than 10,000 employees. In recent years, we have increased our focus on the mid-market and enterprise customer segments, and in fiscal 2017, we generated a majority of our services revenue from customers in these business segments. We provide most of our communications services on a SaaS model, with monthly billing of service fees and usage charges, under contracts with terms that generally range from one to four years.

Businesses today face increasing cost and complexity with deployments of communications and collaboration solutions. Companies of all sizes are managing a global, distributed, remote and multigenerational workforce that seeks to leverage multiple forms of communication in their day-to-day interactions. The rapid rise of mobile devices in the enterprise has created demand for BYOD (bring your own device) integration as part of s typical business' communications needs.  Companies are looking to increase their competitive edge by also integrating their communications with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), HCM (Human Capital Management) applications and other back-office IT (information technology) systems within their communications infrastructure. Further complicating matters, business users are circumventing their IT departments by using a variety of self-selected third-party tools for team communications and collaboration, driving a shift in the buying center for communications and collaboration from IT to individuals, a phenomenon known in the industry as "shadow IT."

We believe traditional on-premises communications systems are unable to accommodate all of these needs in a cost-efficient manner. In addition to being difficult to deploy and expensive to maintain in multiple locations for a globally distributed workforce, these solutions often fail to provide the mobility, business continuity and integration capabilities required by modern business customers. BYOD demands from employees further complicate the delivery of a company-wide communication system using on-premises equipment. The result is a patchwork of communications systems with security risks that stretch across the organization.

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The 8x8 Solution

We offer unified communications, team collaboration, contact center, and analytics in a scalable platform that is used by businesses of all sizes across the globe, and can be accessed utilizing available Internet connections.

The key attributes of the 8x8 Communications Cloud solution include:

• Seamless Communication and Collaboration within a Single Integrated Software Platform. We believe that seamless, continuous communications and collaboration drives more effective employee and customer engagement and greater business productivity. Our ownership of the core technology underlying each of our offerings enables us to tightly integrate our solutions and provide users with the tools needed to communicate and collaborate with others in an integrated and fluid manner.  A single global corporate directory providing presence and click-to-contact functionality across all devices is the hallmark of our platform approach to communications.
• Integrated Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions. A feature that we believe is unique to the 8x8 Communications Cloud is the integration of our 8x8 Virtual Office Unified Communications solution with our Virtual Contact Center solution within a single cloud platform. One of the primary benefits of this integration is the unification of contact center agents with the rest of the organization through the global corporate directory - facilitating, for example, the involvement of subject matter experts outside of the call center in customer interactions.  In addition to our full-featured Virtual Contact Center solution, we also offer 8x8 ContactNow, an intelligent, scalable and easy-to-use contact center solution for teams.
• Team Collaboration Interoperability. With the rise in popularity of team collaboration tools, including Slack, HipChat and various other team collaboration environments, we see a growing need for interoperability between these environments to support contextual communications between teams that are utilizing these tools. A recent addition to the 8x8 Communications Cloud, our Sameroom technology enables team-to-team collaboration via interoperability between the most popular of these tools in the market today.
• Big Data and Analytics. We believe that visibility into communications data and trends helps businesses optimize productivity and customer engagement. To address this need, we have developed a robust suite of web-based tools to help customers make informed business decisions based on underlying communications data. These analytics tools deliver rapid, easy-to-use, customizable insights into the communications information associated with all 8x8 extensions and supported devices in an organization's communications network.  
• Global Reach®. 8x8's Global Reach® initiative refers to our global strategy to provide enterprise-grade quality of service, reliability, security and support for our multinational customers. We serve customers operating in over 100 countries, through 12 data centers that cover seven dispersed regions - United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Continental Europe, Singapore/Asia, Australia and Philippines - helping provide superior call quality to customers worldwide.
• Integration with other Business Applications. Many businesses are faced with customer communication challenges due to gaps in employee communication, poor internal collaboration, and little or no contextual data available at the time of customer contact. Our software uses a combination of open application program interfaces (APIs) and pre-built integrations to enhance functionality with data from other third-party enterprise applications including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Zendesk, Oracle Sales Cloud and Hubspot. These integrations expose rich communications data to the applications used every day by groups such as sales, marketing, customer service, HR, finance, and more to improve workflows and drive better productivity.
• Customer & Partner APIs. The 8x8 Communications Cloud offers a number of open APIs that allow customers and partners to expose rich communications data to their existing enterprise applications. These include APIs for direct access to messaging and chat, meetings, interactive voice response (IVR) /auto attendant, short messaging service (SMS), fax, analytics and data extraction, and provisioning and service management.
• Intuitive User Experience. Because we deliver our software from one integrated platform, we believe our solutions offer a seamless, intuitive communication experience across voice, messaging, collaboration and video.  Our web interfaces act as the communications portal for all 8x8 services and provide customers with a familiar and consistent user experience across all endpoints, as well as integration with many commonly used business productivity application, CRM solutions and vertical business applications.
• Rapid Deployment. Business agility in the global, modern economy is a competitive necessity, and we embrace the notion that communication services should be deployable as quickly as possible. Our services can be generally be provisioned in minutes from web-based administrative tools. We have automated our provisioning, billing and other systems to provide greater speed and flexibility in deployment for our customers. To ensure consistency and quality across our products and customer base, we have developed a deployment methodology, branded as Elite Touch®, that we apply to all of our deployments, from single-site remote implementation to complex deployments involving multiple sites, global implementation and integration with CRM or other back-end systems.

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• Committed Service Quality over the Public Internet. We currently offer qualifying customers a service level agreement (SLA) with commitments regarding "end-to-end" service availability and voice quality, for calls transmitted over the public Internet. This end-to-end SLA provides for at least 99.99% uptime and a voice-quality mean opinion score (MOS) of 3.0 or higher for at least 98% of all calls carried over the network, subject to customary exceptions and conditions, including the customer's implementation of dual diverse connections to the Internet and adherence to our setup guidelines. We are able to provide these commitments because of our proprietary audio technology stack and the geographical and network architecture, designed to optimize the path for voice data across the Internet.
• Emphasis on Security and Compliance. Security and compliance in this cloud environment is difficult and expensive to achieve. We believe we have created a top-down culture of security and compliance, including a commitment to secure architecture and development. We have also invested heavily in system security and compliance with U.S. federal regulations including FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information), and International Standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 9001, the U.K. Government's Cyber Essentials Plus, and the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

We are committed to developing and delivering the most innovative, reliable, scalable and secure cloud software for global business communications as part of the 8x8 Communications Cloud. Our strategy is informed by evolving market dynamics, including the growing adoption of cloud communications software by larger commercial and enterprise customers, along with the unique attributes of our technology.

Key elements of our strategy include:

• Providing Superior, Enterprise Grade Functionality. We have invested in our software and software delivery infrastructure to provide a high-level of availability, reliability, security and compliance, and will continue to invest in this area. We intend to continue to expand our customer deployment and support capabilities, including our program management, professional services, and partner delivery capabilities, to meet the needs of larger, multinational customers.
• Focusing on Mid-Market and Enterprise Market Segments. We plan to capitalize on the growing adoption of cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions by commercial/mid-market and enterprise customers through increased focus on these market segments, through both a direct and channel sales strategy.
• Maintaining a Single Integrated Platform. We believe business communications solutions are increasingly requiring a breadth of software capabilities, from simple voice and video collaboration to complex multi-channel contact center capabilities, and we expect this trend to continue. We believe our ability to deliver a full spectrum of capabilities within a single cloud platform from a single vendor is a competitive advantage, especially for larger customers. We plan to continue expanding these services within our platform, including extending our contact center capabilities, adding deeper collaboration services, and bringing an increasing number of analytics-driven applications to market. Additionally, we intend to upsell our products and services by educating our customers on the additional services we offer, and the value of using them in concert.
• Expanding our Global Footprint. As more and more businesses establish international operations, we believe companies will view traditional communication solutions bridging multiple geographies and carrier networks as cumbersome and expensive. We will continue to focus on expanding our ability to effectively and efficiently deliver our services into the countries and regions we currently serve. In addition, we plan to continue expanding the distribution of our services into new countries through a combination of organic growth, regional acquisitions and channel partners.
• Expanding Paths to Market with Self-Service Solutions. We are investing in web-based, self-service capabilities in order to enable a broader set of customers to discover, purchase and implement our products. We have recently launched 8x8 ContactNow, our simplified contact center solution for teams, into the US market with full self-service capabilities, and we expect to leverage this model across additional services in the future.
• Acquiring Strategic Assets. We intend to identify, acquire and integrate strategic technologies, assets and businesses to expand the breadth and adoption of our cloud software offerings and drive growth, both domestically and internationally.

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Our Products

Powered by internally owned and managed technologies, 8x8's solutions serve businesses of all sizes, scaling readily to serve large, globally distributed enterprise customers. All of our core software components work together and can be combined into different bundles depending on the business needs of our customers.

Our current suite of products includes:

8x8 Virtual Office (VO) delivers high quality voice and unified communications-as-a-service globally. 8x8 Virtual Office is a self-contained, end-to-end solution that enables a customer to use a single business phone number to place and receive calls from any supported device (including desktop phones, computers with an installed software telephone app and mobile devices) over any available broadband Internet connection. We offer metered, unlimited, and international service plans.

The basic feature set of 8x8 Virtual Office includes auto attendants; unlimited, metered or international calling plans; worldwide extension dialing; corporate directory with click-to-call functionality; presence, messaging and chat; voicemail to email notification; conferencing; ring groups (ringing multiple extensions at the same time or in sequence); hot-desking (multiple people sharing the same physical device); call recording; fax; call monitoring; music on hold; and a receptionist console with a night-attendant feature to answer and route calls when no employees are available. A web-based portal enables system administrators to manage their Virtual Office solution, including setting up user profiles; configuring auto-attendants, ring groups, call queues and branches; managing corporate directories; and viewing call detail records and billing information.

We also provide, at no additional cost, Virtual Office Mobile software that turns Apple iOS and Android-based mobile devices into extensions on the 8x8 Virtual Office platform. Virtual Office Mobile can be downloaded from the Apple or Google Play stores as an application.

8x8 Virtual Contact Center (VCC) is a multi-channel cloud based solution that enables even the smallest contact center to enjoy customer experience and agent productivity benefits that were previously available only to large contact centers at a much higher cost. 8x8 Virtual Contact Center is suitable for customer support, sales and any other corporate function that generates a high volume of inbound interactions with customers.

Basic features of the 8x8 Virtual Contact Center solution include a programmable IVR tool for greeting customers, automatic queuing and routing of inbound inquiries, skills-based routing of inquiries to the appropriate call center agents, browser-based agent console, multimedia management, real-time monitoring and reporting, internal chat, voice recording and logging, historical reporting, contact and case management tools, and integration with popular third-party CRM tools. To give customers a truly global presence, 8x8 Virtual Contact Center seamlessly connects an organization's international agents over a single platform with integrated presence, multilingual chat with automatic translation, call routing, reporting and management.

Recent enhancements to 8x8 Virtual Contact Center include Customer Journey analytics capabilities that offer insight into customer experience and cloud-native Quality Management tools that help contact center managers evaluate every customer interaction and make timely improvements.

8x8 Virtual Office Meetings is a cloud-based video conferencing and collaboration solution that enables secure, continuous collaboration with borderless high definition (HD) video and audio communications from mobile and desktop devices, anywhere in the world. Virtual Office Meetings is built seamlessly into 8x8's Virtual Office desktop and mobile experience which allows users to schedule meetings, initiate instant collaboration on the fly, and transition IM conversations into a meeting from a single application. In addition, the solution gives users access to their corporate directory for easy engagement and eliminates the need for users and IT to manage multiple logins and passwords.

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Inside a Virtual Office Meeting, participants experience high definition audio conferencing (for employees or external participants using a software download), content sharing, chat conversations, high definition video conferencing and meeting recordings. Meetings can be scheduled in advance either from the software itself or from Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. When in a meeting, users can take advantage of 8x8's integrated presence feature to bring additional participants directly into a collaboration session using their preferred method of communication, including IM, email and voice.

With the surge in team messaging and collaboration apps such as Slack and HipChat, enterprises are increasingly subject to application proliferation and fragmentation that is hard to manage and govern securely. 8x8 Sameroom provides an interoperability platform that enables cross-team messaging and collaboration within a large organization and between organizations. With the Sameroom technology, our customers can collaborate across more than twenty disparate team messaging solutions.

8x8 ContactNow is an intelligent, scalable and easy-to-use cloud contact center solution that we market for use by teams.  ContactNow provides call center functionality for teams that regularly interact with internal and external customers, such as sales, marketing, human resources, recruiting and help desks, but do not require the capabilities and feature set of a full scale, traditional contact center solution. 8x8 ContactNow offers a flexible pay-as-you-go model and is readily scalable and customizable through self-service configuration, allowing customers to add and subtract agents "on the fly" based on customer demand. We expect 8x8 ContactNow generally to be more affordable and better suited for the needs of small teams than 8x8 VCC.

Script8 is a dynamic communications flow and routing engine that offers a scripting environment for intelligently routing communications data for specific workflows. Script8 allows end-users to create simple, personalized and customizable communications experiences, including communications control, external data source integration and intelligent routing. Script8 use cases have included, for example: routing priority calls based on sales pipeline data in CRM system; IVR with two-factor authentication; sending SMS with directions to a retail store; and emergency dialing with Caller ID override.

We introduced our first communications SaaS offering in 2002, and have since expanded our solutions, features and capabilities. Our services are powered by internally-owned and operated technologies and are delivered to our customers from our 8x8 Communications Cloud platform. From inception through March 31, 2017 we have been awarded 131 United States patents covering a variety of voice and video communications, signaling, processing and storage technologies. Many patents in our portfolio relate to the communications software used in our various SaaS solutions.

We developed our Global Reach patented technology to ensure that 8x8 voice communications, placed or received anywhere on the globe on any compatible device, can have the same consistent quality as a local call within a single area code. Many hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions route call data through the same data center, regardless of the physical or geographic location of callers. By contrast, when an end-user makes a call using our solution, our patented technology seeks out the closest data center to the caller's location, subject to service quality, security and data sovereignty considerations. We call this "geo-routing." Our proprietary technologies take into account current Internet and carrier network conditions and determine the best route virtually instantaneously, ensuring that latency is minimized within the available routing options.

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Many of our software solutions provide mission critical services to our business customers. We have therefore developed technologies and architectures that embed high reliability and uptime into our software. Based on this reliability and our Global Reach techology, we are able to offer qualifying enterprise customers an end-to-end SLA that provides commitments as to both the availability of our solutions, or uptime, and voice call quality.

We believe one of the key areas that differentiates 8x8 from our competitors is the quality of our real-time service delivery over the public Internet. Real-time voice is perhaps the most difficult application to be delivered over the public Internet as there is no time for retransmission and there is little buffering that can be done without impacting the quality of a real-time conversation. As such, quality of the connection well beyond just the available bandwidth is the most important element of service delivery for VoIP. By having diverse routes and connectivity as well as full and granular Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control over these connections, 8x8 is constantly inspecting the state of the Internet to optimize our service delivery to customers.

In addition, we have instrumented hundreds of thousands of 8x8 endpoints to provide details of quality of connection information at the end of each call to 8x8's internal network operations environment. This is possible due to our full control over the core networking stack/equipment and the transit connections in our data centers.  

Our technologies include a number of deployment methodologies that represent best practices for implementing our software at a customer site and driving customer adoption of our more advanced software features. We also manage and port existing business numbers globally, and we provide local number porting services in more than 40 countries. We provide software connectivity to emergency services and other regulatory services required by law in different regions of the world. We have developed our own billing software, and provide our customers with electronic monthly billing.

Finally, a key aspect of our technology, especially critical for larger enterprise customers and certain industry verticals (such as healthcare), is our emphasis on security and compliance, which we have addressed through specific measures such as our end-to-end encryption technologies and certifications with various regulations and industry standards as described above.

We market our services directly to end users through a variety of means, including search engine marketing and optimization, third-party lead generation sources, industry conferences, trade shows, and webinars, as well as traditional advertising channels. We employ a direct sales organization, consisting of inside and field-based sales agents, and an indirect channel partner network consisting of value-added resellers (VARs), master agents, system integrators and service providers. We typically contract directly with the end customer and use these channel partners to identify, qualify and manage prospects throughout the sales cycle, and have arrangements with a number of partners who resell our services to their customers. For mid-market and enterprise customers, our sales professionals work closely with inside technical support, sales engineers and deployment specialists to develop customized solution proposals based on individual customer requirements.

In fiscal 2017, we invested in new resources and support tools for our channel partner program, including new sales enablement training and resources, deployment and support certification programs, online customer return on investment (ROI) tools, co-branded marketing materials and our new "PartnerConnect" portal which, among other capabilities, allows partners to launch and manage pre-built, multi-touch digital co-marketing campaigns.

Given the size and stage of the current market opportunity and the breadth of our communications and collaboration service platform, we face competition from many companies, including other cloud services providers, communications and collaboration software vendors and incumbent telephone companies and other resellers of legacy communications equipment. For more information regarding the risks associated with such competition, please refer to our "Risk Factors" below.

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Cloud Services Providers

For customers looking to implement cloud-based communications, we compete with other cloud communication software providers such as RingCentral, Fuze, Vonage, Five9 and InContact/Nice. We believe that the integration of our services over a common platform, including contact center, differentiates our services from those offered by these competitors. We believe we also compare favorably as to security, reliability, quality of service, analytics and global coverage.

We also face competition from communications and collaboration software vendors such as Cisco, Google, Amazon and Microsoft Corporation, some of which are well-established in the communications industry while others have only recently begun to market cloud communications solutions. Some of these competitors have developed strong software solutions for its respective communications and/or collaboration silo. Many of these competitors are substantially larger, better capitalized, and more well-known than we are. However, we believe that a collective deployment of these software solutions is likely to be more expensive and cumbersome for customers, when compared to similar deployments of our services.

Our cloud-based software replaces wire line business voice services sold by incumbent telephone and cable companies such as AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, and Verizon Communications, often in conjunction with on-premises hardware solutions from companies like Avaya, Cisco and Mitel. We believe that the solutions offered by these competitors are typically more expensive to adopt, require cumbersome on-premises implementations, and need regular hardware and IT infrastructure upgrades. Furthermore, the offerings often do not provide all the functionality needed for larger customers to integrate their communication systems with their IT infrastructure, therefore requiring additional system integration investments.

Our operations infrastructure consists of data management, monitoring, control and billing systems that support all of our products and services. We have invested substantial resources to develop and implement our real-time call management information system. Key elements of our operations infrastructure include a prospective customer quotation portal, customer provisioning, customer access, fraud control, network security, call routing, call monitoring, media processing and normalization, call reliability, detailed call record storage and billing and integration with third-party applications. We maintain a call-switching platform in software that manages call admission, call control and call rating and routes calls to an appropriate destination or customer premises equipment.

We maintain global network operations centers at our headquarters in San Jose, California and in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and employ a staff with experience in voice and data operations to provide 24-hour operations support, seven days per week. We use various tools to monitor and manage all elements of our network and our partners' networks in real time. We also monitor the network elements of some of our larger business customers. Additionally, our network operations center provides technical support to troubleshoot equipment and network problems. We also rely upon the network operations centers and resources of our telecommunications carrier partners and data center providers to augment our monitoring and response efforts.

In the event of a major disruption at a data center, such as a natural disaster, failover between data centers for 8x8 Virtual Office is designed to occur instantly. Active calls may disconnect, but new calls can be generated immediately. In addition, most of the maintenance services performed by 8x8 are seamless and non-disruptive to customers. For example, we can move the core call flow processing from one data center to another without dropping a call. We offer local redundancy (i.e., failover to a data center within the same region) as a standard feature of 8x8 Virtual Contact Center, and geographical redundancy (i.e., failover to a data center in a different region) can be enabled as an option to provision geo-redundant tenants on multiple sites. Our ContactNow product is geographically redundant in the U.S. and, in the UK, across multiple sites in London.

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Customer and Technical Support

8x8 maintains a global customer support organization with operations in the United States, United Kingdom, Philippines and Romania. Customers can access 8x8 customer support services directly from the company website or receive multi-channel technical support via phone, chat, web and email. Emergency support is available on a 24x7 basis.

We take a lifecycle approach to customer support, supporting customers from onboarding to deployment and training, and through the renewal process, to drive greater user adoption of 8x8 services. For our larger enterprise customers, our Elite Touch implementation methodology utilizes a Deployment Management team and provides active support through the "go-live" date at each customer site.  We also provide a Customer Success Manager as a single point of contact for every aspect of the post-sale relationship.  Finally, we offer a variety of training classes through our 8x8 Academy, either through instructor-led classes or self-paced eLearning.

We are a party to telecommunications interconnect and service agreements with VoIP providers and public switched telephone network (PSTN) telecommunications carriers in the United States and other global regions.  Pursuant to these agreements, VoIP calls originating on our network can be terminated on other VoIP networks or the PSTN, and likewise, calls originating on other VoIP networks and the PSTN can be terminated on our network.

The cloud communications market is characterized by rapid technological changes and advancements, typical of most SaaS markets. Accordingly, we make substantial investments in the design and development of new products and services, as well as the development of enhancements and features to our existing products and services, and make these enhancements available to our customers frequently. Research and development expenses in each of the fiscal years ended March 31, 2017, 2016 and 2015 were $27.5 million, $24.0 million and $15.1 million, respectively.

We plan to invest in expanding the set of services within our platform, including extending our contact center capabilities, adding deeper collaboration services, and bringing an increasing number of analytics-driven applications to market. We expect our future development programs also to focus on the integration and functionality of our products and services with other SaaS products, such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Zendesk and others.

We currently employ individuals in research, development and engineering activities in our facilities in San Jose, California, London, England and Cluj, Romania as well as outsourced software development consultants.

In the United States, VoIP and other software communications and collaboration services, like ours, have been subject to less regulation at the state and federal levels than traditional telecommunications services. The FCC has subjected VoIP service providers to a smaller subset of regulations that apply to traditional telecommunications service providers and has not yet classified VoIP services as either telecommunications or information. The FCC is currently examining the status of VoIP service providers and the services they provide in multiple open proceedings.

Many state regulatory agencies impose taxes and other surcharges on VoIP services, and certain states take the position that offerings by VoIP providers are intrastate telecommunications services and therefore subject to state regulation. These states argue that if the beginning and end points of communications are known, and if some of these communications occur entirely within the boundaries of a state, the state can regulate that offering. We believe that federal regulations largely pre-empt state regulations that treat VoIP offerings in the same manner as providers of traditional telecommunications services. However, there are many areas of regulation where pre-emption has not been resolved as a matter of law. It is possible that the FCC could determine that VoIP services are not information services, or that there could be a judicial or legislative determination that the states are not pre-empted from regulating VoIP services as traditional telecommunications services. We cannot predict how or when these issues will be resolved or the potential future impact on our business at this time.

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In addition to regulations addressing Internet telephony and broadband services, other regulatory issues relating to the Internet generally could affect our ability to provide our services. Congress has adopted legislation that regulates certain aspects of the Internet including online content, user privacy, taxation, liability for third-party activities and jurisdiction. In addition, a number of initiatives pending in Congress and state legislatures would prohibit or restrict advertising or sale of certain products and services on the Internet, which may have the effect of raising the cost of doing business on the Internet generally.

Internationally, we are subject to a complex patchwork of regulations that vary from country to country. Some countries have adopted laws that make the provision of VoIP services illegal within the country. Other countries have adopted laws that impose stringent licensing obligations on providers of VoIP services like ours. In many countries, it is not clear how laws that have historically been applied to traditional telecommunications providers will be applied to providers of VoIP services like us.

The effect of any future laws, regulations and orders, or any changes in existing laws or their enforcement, on our operations cannot be determined. But as a general matter, increased regulation and the imposition of additional funding obligations increases service costs that may or may not be recoverable from our customers. An increase in these costs could make our services less competitive with traditional telecommunications services, if we increase our prices, or decrease our profit margins, if we attempt to absorb such costs.

Federal, state, local and foreign governmental organizations are considering other legislative and regulatory proposals that would regulate and/or tax applications running over the Internet. We cannot predict whether new taxes will be imposed on our services, and depending on the type of taxes imposed, whether and how our services would be affected thereafter. Increased regulation of the Internet may decrease its growth and hinder technological development, which may negatively impact the cost of doing business via the Internet or otherwise materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Please refer to Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors," for a discussion of regulatory risks, proceedings and issues that could adversely affect our business and operating results in the future.

Our ability to compete depends, in part, on our ability to obtain and enforce intellectual property protection for our technology in the United States and internationally. We currently rely primarily on a combination of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, trademarks and licenses to protect our intellectual property. From inception through March 31, 2017, we have been awarded 131 United States patents, of which we expect to expire between 2017 and 2035. We have additional United States and foreign patent applications pending. We cannot predict whether our pending patent applications will result in issued patents.

To protect our trade secrets and other proprietary information, we require our employees to sign agreements providing for the maintenance of confidentiality and also the assignment of rights to inventions made by them while employed by us. There can be no assurance that our means of protecting our proprietary rights in the United States or abroad will be adequate or that competition will not independently develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technology, duplicate our technology or design around any of our patents. In addition, the laws of foreign countries in which our products are or may be sold may not protect our intellectual property rights to the same extent as do the laws of the United States. Our failure to protect our proprietary information could cause our business and operating results to suffer.

We are also subject to the risks of adverse claims and litigation alleging infringement of the intellectual property rights of others. Such claims and litigation could require us to expend substantial resources and distract key employees from their normal duties, which could have a material adverse effect on our operating results, cash flows and financial condition. The communications and software industries are subject to frequent litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. Moreover, the VoIP service provider community has historically been a target of patent holders. There is a risk that we will be a target of assertions of patent rights and that we may be required to expend significant resources to investigate and defend against such assertions of patent rights. For information about specific claims, please refer to Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors - "Our infringement of a third party's proprietary technology could disrupt our business" and Part I, Item 3. "LEGAL PROCEEDINGS."

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We utilize certain technology, including hardware and software, that we license from third parties. Most of these licenses are on standard commercial terms made generally available by the companies providing the licenses. To date, the cost and terms of these licenses individually has not been material to our business. There can be no assurance that the technology licensed by us will continue to provide competitive features and functionality or that licenses for technology currently utilized by us or other technology which we may seek to license in the future will be available to us on commercially reasonable terms or at all, however. The loss of, or inability to maintain, existing licenses could result in shipment delays or reductions until equivalent technology or suitable alternative products could be developed, identified, licensed and integrated, and could harm our business.

We have two reportable segments. Financial information relating to revenues generated in different geographic areas are set forth in Note 12 to our consolidated financial statements contained in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report.

As of March 31, 2017, our workforce consisted of 1,019 full time employees spread across the globe. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or are subject to a collective bargaining arrangement.

We were incorporated in California in February 1987 and reincorporated in Delaware in December 1996. We maintain a corporate Internet website at the address http://www.8x8.com. The contents of this website are not incorporated in or otherwise to be regarded as part of this Annual Report. We file reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, which are available on our website free of charge. These reports include annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to such reports, each of which is provided on our website as soon as reasonably practical after we electronically file such materials with or furnish them to the SEC. You can also read and copy any materials we file with the SEC at the SEC's Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. You can obtain additional information about the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1.800.SEC.0330. In addition, the SEC maintains a website (www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC, including 8x8.

Our executive officers as of the date of this report are listed below.

Vikram Verma, Chief Executive Officer. Vikram Verma, age 52, has served as Chief Executive Officer since September 2013 and as a director since January 2012. From October 2008 through August 2013, Mr. Verma was President of Strategic Venture Development for Lockheed Martin. From 2006 through 2008, Mr. Verma was President of the IS&GS Savi Group, a division of Lockheed Martin. Prior to 2006, Mr. Verma was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Savi Technology, Inc. Mr. Verma received a B.S.E.E. degree from Florida Institute of Technology, a M.S.E. degree from the University of Michigan in electrical engineering, and a graduate degree of Engineer in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Bryan Martin, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. Bryan Martin, age 49, has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors since December 2003, has served as Chief Technology Officer since September 2013 and as a director since February 2002. From February 2002 to September 2013, he served as Chief Executive Officer. From March 2007 to November 2008, and again from April 2011 to December 2011, he served as President. From February 2001 to February 2002, he served as our President and Chief Operating Officer. He served as our Senior Vice President, Engineering Operations from July 2000 to February 2001 and as Chief Technical Officer from August 1995 to August 2000. He also served as a director of the Company from January 1998 through July 1999. In addition, Mr. Martin served in various technical roles for the Company from April 1990 to August 1995. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Mary Ellen Genovese, Chief Financial Officer. Mary Ellen Genovese, age 58, has served as our Chief Financial Officer since November 2014.  Ms. Genovese had been serving as our Senior Vice President of Human Resources since July 2014 and prior to that, as a consultant to the Company since April 2012. Prior to joining the Company, from 2008 to 2011, Ms. Genovese served as a consultant to a Fortune 50 security company. From 2004 through 2006, Ms. Genovese was the Chief Financial Officer of Savi Technology, Inc. Prior to joining Savi Technology, she was Chief Financial Officer of Trimble Navigation Limited from 2000 to 2004. Between 1992 and 2000, Ms. Genovese worked at Trimble in a succession of other financial and accounting positions, including VP of Finance and Corporate Controller. Ms. Genovese holds a B.S. Degree in Accounting from Fairfield University and received her CPA license from the State of Connecticut.

Darren Hakeman, Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy. Darren Hakeman, age 47, has served as our Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy since September 2013, and was a consultant to the Company starting in May 2013. From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Hakeman worked as a strategic advisor to leading Silicon Valley companies and emerging start-ups including Authentication Metrics, Inc. (now Agari), Blackfire Research, and a major global security company. Prior to 2009, he served as Senior Vice President of Operations for a SaaS Business Unit of Lockheed Martin that emerged following Lockheed's acquisition of Savi Technology, Inc. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

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Puneet Arora, Senior Vice President of Global Sales. Puneet Arora, age 42, has served as Senior Vice President of Global Sales since January 2015. From January 2013 to January 2015, Mr. Arora was Vice President and Head of North America Sales at LivePerson. From August 2010 to August 2012, Mr. Arora led Cloud CRM Sales - North America - West for Oracle. From September 2007 to November 2009, Mr. Arora was Vice President of Corporate Sales for Salesforce.com. He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University and an M.B.A. from Babson College.

Henrik Gerdes, Chief Accounting Officer. Henrik Gerdes, age 41, has served as our Chief Accounting Officer, since March 2017. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Gerdes, served as Corporate Controller and Treasurer at Rocket Fuel Inc. from 2014 through March 2017, Director of Finance at TIBCO Software Inc. from 2011 through 2014 and SEC reporting manager from 2010 through 2011. Between 2002 and 2010, Mr. Gerdes served in different positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Germany and San Jose, USA. Mr. Gerdes holds a Masters of Business Economics from University of Goettingen, Germany.

If any of the following risks actually occur, our business, results of operations and financial condition could suffer significantly.

Our future success depends on our ability to significantly increase revenue generated from sales of our cloud software solutions to business customers, including small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and mid-market and larger distributed enterprises. To increase our revenue, we must add new customers and encourage existing customers to continue their subscriptions (on terms favorable to us), increase their usage of our services, and/or purchase additional services from us. For customer demand and adoption of our cloud communications solutions to grow, the quality, cost and feature benefits of these services must compare favorably to those of competing services. For example, our cloud unified communications and contact center services must continue to evolve so that high-quality service and features can be consistently offered at competitive prices. As our target markets mature, or as competitors introduce lower cost and/or more differentiated products or services that compete or are perceived to compete with ours, we may be unable to renew or extend our agreements with existing customers or attract new customers, or new business from existing customers, on favorable terms, which could have an adverse effect on our revenue and growth.

The rate at which our existing customers purchase any new or enhanced services we may offer depends on a number of factors, including general economic conditions, the importance of these additional features and services to our customers, and the price at which we offer them. If our customers react negatively to our new or enhanced service offerings or our efforts to upsell are otherwise not as successful as we project, our business may suffer. Our sales strategies must also continue to evolve and adapt as our market matures, for example through the offering of additional customer self-service tools and automation for the SMB segment and the development of new and more sophisticated sales channels that leverage the strengths of our partners. In addition, marketing and selling new and enhanced features and services may require increasingly sophisticated and costly sales and marketing efforts, which may require us to incur additional expenses and may negatively impact the results of our operations.

To support the successful marketing and sale of our services to new and existing customers, we must continue to offer high-quality training, deployment, and customer support. Providing these services effectively requires that our customer support personnel have industry-specific technical knowledge and expertise, which may make it difficult and costly for us to locate and hire qualified personnel, particularly in the competitive Silicon Valley labor market where we are headquartered. Our support personnel also require extensive training on our products, which may make it difficult to scale up our support operations rapidly. The importance of high-quality customer support will increase as we expand our business globally and pursue new mid-market and distributed enterprise customers. If we do not help our customers quickly resolve post-deployment issues and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional features and services to existing customers will suffer and our reputation may be harmed.

We currently derive a majority of our revenues from sales of our cloud software solutions to mid-market and larger distributed enterprises, and we believe increasing our sales to these customers is key to our future growth. Our sales cycle, which is the time between initial contact with a potential customer and the ultimate sale to that customer, is often lengthy and unpredictable for larger enterprise customers. Many of our prospective enterprise customers do not have prior experience with cloud-based communications and, therefore, typically spend significant time and resources evaluating our solutions before they purchase from us. Similarly, we typically spend more time and effort determining their requirements and educating these customers about the benefits and uses of our solutions. Enterprise customers also tend to demand more customizations, integrations and additional features than SMB customers. As a result, we may be required to divert more sales and engineering resources to a smaller number of large transactions than we have in the past, which means that we will have less personnel available to support other segments or that we will need to hire additional personnel, which would increase our operating expenses.

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It is often difficult for us to forecast when a potential enterprise sale will close, the size of the customer's initial service order and the period over which the deployment will occur, which impacts our recognition of revenue. Enterprise customers may delay their purchases from one quarter to another as they assess their budget constraints, negotiate early contract terminations with their existing providers or wait for us to develop new features. Any delay in closing, or failure to close, a large enterprise sales opportunity in a particular quarter or year could significantly harm our projected growth rates and cause the amount of new sales we book to vary significantly from quarter to quarter. We may also have to delay revenue recognition on some of these transactions until the customer's technical or implementation requirements have been met.

In some cases, we may enter into a contract with a large enterprise customer, such as a preferred vendor agreement, that has little or no minimum purchase commitments but establishes the terms on which the customer's affiliates, clients or franchisees (as the case may be) may order services from us in the future. We may expend significant time and resources towards becoming a preferred vendor without booking significant sales from the opportunity until months or years after we sign the initial agreement. If we are unsuccessful in selling our services to the prospective purchasers under these agreements, we may not recognize revenue in excess of the expenses we incur in pursuing these opportunities, which could adversely impact our profitability and cash flow.

We have a limited history of selling our services to larger businesses and have experienced, and may continue to experience, new challenges in deploying and providing ongoing support for the solutions we sell to large customers.

Larger customers' networks are often more complex than those of smaller customers and generally require participation from the customer information technology (IT) team, and there is no guarantee that resources with adequate expertise will be available when we deploy our services. The lack of local resources may prevent us from ensuring the proper deployment of our services, which can in turn adversely impact the quality of services that we deliver over our customers' networks, and/or may result in delays in the implementation of our services. This may create a public perception that we are unable to deliver high quality of service to our customers, which could harm our reputation and make it more difficult to attract new customers and retain existing customers. Moreover, larger customers tend to require higher levels of customer service and individual attention (including periodic business reviews and in-person visits, for example), which may increase our costs for implementing and delivering services. If a customer is unsatisfied with the quality of services we provide or the quality of work performed by us or a third party, we may decide to incur costs beyond the scope of our contract with the customer in order to address the situation and protect our reputation, which may in turn reduce or eliminate the profitability of our contract with the customer. In addition, negative publicity related to our larger customer relationships, regardless of its accuracy, could harm our reputation and make it more difficult for us to compete for new business with current and prospective customers.

We also face challenges building and training an integrated sales force capable of addressing the services and features of our comprehensive product suite, as well as a staff of expert engineering and customer support personnel capable of addressing the full range of installation and deployment issues that tend to arise more frequently with larger customers. Also, we have only limited experience in developing and managing sales channels and distribution arrangements for larger businesses. If we fail to effectively execute the sale, deployment and ongoing support of our services to mid-market and larger distributed enterprises, our results of operations and our overall ability to grow our customer base could be materially and adversely affected.

The cloud communications industry is competitive, and we expect it to become increasingly competitive in the future. We may also face competition from companies in adjacent or overlapping industries.

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In connection with our unified communication services, we face competition from other providers of cloud communication services, such as RingCentral, Fuze, Vonage and Dialpad. In connection with our cloud contact center services, we face competition from other providers of cloud and premise-based contact center software services, such as inContact (recently acquired by NICE), Five9 and Interactive Intelligence. In addition, because many of our target customers have historically purchased communications services from incumbent telephone companies along with legacy on-premises communication equipment, we compete with these customers' existing providers. These competitors include, for example, AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast and Verizon Communications in the United States, as well as local incumbent communications providers in the international markets where we operate, such as Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange, America Movil and Deutsche Telekom, all in conjunction with on-premises hardware solutions from companies like Avaya, Cisco and Mitel.   We may also face competition from large Internet and cloud service companies such as Google Inc., Amazon Inc., Oracle Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, any of which might launch a new cloud-based business communications service, expand its existing offerings or acquire other cloud-based business communications companies in the future.

Many of our current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, significantly greater resources and brand awareness, and a larger base of customers than we have. As a result, these competitors may have greater credibility with our existing and potential customers. They also may be able to adopt more aggressive pricing policies and devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products. Our competitors may also offer bundled service arrangements that present a more differentiated or better integrated product to customers. Increased competition could require us to lower our prices, reduce our sales revenue, lower our gross profits and/or cause us to lose market share. In addition, many of our customers are not subject to long-term contractual commitments and have the ability to switch from our services to our competitors' offerings on relatively short notice.

Given the significant price competition in the markets for our services, we may be at a disadvantage compared with those competitors who have substantially greater resources than us or may otherwise be better positioned to withstand an extended period of downward pricing pressure. The adverse impact of a shortfall in our revenues may be magnified by our inability to adjust our expenses to compensate for such shortfall. Announcements, or expectations, as to the introduction of new products and technologies by our competitors or us could cause customers to defer purchases of our existing products, which also could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.

We recorded an operating loss of approximately $6.7 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017 and ended the period with an accumulated deficit of approximately $115 million. Although we have achieved operating income in three of our five most recent fiscal years, we incurred substantial operating losses prior to that period and we may incur operating losses in the future, and those loses could be substantial. As we expand our geographic reach and range of service offerings, and further invest in research and development, sales and marketing, and regulatory compliance, we will need to increase revenues in order to generate sustainable operating profit. Given our history of fluctuating revenues and operating losses, we cannot be certain that we will be able to achieve or maintain operating profitability on an annual basis or on a quarterly basis in the future.

Our customers generally do not have long-term contracts with us and may discontinue their subscriptions for our services after the expiration of their initial subscription period, which typically range from one to three years. In addition, our customers may renew for lower subscription amounts or for shorter contract lengths. We may not accurately predict cancellation rates for our customers. Our cancellation rates may increase or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including customer usage, pricing changes, number of applications used by our customers, customer satisfaction with our service, the acquisition of our customers by other companies and deteriorating general economic conditions. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our service or decrease the amount they spend with us, our revenue will decline and our business will suffer.

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Our average monthly business service revenue churn was less than 1% over the past two fiscal years. Our method of computing this revenue churn rate may be different from methods used by our competitors and other companies in our industry to compute their publicly disclosed churn rates. As a result, only limited reliance can be placed on our churn rate when attempting to compare it to that of other companies. Also, our churn rate can vary based on events that may not be indicative of actual trends in our business. Our churn rate could increase in the future if customers are not satisfied with our service. Other factors, including increased competition from other providers of communications and collaborations services, alternative technologies, and adverse business conditions also influence our churn rate.

Because of churn, we must acquire new customers on an ongoing basis to maintain our existing level of customers and revenues. As a result, marketing expenditures are an ongoing requirement of our business. If our churn rate increases, we will have to acquire even more new customers in order to maintain our existing revenues. We incur significant costs to acquire new customers, and those costs are an important factor in determining our net profitability. Therefore, if we are unsuccessful in retaining customers or are required to spend significant amounts to acquire new customers beyond those budgeted, our revenue could decrease and our net loss could increase.

Our rate of customer cancellations may increase in future periods due to a number of factors, some of which are beyond our control, such as the financial condition of our customers or the state of credit markets. In addition, a single, protracted service outage or a series of service disruptions, whether due to our services or those of our carrier partners, may result in a sharp increase in customer cancellations.

Due to the length of our sales cycle, especially in adding new mid-market and larger distributed enterprises as customers, we may also experience delays in acquiring new customers to replace those that have terminated our services. Such delays would be exacerbated if general economic conditions worsen. An increase in churn, particularly in challenging economic times, could have a negative impact on the results of our operations.

We operate in an emerging market that is characterized by rapid changes in customer requirements, frequent introductions of new and enhanced products, and continuing and rapid technological advancement. To compete successfully in this emerging market, we must continue to design, develop, manufacture, and sell new and enhanced cloud software solutions products and services that provide higher levels of performance and reliability at lower cost. If we are unable to develop new services that address our customers' needs, to deliver our applications in one seamless integrated product offering that addresses our customers' needs, or to enhance and improve our services in a timely manner, we may not be able to achieve or maintain adequate market acceptance of our services. Our ability to grow is also subject to the risk of future disruptive technologies. Access and use of our services is provided via the cloud, which, itself, has been disruptive to the previous premises-based model.

If new technologies emerge that are able to deliver communications and collaboration services at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently or more securely, such technologies could adversely impact our ability to compete.

If we are unable to develop new features and services internally due to factors such as competitive labor markets, high employee turnover, lack of management ability or a lack of other research and development resources, we may miss market opportunities. Further, many of our competitors have historically spent a greater amount of funds on their research and development programs, and those that do not may be acquired by larger companies that would allocate greater resources to our competitors' research and development programs. In addition, there is no guarantee that our research and development efforts will succeed, or that our new products and services will enable us to maintain or grow our revenue or recover our development costs. Our failure to maintain adequate research and development resources, to compete effectively with the research and development programs of our competitors and to successfully monetize our research and development efforts could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

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We may not be able to scale our business efficiently or quickly enough to meet our customers' growing needs, in which case our operating results could be harmed.

As usage of our cloud software solutions by mid-market and larger distributed enterprises expands and as customers continue to integrate our services across their enterprises, we are required to devote additional resources to improving our application architecture, integrating our products and applications across our technology platform, integrating with third-party systems, and maintaining infrastructure performance. As our customers gain more experience with our services, the number of users and transactions managed by our services, the amount of data transferred, processed and stored by us, the number of locations where our service is being accessed, and the volume of communications managed by our services have in some cases, and may in the future, expand rapidly. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support and services and regulatory compliance, to serve our growing customer base. Any failure of or delay in these efforts could cause impaired system performance and reduced customer satisfaction. These issues could reduce the attractiveness of our cloud software solutions to customers, resulting in decreased sales to new customers, lower renewal rates by existing customers, the issuance of service credits, or requested refunds, which could hurt our revenue growth and our reputation. These system upgrades and the expansion of our support and services have been and will continue to be expensive and complex, requiring management time and attention and increasing our operating expenses. We could also face inefficiencies or operational failures as a result of our efforts to scale our infrastructure. Moreover, there are inherent risks associated with upgrading, improving and expanding our information technology systems. We cannot be sure that the expansion and improvements to our infrastructure and systems will be fully or effectively implemented on a timely basis, if at all. These efforts may reduce revenue and our margins and adversely impact our financial results.

We currently use the infrastructure of third-party network service providers, including the services of Equinix, Inc., and Level 3 Communications, Inc., to provide all of our cloud services over their networks rather than deploying our own networks.

We also rely on third-party network service providers to originate and terminate substantially all of the PTSN calls using our cloud-based services. We leverage the infrastructure of third-party network service providers to provide telephone numbers, PSTN call termination and origination services, and local number portability for our customers rather than deploying our own network throughout the United States and internationally. This decision has resulted in lower capital and operating costs for our business in the short-term, but has reduced our operating flexibility and ability to make timely service changes. If any of these network service providers cease operations or otherwise terminate the services that we depend on, the delay in switching our technology to another network service provider, if available, and qualifying this new service provider could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results. The rates we pay to our network service providers may also increase, which may reduce our profitability and increase the retail price of our service.

There can be no assurance that these service providers will be able or willing to supply cost-effective services to us in the future or that we will be successful in signing up alternative or additional providers. Although we believe that we could replace our current providers, if necessary, our ability to provide service to our subscribers could be impacted during any such transition, which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. The loss of access to, or requirement to change, the telephone numbers we provide to our customers also could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.

Due to our reliance on these service providers, when problems occur in a network, it may be difficult to identify the source of the problem. The occurrence of hardware and software errors, whether caused by our service or products or those of another vendor, may result in the delay or loss of market acceptance of our products and any necessary revisions may force us to incur significant expenses. Under the terms of the "end-to-end" service level commitments that we make for the benefit of qualifying customers, we are potentially at risk for service problems experienced by these service providers. Customers who do not qualify for these enhanced SLA commitments may nevertheless hold us responsible for these service issues and seek service credits, early termination rights or other remedies. Accordingly, service issues experienced by our service provider partners may harm our reputation as well as our business, financial condition or operating results.

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Our physical infrastructure is concentrated in a few facilities and any failure in our physical infrastructure or services could lead to significant costs and disruptions and could reduce our revenue, harm our business reputation and have a material adverse effect on our financial results.

Our leased network and data centers are subject to various points of failure. Problems with cooling equipment, generators, uninterruptible power supply, routers, switches, or other equipment, whether or not within our control, could result in service interruptions for our customers as well as equipment damage. Because our services do not require geographic proximity of our data centers to our customers, our infrastructure is consolidated into a few large data center facilities. Any failure or downtime in one of our data center facilities could affect a significant percentage of our customers. The total destruction or severe impairment of any of our data center facilities could result in significant downtime of our services and the loss of customer data. Because our ability to attract and retain customers depends on our ability to provide customers with highly reliable service, even minor interruptions in our service could harm our reputation. Additionally, in connection with the expansion or consolidation of our existing data center facilities from time to time, there is an increased risk that service interruptions may occur as a result of server relocation or other unforeseen construction-related issues.

We have experienced interruptions in service in the past. While we have not experienced a material increase in customer attrition following these events, the harm to our reputation is difficult to assess. We have taken and continue to take steps to improve our infrastructure to prevent service interruptions, including upgrading our electrical and mechanical infrastructure. However, service interruptions continue to be a significant risk for us and could materially impact our business.

Any future service interruptions could:

• cause our customers to seek service credits, or damages for losses incurred;
• require us to replace existing equipment or add redundant facilities;
• affect our reputation as a reliable provider of communications services;
• cause existing customers to cancel or elect to not renew their contracts; or
• make it more difficult for us to attract new customers.

Any of these events could materially increase our expenses or reduce our revenue, which would have a material adverse effect on our operating results.

We may also be required to transfer our servers to new data center facilities in the event that we are unable to renew our leases on acceptable terms, or at all, or the owners of the facilities decide to close their facilities, and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so. In addition, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy or foreclosure, faced by our third-party data center operators, or any of the service providers with which we or they contract, may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Additionally, if our data centers are unable to keep up with our increasing needs for capacity, our ability to grow our business could be materially and adversely impacted.

We rely on third-party vendors for IP phones and software endpoints required to utilize our service. We currently do not have long-term supply contracts with any of these vendors. As a result, most of these third-party vendors are not obligated to provide products or services to us for any specific period, in any specific quantities or at any specific price, except as may be provided in a particular purchase order. The inability of these third-party vendors to deliver IP phones of acceptable quality and in a timely manner, particularly the sole source vendors, could adversely affect our operating results or cause them to fluctuate more than anticipated. Additionally, some of our products may require specialized or high-performance component parts that may not be available in quantities or in time frames that meet our requirements.

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If we do not or cannot maintain the compatibility of our communications and collaboration software with third-party applications and mobile platforms that our customers use in their businesses, our revenue will decline.

The functionality and popularity of our cloud software solutions depends, in part, on our ability to integrate our services with third-party applications and platforms, including enterprise resource planning, customer relations management, human capital management and other proprietary application suites. Third-party providers of applications and application programmable interfaces, or APIs, may change the features of their applications and platforms, restrict our access to their applications and platforms or alter the terms governing use of their applications and APIs and access to those applications and platforms in an adverse manner. Such changes could functionally limit or terminate our ability to use these third-party applications and platforms in conjunction with our services, which could negatively impact our offerings and harm our business. If we fail to integrate our software with new third-party back-end enterprise applications and platforms used by our customers, we may not be able to offer the functionality that our customers need, which would negatively impact our ability to generate revenue and adversely impact our business. 

Our services also allow our customers to use and manage our cloud software solutions on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. As new smart devices and operating systems are released, we may encounter difficulties supporting these devices and services, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our mobile applications. In addition, if we experience difficulties in the future integrating our mobile applications into smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices or if problems arise with our relationships with providers of mobile operating systems, such as those of Apple Inc. or Google Inc., our future growth and our results of operations could suffer.

Our customers use our service to manage important aspects of their businesses, and any errors, defects, disruptions to our service or other performance problems with our service could hurt our reputation and may damage our customers' businesses. Our services and the systems infrastructure underlying our cloud communications platform incorporate software that is highly technical and complex. Our software has contained, and may now or in the future contain, undetected errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities. Some errors in our software code may only be discovered after the code has been released. Any errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities discovered in our code after release could result in damage to our reputation, loss of users, loss of revenue, or liability for damages, any of which could adversely affect our business and financial results. We implement bug fixes and upgrades as part of our regularly scheduled system maintenance, which may lead to system downtime. Even if we are able to implement the bug fixes and upgrades in a timely manner, any history of defects, or the loss, damage or inadvertent release of confidential customer data, could cause our reputation to be harmed, and customers may elect not to purchase or renew their agreements with us and subject us to service performance credits, warranty claims or increased insurance costs. The costs associated with any material defects or errors in our software or other performance problems may be substantial and could materially adversely affect our operating results.

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Internet access providers and Internet backbone providers may be able to block, degrade or charge for access to or bandwidth use of certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users.

Our products and services depend on the ability of our users to access the Internet, and certain of our products require significant bandwidth to work effectively. In addition, users who access our services and applications through mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, must have a high-speed connection, such as Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or LTE, to use our services and applications. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant and increasing market power in the broadband and Internet access marketplace, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies and mobile communications companies. Some of these providers offer products and services that directly compete with our own offerings, which give them a significant competitive advantage. Some of these broadband providers have stated that they may exempt their own customers from data-caps or offer other preferred treatment to their customers. Other providers have stated that they may take measures that could degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of user access to certain of our products by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our offerings, or by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings, while others, including some of the largest providers of broadband Internet access services, have committed to not engaging in such behavior. These providers have the ability generally to increase their rates, which may effectively increase the cost to our customers of using our cloud software solutions.

On March 12, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, released an order that would prevent broadband Internet access providers from degrading or otherwise disrupting a broad range of services provisioned over consumers' and enterprises' broadband Internet access lines. While this order was appealed by a number of providers and trade organizations, it was subsequently upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on June 14, 2016. A petition for rehearing seeking an en banc rehearing is currently pending. In addition, the current Chairman of the FCC has publicly expressed an interest in changing the regulatory model for broadband Internet access under the current rules. The regulatory treatment of prioritization or degradation of traffic over the Internet, also known as net neutrality, varies widely among the jurisdictions in which we operate. While certain jurisdictions, such as the European Union have strong protections for competitive services such as ours, other countries either lack a net neutrality framework altogether or otherwise have lax enforcement of their rules. Broadband Internet access provider interference could result in a loss of existing users and increased costs, and could impair our ability to attract new users, thereby negatively impacting our revenue and growth.

Our operations depend on our ability to protect our network from interruption by damage from unauthorized entry, computer viruses or other events beyond our control. In the past, we may have been subject to denial or disruption of service, or DDOS, and we may be subject to DDOS attacks in the future. We cannot assure you that our backup systems, regular data backups, security protocols, DDOS mitigation and other procedures that are currently in place, or that may be in place in the future, will be adequate to prevent significant damage, system failure or data loss.

Critical to our provision of service is the storage, processing, and transmission of confidential and sensitive data. We store, process and transmit a wide variety of confidential and sensitive information including credit card, bank account and other financial information, proprietary, trade secret or other data that may be protected by intellectual property laws, customers' and employees' personally identifiable information, as well as other sensitive information. We, along with others in the industry, will be subject to cyber threats and security breaches, given the nature of the information we store, process and transmit.

Depending on the evolving nature of cyber threats and the measures we may have to implement to continue to maintain the security of our networks and data, our profitability may be adversely impacted or we may have to increase the price of our services which may make our offerings less competitive with other communications providers.

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If an individual obtains unauthorized access to our network, or if our network is penetrated, our service could be disrupted and sensitive information could be lost, stolen or disclosed which could have a variety of negative impacts, including legal liability, investigations by law enforcement and regulatory agencies, and exposure to fines or penalties, any of which could harm our business reputation and have a material negative impact on our business. In addition, to the extent we market our services as compliant with particular laws governing data privacy and security, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and foreign data protection laws, a security breach that exposes protected information may make us susceptible to a number of claims related to our marketing.

Many governments have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals of data security incidents involving certain types of personal data. In addition, some of our customers contractually require notification of any data security compromise. Security compromises experienced by our competitors, by our customers or by us may lead to public disclosures, which may lead to widespread negative publicity. Any security compromise in our industry, whether actual or perceived, could harm our reputation, erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their subscriptions or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.

In contracts with larger enterprises, we often agree to assume liability for security breaches in excess of the amount of committed revenue from the contract. In addition, there can be no assurance that any limitations of liability provisions in our contracts for a security breach would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. We also cannot be sure that our existing general liability insurance coverage and coverage for errors or omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

We are subject to the data privacy and protection laws and regulations adopted by federal, state and foreign governmental agencies. Data privacy and protection is highly regulated and may become the subject of additional regulation in the future. For example, lawmakers and regulators worldwide are considering proposals that would require companies, like us, that encrypt users' data to ensure access to such data by law enforcement authorities. Privacy laws restrict our storage, use, processing, disclosure, transfer and protection of personal information, including credit card data, provided to us by our customers as well as data we collect from our customers and employees. We strive to comply with all applicable laws, regulations, policies and legal obligations relating to privacy and data protection. However, if we fail to comply, we may be subject to fines, penalties and lawsuits, and our reputation may suffer. We may also be required to make modifications to our data practices that could have an adverse impact on our business.

Governmental entities, class action lawyers and privacy advocates are increasingly examining companies' data collection, processing, use, storing, sharing, transferring and transmitting or personal data and data linkable to individuals. Self-regulatory codes of conduct, enforcement actions by regulatory agencies, and lawsuits by private parties impose additional compliance costs on us negative impacting our profitability as well as subject us to unknown potential liabilities. These evolving laws, rules and practices may also curtail our current business activities which may also result in slimmer profit margins and reduce new opportunities.

We are also subject to the privacy and data protection-related obligations in our contracts with our customers and other third parties. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to comply with federal, state, or international laws, including laws and regulations regulating privacy, data or consumer protection, or to comply with our contractual obligations related to privacy, could result in proceedings or actions against us by governmental entities, contractual parties or others, which could result in significant liability to us as well as harm to our reputation. Additionally, third parties on which we rely enter into contracts to protect and safeguard our customers' data. Should such parties violate these agreements or suffer a breach, we could be subject to proceedings or actions against us by governmental entities, contractual parties or others, which could result in significant liability to us as well as harm to our reputation.

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There is considerable uncertainty with respect to the state of law governing data transfers between the European Union ("EU"), and other countries with similar data protection laws, and the U.S. There is ongoing litigation in the EU, as well as calls by certain political and governmental bodies in the EU to re-evaluate data transfers between the EU and the U.S., that could negatively impact the existing legally acceptable methods for transferring data between the EU and the U.S. on which we rely as do many other companies that transfer certain data between the EU and the U.S. Moreover, while we established alternative methods to transfer data between the EU and U.S. that addressed certain legal uncertainties that previously existed, some independent data regulators have adopted the position that other forms of compliance, including the methods we rely upon now as do many other companies, are also invalid though the legal grounds for these findings remains unclear at this time. Like many other companies, we continue to face uncertainty with respect to the measures we have implemented. Additionally, there is continued uncertainty regarding the legality of transferring certain data between the EU and U.S. caused by: (i) ongoing litigation that could invalidate the existing method that we, along with many other companies, rely upon for compliance with relevant law; and (ii) there is the possibility that political and other governmental bodies may invalidate the method we, along with many other companies, rely upon to comply with relevant law. We cannot predict how or if this issue will be resolved nor can we evaluate our potential liability at this time.

A fundamental requirement for operating an Internet-based, worldwide cloud software solutions and electronically billing our customers is the secure transmission of confidential information and media over public networks. Although we have developed systems and processes that are designed to protect consumer information and prevent fraudulent credit card transactions and other security breaches, failure to mitigate such fraud or breaches may adversely affect our operating results. The law relating to the liability of providers of online payment services is currently unsettled and states may enact their own rules with which we may not comply. We rely on third-party providers to process and guarantee payments made by our subscribers up to certain limits, and we may be unable to prevent our customers from fraudulently receiving goods and services. Our liability risk will increase if a larger fraction of transactions effected using our cloud-based services involve fraudulent or disputed credit card transactions.

In addition, the functionality of our current billing system relies on certain third-party vendors delivering services. If these vendors are unable or unwilling to provide services, we will not be able to charge for our services in a timely or scalable fashion, which could significantly decrease our revenue and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

We must maintain Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS, compliance to bill our customers via credit card. If we fail to meet minimum-security standards for PCI DSS compliance, credit card providers such as American Express Company or Visa Inc. could refuse to process credit card transactions on our behalf and our ability to collect payments from our customers would be adversely impacted.

We may also experience losses due to subscriber fraud and theft of service. Subscribers have, in the past, obtained access to our service without paying for monthly service and international toll calls by unlawfully using our authorization codes or by submitting fraudulent credit card information. If our existing anti-fraud procedures are not adequate or effective, consumer fraud and theft of service could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Our cloud communications services rely on uninterrupted connection to the Internet through data centers and networks. Any interruption or disruption to our network, or the third parties on which we rely, could adversely impact our ability to provide service. Our network could be disrupted by circumstances outside of our control including natural disasters, acts of war, terrorist attacks or other malicious acts including, but not limited to, cyber-attacks. Our headquarters, global networks operations center and one of our third-party data center facilities are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for seismic activity. Should any of these events occur and interfere with our ability to operate our network even for a limited period of time, we could incur significant expenses, lose substantial amounts of revenue, suffer damage to our reputation, and lose customers. Such an event may also impede our customers' connections to our network, since these connections also occur over the Internet, and would be perceived by our customers as an interruption of our services, even though such interruption would be beyond our control. Any of these events could have a material adverse impact on our business.

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Our infringement of a third party's proprietary technology could disrupt our business.

There has been substantial litigation in the communications, cloud communication services, semiconductor, electronics, and related industries regarding intellectual property rights and, from time to time, third parties may claim that we, our customers, our licensees or parties indemnified by us are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating their intellectual property rights. Third parties may also claim that our employees have misappropriated or divulged their former employers' trade secrets or confidential information. Our broad range of current and former technology, including IP telephony systems, digital and analog circuits, software, and semiconductors, increases the likelihood that third parties may claim infringement by us of their intellectual property rights.

During our 2017 fiscal year, we were named as defendants in two lawsuits, each brought by a non-practicing entity and alleging infringement of a single patent. During our 2016 fiscal year, we were similarly named as defendants in two lawsuits in which we were alleged to have infringed patents. We were successful in settling all four lawsuits relatively quickly, although we have in the past been involved in patent infringement lawsuits that spanned several years. Certain technology necessary for us to provide our services may, in fact, be patented by other parties either now or in the future. If such technology were held under patent by another person, we would have to negotiate a license for the use of that technology, which we may not be able to negotiate at a price that is acceptable or at all. The existence of such a patent, or our inability to negotiate a license for any such technology on acceptable terms, could force us to cease using such technology and offering products and services incorporating such technology.

If we are found to be infringing on the intellectual property rights of any third-party in lawsuits or proceedings that may be asserted against us, we could be subject to monetary liabilities for such infringement, which could be material. We could also be required to refrain from using, manufacturing or selling certain products or using certain processes, either of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results. From time to time, we have received, and may continue to receive in the future, notices of claims of infringement, misappropriation or misuse of other parties' proprietary rights. There can be no assurance that we will prevail in these discussions and actions or that other actions alleging infringement by us of third-party patents will not be asserted or prosecuted against us. Furthermore, lawsuits like these may require significant time and expense to defend, may divert management's attention away from other aspects of our operations and, upon resolution, may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

We rely, in part, on trademark, copyright, and trade secret law to protect our intellectual property in the United States and abroad. We seek to protect our software, documentation, and other written materials under trade secret and copyright law, which afford only limited protection. We have additional United States and foreign patent applications pending. We cannot predict whether such pending patent applications will result in issued patents, and if they do, whether such patents will effectively protect our intellectual property. The intellectual property rights we obtain may not be sufficient to provide us with a competitive advantage, and could be challenged, invalidated, infringed or misappropriated. We may not be able to protect our proprietary rights in the United States or internationally (where effective intellectual property protection may be unavailable or limited), and competitors may independently develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technology, duplicate our technology or design around any patent of ours.

We attempt to further protect our proprietary technology and content by requiring our employees and consultants to enter into confidentiality and assignment of inventions agreements and third parties to enter into nondisclosure agreements. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology.

Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to determine the validity and scope of our proprietary rights or the rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of management time and resources and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and operating results. Any settlement or adverse determination in such litigation would also subject us to significant liability.

We also may be required to protect our proprietary technology and content in an increasing number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive and may not be successful, or which we may not pursue in every location. In addition, effective intellectual property protection may not be available to us in every country, and the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States. Additional uncertainty may result from changes to intellectual property legislation enacted in the United States and elsewhere, and from interpretations of intellectual property laws by applicable courts and agencies. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to obtain and maintain the intellectual property rights necessary to provide us with a competitive advantage.

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Because our long-term growth strategy involves further expansion outside the United States, our business will be susceptible to risks associated with international operations.

An important component of our growth strategy involves the further expansion of our operations and customer base internationally. We have formed several subsidiaries outside the United States, including a Romanian subsidiary that contributes significantly to our research and development efforts. We have also acquired two UK-based companies — DXI in May 2015 and Voicenet in November 2013. The risks and challenges associated with sales and other operations outside the United States are different in some ways from those associated with our operations in the United States, and we have a limited history addressing those risks and meeting those challenges. Our current international operations and future initiatives will involve a variety of risks, including:

• localization of our services, including translation into foreign languages and associated expenses;
• regulation of our services as traditional telecommunications services, requiring us to obtain authorizations or licenses to operate in foreign jurisdictions, or alternatively preventing us from selling our full suite of services, or any services at all, in such jurisdictions;
• unexpected changes in a specific country or region's regulatory requirements, taxes, trade laws, or political or economic conditions;
• more stringent regulations relating to data security and the unauthorized use of, access to, and transfer of, commercial and personal information, particularly in the European Union;
• differing labor regulations, especially in the European Union and Latin America, where labor laws are generally more advantageous to employees as compared to the United States, including deemed hourly wage and overtime regulations in these locations;
• challenges inherent in efficiently managing an increased number of employees over large geographic distances, including the need to implement appropriate systems, policies, benefits and compliance programs;
• difficulties in managing a business in new markets with diverse cultures, languages, customs, legal systems, alternative dispute systems and regulatory systems;
• increased travel, real estate, infrastructure and legal compliance costs associated with international operations;
• different pricing environments, longer sales cycles, longer accounts receivable payment cycles and other collection difficulties;
• currency exchange rate fluctuations and the resulting effect on our revenue and expenses, and the cost and risk of entering into hedging transactions if we chose to do so in the future;
• limitations on our ability to reinvest earnings from operations in one country to fund the capital needs of our operations in other countries;
• laws and business practices favoring local competitors or general preferences for local vendors;
• limited or insufficient intellectual property protection;
• political instability or terrorist activities;
• exposure to liabilities under anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act 2010 and similar laws and regulations in other jurisdictions; and
• adverse tax burdens and foreign exchange controls that could make it difficult to repatriate earnings and cash.

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We have limited experience in operating our business internationally, which increases the risk that any potential future expansion efforts that we may undertake will not be successful. We expect to invest substantial time and resources to expand our international operations. If we are unable to do this successfully and in a timely manner, our business and operating results could be materially adversely affected.

In fiscal 2017, we acquired LeChat, Inc., the developer of Sameroom. In fiscal 2016, we acquired DXI Limited, which developed the technology on which ContactNow was based, and substantially all of the assets of Quality Software Corporation, or QSC, which developed the technology behind our Quality Management service. In fiscal 2014, we acquired Voicenet Solutions Limited, a UK-based provider of cloud communication services in the United Kingdom. If appropriate opportunities present themselves, we may make additional acquisitions or investments or enter into joint ventures or strategic alliances with other companies. Risks commonly encountered in such transactions include:

• the difficulty of assimilating the operations and personnel of the combined companies;
• the risk that we may not be able to integrate the acquired services or technologies with our current services, products, and technologies;
• the potential disruption of our ongoing business;
• the diversion of management attention from our existing business;
• the inability of management to maximize our financial and strategic position through the successful integration of the acquired businesses;
• difficulty in maintaining controls, procedures, and policies;
• the impairment of relationships with employees, suppliers, and customers as a result of any integration;
• the loss of an acquired base of customers and accompanying revenue;
• the loss of an acquired base of customers and accompanying revenue while trying to transition the customer from the legacy systems to 8x8's technology due to mismatch of the features, usability, packaging, or pricing at the renewal times;
• the loss of an acquired base of customers and accompanying revenue due to failure and/or lack of maintenance/support for the legacy services and/or equipment/software/services being end of life;
• additional regulatory compliance obligations and costs associated with the acquired operations;
• litigation arising from or relating to the transaction;
• the assumption of leased facilities, other long-term commitments or liabilities that could have a material adverse impact on our profitability and cash flow; and
• the dilution to our existing stockholders from the issuance of additional shares of common stock or reduction of earnings per outstanding share in connection with an acquisition that fails to increase the value of our company.

As a result of these potential problems and risks, among others, businesses that we may acquire or invest in may not produce the revenue, earnings, or business synergies that we anticipate. In addition, there can be no assurance that any potential transaction will be successfully completed or that, if completed, the acquired business or investment will generate sufficient revenue to offset the associated costs or other potential harmful effects on our business.

Our historical operating results have fluctuated significantly and will likely continue to fluctuate in the future, and a decline in our operating results could cause our stock price to fall. On an annual and a quarterly basis, there are a number of factors that may affect our operating results, some of which are outside our control. These include, but are not limited to:

• changes in market demand;
• the timing of customer subscriptions for our cloud software solutions;
• customer cancellations;
• changes in the competitive dynamics of our market, including consolidation among competitors or customers;
• lengthy sales cycles and/or regulatory approval cycles;
• new product introductions by us or our competitors;
• extent of market acceptance of new or existing services and features;
• the mix of our customer base and sales channels;
• the mix of services sold;
• the number of additional customers, on a net basis;

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• the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, training and integrating new employees;
• unforeseen costs and expenses related to the expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure;
• continued compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements;
• material security breaches or service interruptions due to cyberattacks or infrastructure failures or unavailability;
• introduction and adoption of our cloud software solutions in markets outside of the United States; and
• general economic conditions.

Due to these and other factors, we believe that period-to-period comparisons of our results of operations are not meaningful and should not be relied upon as indicators of our future performance. It is possible that in some future periods our results of operations may be below the expectations of public market analysts and investors. If this were to occur, the price of our common stock would likely decline significantly.

In addition to reliability and quality standards, the market acceptance of telephony over broadband IP networks is dependent upon the adoption of industry standards so that products from multiple manufacturers are able to communicate with each other. Our cloud-based communications and collaboration services rely heavily on communication standards such as SIP, MGCP and network standards such as TCP/IP and UDP to interoperate with other vendors' equipment. There is currently a lack of agreement among industry leaders about which standard should be used for a particular application, and about the definition of the standards themselves. These standards, as well as audio and video compression standards, continue to evolve. We also must comply with certain rules and regulations of the FCC regarding electromagnetic radiation and safety standards established by Underwriters Laboratories, as well as similar regulations and standards applicable in other countries. Standards are frequently modified or replaced. As standards evolve, we may be required to modify our existing products or develop and support new versions of our products. We must comply with certain federal, state and local requirements regarding how we interact with our customers, including marketing practices, consumer protection, privacy, and billing issues, the provision of 9-1-1 or other international emergency services, including location data and the quality of service we provide to our customers. The failure of our products and services to comply, or delays in compliance, with various existing and evolving standards could delay or interrupt volume production of our communications and collaboration services, subject us to fines or other imposed penalties, or harm the perception and adoption rates of our service, any of which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.

For example:

• The FCC has adopted network neutrality rules. In March 2015, the FCC adopted new network neutrality rules that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking, degrading and engaging in other practices that would impair or otherwise interfere with services like ours. While the FCC order survived a court challenge, a further appeal remains pending. The current FCC chairman as well as certain members of Congress have expressed a desire to eliminate or narrow the current rules. We cannot predict if the current rules will remain in place. Interference with our service or higher charges for using our service could cause us to lose existing customers, impair our ability to attract new customers, and harm our revenue and growth. These problems could also arise in international markets. Most foreign countries outside of the European Union have not adopted formal net neutrality rules like those adopted by the FCC.
• Regulation of our services as telecommunications services may require us to obtain authorizations or licenses to operate in foreign jurisdictions and comply with legal requirements applicable to traditional telephony providers. Regulators around the world, including those in the European Union generally do not distinguish between our cloud-based communications services and traditional telephony services. By entering additional international markets we may subject ourselves to significant regulation from foreign telecommunications authorities, including obligations to obtain telecommunications licenses and authorizations, complying with consumer protection laws and cooperating with local law enforcement authorities. This regulation impacts our ability to differentiate ourselves from incumbent service providers and imposes substantial compliance costs on us. Regulation restricts our ability to compete and, in some jurisdictions, it may restrict how we are able to expand our service offerings. Moreover, the regulatory environment is constantly evolving and changes to the applicable regulations may have an adverse effect upon our business by imposing additional compliance costs, modifying our technology and operations and in general affecting our profitability.

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• Reform of federal and state Universal Service Fund programs and payment of regulatory and other fees in international markets, could increase the cost of our service to our customers diminishing or eliminating our pricing advantage. The FCC and a number of states are considering reform or other modifications to Universal Service Fund programs. Furthermore, the FCC has ruled that states can require us to contribute to state Universal Service Fund programs. A number of states already require us to contribute, while others are actively considering extending their programs to include the services we provide. At the same time, foreign regulatory authorities may impose regulatory fees or other contributions on our services. Should the FCC, states or foreign regulators adopt new contribution mechanisms or otherwise modify contribution obligations that increase our contribution burden, we will either need to raise the amount we currently collect from our customers to cover these obligations or absorb the costs, which would reduce our profit margins. We currently pass-through Universal Service Fund contributions and certain other fees to our customers, which may result in our services becoming less competitive as compared to those provided by others.
• We may become subject to state regulation for certain service offerings. Certain states take the position that offerings by VoIP providers, like us, are intrastate and therefore subject to state regulation. These states argue that if the beginning and end points of communications are known, and if some of these communications occur entirely within the boundaries of a state, the state can regulate that offering. We believe that the FCC has preempted states from regulating VoIP services like ours in the same manner as providers of traditional telecommunications services. We cannot predict how this issue will be resolved or its impact on our business at this time.
• The FCC adopted rules concerning call completion rates to rural areas of the United States. It is possible that we, like other providers in the communications marketplace, may be subject to fines or other enforcement actions should the FCC determine that our call completion rates to rural areas are, or have been, unacceptable.
• The FCC and foreign regulators may require providers like us to comply with regulations related to how we present bills to customers. The adoption of such obligations may require us to revise our bills and may increase our costs of providing service which could either result in price increases or reduce our profitability.
• There may be risk associated with our ability to comply with U.S. and foreign rules concerning disabilities access requirements and the FCC and foreign regulators may expand disabilities access requirements to additional services we offer. We cannot predict whether we will be subject to additional accessibility requirements or whether any of our service offerings that are not currently subject to disabilities access requirements will be subject to such obligations. It is possible that we, like other providers in the communications marketplace, may be subject to fines or other enforcement actions if we are found not to be in compliance with the FCC's and foreign accessibility requirements.
• There may be risks associated with our ability to comply with requirements of the Telecommunications Relay Service and similar foreign statutes. The FCC requires providers of interconnected VoIP services to comply with certain regulations pertaining to people with disabilities and to contribute to the Telecommunications Relay Services fund. We are also required to offer 7-1-1 abbreviated dialing for access to relay services. At the same time, several foreign regulators also mandate accessibility requirements for people with disabilities. It is possible that we, like other providers in the communications marketplace, may be subject to fines or other enforcement actions if we are found not to be in compliance with these requirements, including the FCC's 7-1-1 abbreviated dialing obligations.
• There may be risks associated with our ability to comply with the requirements of U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies. The FCC requires all interconnected VoIP providers to comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Similarly, foreign regulatory frameworks require VoIP providers to comply with local assistance to law enforcement laws and cooperation with local authorities in conducting wiretaps, pentraps and other surveillance activities. The FCC and other regulators may allow VoIP providers to comply with CALEA and similar statutes through the use of a service provided by a trusted third-party with the ability to extract call content and call-identifying information from a VoIP provider's network. Regardless of our reliance on a third party for compliance, it is possible that we, like other providers in the communications marketplace, may be subject to fines or other enforcement actions if we are found not to be in compliance with our obligations under CALEA or other similar assistance with law enforcement statutes.

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• U.S. and foreign regulations may require us to deploy an E-911 or access to emergency service that automatically determines the location of our customers. On June 1, 2007, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or the VoIP E-911 order, in which it tentatively concluded that all interconnected VoIP providers that allow customers to use their service in more than one location (nomadic VoIP service providers, such as us), must utilize an automatic location technology that meets the same accuracy standards which apply to providers of commercial mobile radio services (mobile phone service providers). Since then, the FCC has been conducting proceedings and inquiries concerning the implementation of such a rule, including possible changes to the manner providers provision E-911 services on mobile applications. At the same time, foreign regulatory authorities, have conducted similar proceedings mandating VoIP providers in the applicable jurisdiction to provide caller location data when completing calls to the local emergency service numbers. The outcome of these proceedings cannot be determined at this time and we may or may not be able to comply with any such obligations that may be adopted. At present, we currently have no means to automatically identify the physical location of one of our customers on the Internet. We cannot guarantee that emergency calling service consistent with the VoIP E-911 order and other similar foreign orders will be available to all of our customers, especially those accessing our services from outside of the United States. Compliance with these obligations could result in service price increases and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.
• The FCC adopted orders reforming the system of payments between regulated carriers that we partner with to interface with the public switch telephone network. The FCC reformed the system under which regulated providers of telecommunications services compensate each other for various types of traffic, including VoIP traffic that terminates on the PSTN and applied new call signaling requirements to VoIP providers and other service providers. The FCC's new rules require, among other things, interconnected VoIP providers, like us, that originate interstate or intrastate traffic destined for the PSTN, to transmit the telephone number associated with the calling party to the next provider in the call path. Intermediate providers must pass calling party number or charge number signaling information they receive from other providers unaltered, to subsequent providers in the call path. While we believe we are in compliance with this rule, to the extent that we pass traffic that does not have appropriate calling party number or charge number information, we could be subject to fines, cease and desist orders, or other penalties. The FCC's Order reforming payments between carriers for various types of traffic may result in increasing the payments we make to underlying carriers to access the PSTN, which may result in us increasing the retail price of our service, potentially making our offering less competitive with traditional providers of telecommunications services, or may reduce our profitability.

Both our emergency calling service and our E-911 calling service are different, in significant respects, from the emergency calling services offered by traditional wireline telephone companies in the United States and abroad. In each case, the differences may cause significant delays, or even failures, in callers' receipt of the emergency assistance they need.

The FCC may determine that our nomadic emergency calling service does not satisfy the requirements of its VoIP E-911 order because, in some instances, our nomadic emergency calling service requires that we route an emergency call to a national emergency call center instead of connecting our customers directly to a local public-safety answering point through a dedicated connection and through the appropriate selective router. Similarly, foreign telecommunications regulators may determine that our nomadic emergency calling service does not meet applicable local emergency dialing and location requirements.

Delays our customers may encounter when making emergency services calls and any inability of the answering point to automatically recognize the caller's location or telephone number can result in life threatening consequences. Customers may, in the future, attempt to hold us responsible for any loss, damage, personal injury or death suffered as a result of any failure of our E-911 services and other emergency dialing services.

In July 2008, the President signed into law the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008. The law provides public safety entities, interconnected VoIP providers and others involved in handling 911 calls the same liability protections when handling 911 calls from interconnected VoIP users as from mobile or wired telephone service users. The applicability of the liability protections to our national call center service is unclear at the present time.

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Alleged or actual failure of our solutions to comply with regulations governing outbound dialing, including regulations under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and similar foreign statutes, could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

The legal and contractual environment surrounding calling consumers and wireless phone numbers is complex and evolving. In the United States, two federal agencies, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and the FCC, and various states have enacted laws including, at the federal level, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, or TCPA, that restrict the placing of certain telephone calls and texts to residential and wireless telephone subscribers by means of automatic telephone dialing systems, prerecorded or artificial voice messages and fax machines. Internationally, we are also subject to similar laws imposing limitations on marketing calls to wireline and wireless numbers and compliance with do not call rules. These laws require companies to institute processes and safeguards to comply with these restrictions. Some of these laws can be enforced by the FTC, FCC, State Attorneys General, foreign regulators or private party litigants. In these types of actions, the plaintiff may seek damages, statutory penalties, costs and/or attorneys' fees.

It is possible that the FTC, FCC, foreign regulators, private litigants or others may attempt to hold our customers, or us as a software provider, responsible for alleged violations of these laws. In the event that litigation is brought, or fines are assessed, against us, we may not successfully enforce or collect upon any contractual indemnities we may have from our customers. Additionally, any changes to these laws or their interpretation that further restrict calling consumers, any adverse publicity regarding the alleged or actual failure by companies, including our customers and competitors, to comply with such laws, or any governmental or private enforcement actions related thereto, could result in the reduced use of our solution by our clients and potential clients, which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. We anticipate that these risks will increase as we begin to market and sell our EasyContactNow service in the United States.

We rely on IT systems to manage numerous functions of our internal operations.  We have historically utilized internally developed IT systems that are not integrated with our ERP system. These IT systems require specialized knowledge for which we have to train new personnel, and if we were to experience an unusual increase in attrition of our IT personnel, we may not be adequately equipped to respond to an IT system failure. These IT systems were developed at a time when we provided services primarily to SMB customers and they may not be able to accommodate the requirements of larger enterprises as effectively as more modern and flexible solutions. Continued reliance on these systems may harm us competitively and impede our efforts to sell to larger enterprises.

Although we are in the process of upgrading a number of our IT systems, including our ERP software, our quote-to-cash software and our customer service and support software, we face risks relating to these transitions. For example, we may incur greater costs than we anticipate to train our personnel on the new systems; we may experience more errors in our records during the transition; and we may be delayed in meeting our various reporting obligations. To the extent any of these risks or events impact our customer service, we may experience an increase in customer attrition, which could have a material adverse impact on our results of operations.

Our technology platform incorporates software licensed from third parties, including some software, known as open source software, which we use without charge. Although we monitor our use of open source software, the terms of many open source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide our platform to our customers, content creators and brand advertisers. In the future, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our platform, which licenses may not be available on terms that are acceptable to us, or at all. Alternatively, we may need to re-engineer our platform or discontinue use of portions of the functionality provided by our platform. In addition, the terms of open source software licenses may require us to provide software that we develop using such software to others on unfavorable license terms. Our inability to use third- party software could result in disruptions to our business, or delays in the development of future offerings or enhancements of existing offerings, which could impair our business.

Our data centers are susceptible to increased costs of power and to electrical power outages. Our customer contracts do not contain provisions that would allow us to pass on any increased costs of energy to our customers, which could affect our operating margins. Any increases in the price of our services to recoup these costs could not be implemented until the end of a customer contract term. Further, power requirements at our data centers are increasing as a result of the increasing power demands of today's servers. Increases in our power costs could impact our operating results and financial condition. Since we rely on third parties to provide our data centers with power sufficient to meet our needs, our data centers could have a limited or inadequate amount of electrical resources necessary to meet our customer requirements. We attempt to limit exposure to system downtime due to power outages by using backup generators and power supplies. However, these protections may not limit our exposure to power shortages or outages entirely. Any system downtime resulting from insufficient power resources or power outages could damage our reputation and lead us to lose current and potential customers, which would harm our operating results and financial condition.

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Decreasing telecommunications rates and increasing regulatory charges may diminish or eliminate our competitive pricing advantage versus legacy providers.

Decreasing telecommunications rates may diminish or eliminate the competitive pricing advantage of our services, while increased regulation and the imposition of additional regulatory funding obligations at the federal, state, local and foreign level could require us to either increase the retail price for our services, thus making us less competitive, or absorb such costs, thus decreasing our profit margins. International and domestic telecommunications rates have decreased significantly over the last few years in most of the markets in which we operate, and we anticipate these rates will continue to decline in all of the markets in which we do business or expect to do business. Users who select our services to take advantage of the current pricing differential between traditional telecommunications rates and our rates may switch to traditional telecommunications carriers if such pricing differentials diminish or disappear, and we will be unable to use such pricing differentials to attract new customers in the future. Continued rate decreases would require us to lower our rates to remain competitive in the United States and abroad and would reduce or possibly eliminate any gross profit from our services. In addition, we may lose subscribers for our services.

Certain provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage takeover attempts and lead to management entrenchment.

Our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could have the effect of delaying or preventing changes in control or changes in our management without the consent of our board of directors, including, among other things:

• no cumulative voting in the election of directors, which limits the ability of minority stockholders to elect director candidates;
• the ability of our board of directors to issue shares of preferred stock and to determine the price and other terms of those shares, including preferences and voting rights, without stockholder approval, which could be used to significantly dilute the ownership of a hostile acquirer;
• the exclusive right of our board of directors to elect a director to fill a vacancy created by the expansion of our board of directors or the resignation, death or removal of a director, which prevents stockholders from being able to fill vacancies on our board of directors;
• a prohibition on stockholder action by written consent, which forces stockholder action to be taken at an annual or special meeting of our stockholders;
• the requirement that a special meeting of stockholders may be called only by a majority vote of our Board of Directors or by stockholders holdings shares of our common stock representing in the aggregate a majority of votes then outstanding, which could delay the ability of our stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or to take action, including the removal of directors;
• the ability of our board of directors, by majority vote, to amend our amended and restated bylaws, which may allow our board of directors to take additional actions to prevent a hostile acquisition and inhibit the ability of an acquirer to amend our amended and restated bylaws to facilitate a hostile acquisition; and
• advance notice procedures with which stockholders must comply to nominate candidates to our board of directors or to propose matters to be acted upon at a stockholders' meeting, which may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer's own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of us.

We are also subject to certain anti-takeover provisions under the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, or the DGCL. Under Section 203 of the DGCL, a corporation may not, in general, engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its capital stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or (i) our board of directors approves the transaction prior to the stockholder acquiring the 15% ownership position, (ii) upon consummation of the transaction that resulted in the stockholder acquiring the 15% ownership position, the stockholder owns at least 85% of the outstanding voting stock (excluding shares owned by directors or officers and shares owned by certain employee stock plans) or (iii) the transaction is approved by the board of directors and by the stockholders at an annual or special meeting by a vote of 66 2/3% of the outstanding voting stock (excluding shares held or controlled by the interested stockholder). These provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws and under Delaware law could discourage potential takeover attempts.

None.

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ITEM 2. PROPERTIES

Our principal operations are located in San Jose, California, in two facilities that are approximately 140,831 square feet of leased office space. Outside the United States our operations are conducted primarily in leased sites located in the United Kingdom and Romania. We believe our facilities will adequately meet our current and foreseeable future needs. For additional information regarding our obligations under leases, see Note 8 to the consolidated financial statements contained in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report.

From time to time, we become involved in various legal claims and litigation that arise in the normal course of our operations. While the results of such claims and litigation cannot be predicted with certainty, we are not currently aware of any such matters that we believe would have a material adverse effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

On February 22, 2011, we were named a defendant in Bear Creek Technologies, Inc. (BCT) v. 8x8, Inc. et al., filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (the Delaware Court), along with 20 other defendants. Collectively this patent litigation is referred to as In re Bear Creek Technologies, Inc. (MDL No.: 2344). In August 2011, the suit was dismissed without prejudice but then refiled in the Delaware Court. On November 28, 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") initiated a Reexamination Proceeding through which the claims of the patent asserted against us were found to be invalid based on four separate grounds. During the Reexamination Proceeding, the Delaware Court granted the Company's motion to stay the proceeding (July 17, 2013) and administratively closed the case on May 5, 2015 with leave to reopen if needed. The outcome of the Reexamination Proceeding was first appealed to the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board which affirmed the invalidity bases of all claims in a Decision dated Dec. 29, 2015 ("the Board Decision"). The Board Decision was then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("Federal Circuit"), which also affirmed the invalidity bases of all claims as the Federal Circuit noted in a Judgment dated March 15, 2017. On April 21, 2017, the Federal Circuit issued a Mandate, which formally concludes the appeal and, absent any unforeseen circumstances, formally ended the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction of this matter, thereby for effecting finality of the Delaware Court's May 5, 2015 decision.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Our common stock is traded under the symbol "EGHT" and is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market of the Nasdaq Stock Market national securities exchange.

We have never paid cash dividends on our common stock and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. As of May 25, 2017, there were 223 holders of record of our common stock.

The following table sets forth the range of high and low close prices for each period indicated:

See Item 12 of Part III of this Annual Report regarding information about securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans.

The graph below shows the cumulative total stockholder return over a five-year period assuming the investment of $100 on March 31, 2012 in each of 8x8's common stock, the NASDAQ Composite Index and the NASDAQ Telecommunications Index. The graph is furnished, not filed, and the historical return cannot be indicative of future performance.

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Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

The registrant did not make any repurchases of stock during the quarter ended March 31, 2017 under a stock repurchase program. The last plan authorized by the Company's board of directors expired in October 2016 with an unused authorized repurchase amount of $15.0 million.

The following table sets forth selected consolidated financial data of 8x8 Inc. for each year in the five-year period ended March 31, 2017. The following selected consolidated financial data is qualified by reference to and should be read in conjunction with "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and with the consolidated financial statements, related notes thereto and other financial information included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

We are a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications solutions, helping businesses get their employees, customers and applications talking, to make people more connected and productive, no matter where they are in the world.   From a single, proprietary platform, which we refer to as the 8x8 Communications Cloud, we offer unified communications, team collaboration, contact center, analytics and other services to our business customers on a Software-as-a Service (SaaS) model.

In fiscal year 2017, we displayed continued momentum in four key areas of our business. First, our increased focus on mid-market and distributed enterprise customers resulted in approximately 54% of our total service revenue coming from this customer segment, compared with 48% in fiscal 2016. Over the course of the fiscal year, we continued to show an increase in our average monthly service revenue per customer (ARPU). In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017, our ARPU grew 11% to $426, compared with $385 in the same period of fiscal 2016. The increase resulted from our success in selling a greater number of subscriptions to larger, more established customers.

Second, we continued the advancement of our technology and product development work on several key platform infrastructure and product development initiatives. Initiatives include our new micro services platform, admin portal, desktop and mobile clients, and back office improvements to enable end-to-end quoting, ordering, provisioning, configuring, and billing our expanded mid-market and enterprise customer base. We also launched the 8x8 Communication Cloud Platform, an industry first solution which combines unified communications, team collaboration interoperability, contact center, and real time analytics in a single open platform.

Third, we have made significant progress with increasing the effectiveness of our global channel network to ensure our channel partners are properly engaged and prepared to transition their customers to 8x8. We enhanced our partner enablement offering with a new Partner Connect global web portal, which offers extensive sales, technical resources, marketing, and lead generation support.

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Fourth, we have made significant progress enhancing our global systems and customer support capabilities to better serve our multinational customers. We went live on Salesforce Service Cloud, an enterprise-scalable platform that is fully integrated with our sales automation system. This enables any of our contact centers around the world to view and manage any customer case, allowing for seamless case handoffs across regions.

Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements in Part II, Item 8 of this Report describes the significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements.

We have identified the policies below as some of the more critical to our business and the understanding of our results of operations. These policies may involve a higher degree of judgment and complexity in their application and represent the critical accounting policies used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements. Although we believe our judgments and estimates are appropriate, actual future results may differ from our estimates. If different assumptions or conditions were to prevail, the results could be materially different from our reported results. The impact and any associated risks related to these policies on our business operations is discussed throughout Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations where such policies affect our reported and expected financial results.

The preparation of the consolidated financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities and equity and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. On an on-going basis, we evaluate such estimates, including, but not limited to, those related to bad debts, returns reserve for expected cancellations, valuation of inventories, income and sales tax, and litigation and other contingencies. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying value of assets and liabilities, and equity that are not readily apparent from other sources. Our actual results could differ from those estimates under different assumptions or conditions.

Additional information regarding risk factors that may impact our estimates is included above under Part I, Item 1A, "Risk Factors."

Our revenue recognition policies are described in Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report. As described below, significant management judgments and estimates must be made and used in connection with the revenue recognized in any accounting period. Material differences may result in the amount and timing of our revenue for any period if our management made different judgments or utilized different estimates.

We recognize service revenue, mainly from subscription services related to its cloud-based voice, call center, video, and collaboration solutions, when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, delivery has occurred or services have been rendered, price is fixed or determinable and collectability is reasonably assured. We defer recognition of service revenues in instances when cash receipts are received before services are delivered and we recognize deferred revenues ratably, over the course of the contract, as services are provided.

Under the terms of our typical subscription agreements, new customers can terminate their service within 30 days of order placement and receive a full refund of fees previously paid. We have determined that we have sufficient history of subscriber conduct to make a reasonable estimate of cancellations within the 30-day trial period. Therefore, we recognize new subscriber revenue that is fixed and determinable and that is not contingent on future performance or future deliverables, in the month in which the new order was shipped, net of an allowance for expected cancellations.

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We recognize revenue from product sales, mainly 8x8 IP telephones, for which there are no related services to be rendered upon shipment to customers provided that persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, the price is fixed or determinable, title has transferred, collection of resulting receivables is reasonably assured, there are no customer acceptance requirements, and there are no remaining significant obligations. Gross outbound shipping and handling charges are recorded as revenue, and the related costs are included in cost of goods sold. Reserves for returns and allowances for customer sales are recorded at the time of shipment. In accordance with the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") Accounting Standards Codification ("ASC") 605, Revenue Recognition, we defer revenue from shipments to distributors, retailers, channel partners, and resellers, where the right of return exists, until the products have been sold to the end customer.

We record revenue net of any sales and service related taxes and mandatory government charges that are billed to our customers. We believe this approach results in consolidated financial statements that are more easily understood by users.

ASC 605-25, Revenue Recognition - Multiple Element Arrangements, requires that revenue arrangements with multiple deliverables be divided into separate units of accounting if the deliverables in the arrangement meet specific criteria.  The provisioning of the 8x8 cloud service with the accompanying 8x8 IP telephone constitutes a revenue arrangement with multiple deliverables.  For arrangements with multiple deliverables, we allocate the arrangement consideration to all units of accounting based on their relative selling prices. In such circumstances, the accounting principles establish a hierarchy to determine the relative selling price to be used for allocating arrangement consideration to units of accounting as follows: (i) vendor-specific objective evidence of fair value ("VSOE"), (ii) third-party evidence of selling price ("TPE"), and (iii) best estimate of the selling price ("BESP").

VSOE generally exists only when we sell the deliverable separately, on more than a limited basis, at prices within a relatively narrow range.  When VSOE cannot be established, we attempt to establish the selling price of deliverables based on relevant TPE. TPE is determined based on manufacturer's prices for similar deliverables when sold separately, when possible. As we have historically been unable to establish a selling price using VSOE or TPE, we use BESP for the allocation of arrangement consideration. The objective of BESP is to determine the price at which we would transact a sale if the product or service was sold on a stand-alone basis. BESP is generally used for offerings that are not typically sold on a stand-alone basis or for new or highly customized offerings. We determine BESP for a product or service by considering multiple factors including, but not limited to:

• the price list established by its management which is typically based on general pricing practices and targeted gross margin of products and services sold; and
• analysis of pricing history of new arrangements, including multiple element and stand-alone transactions.

In accordance with the guidance of ASC 605-25, when we enter into revenue arrangements with multiple deliverables we allocate arrangement consideration, among the products and subscriber services based on their relative selling prices. Arrangement consideration allocated to the sold products that is fixed or determinable and that is not contingent on future performance or future deliverables is recognized as product revenues during the period of the sale less the allowance for estimated returns during the 30-day trial period. Arrangement consideration allocated to subscriber services that is fixed or determinable and that is not contingent on future performance or future deliverables is recognized ratably as service revenues as the related services are provided, which is generally over the initial contract term.

Our ability to enter into revenue generating transactions and recognize revenue in the future is subject to a number of business and economic risks discussed above under Item 1A,"Risk Factors."

We must make estimates of the collectability of our accounts receivable. Management specifically analyzes accounts receivable, including historical bad debts, customer concentrations, customer creditworthiness, current economic trends and changes in our customer payment terms when evaluating the adequacy of the allowance for doubtful accounts. As of March 31, 2017, the accounts receivable balance was approximately $14.3 million, net of an allowances for doubtful accounts and returns of $1.3 million. If the financial condition of our customers deteriorates, our actual losses may exceed our estimates, and additional allowances would be required.

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Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets

Goodwill and intangible assets with indefinite useful lives are not amortized. Goodwill represents the excess fair value of consideration transferred over the fair value of net assets acquired in business combinations. The carrying value of goodwill and indefinite lived intangible assets are not amortized, but are annually tested for impairment and more often if there is an indicator of impairment.

We perform an annual impairment assessment in the fourth quarter of each year, or more frequently if indicators of potential impairment exist, to determine whether it is more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit in which goodwill resides is less than its carrying value. For reporting units in which this assessment concludes that it is more likely than not that the fair value is more than its carrying value, goodwill is not considered impaired and we are not required to perform the two-step goodwill impairment test. Qualitative factors considered in this assessment include industry and market considerations, overall financial performance, and other relevant events and factors affecting the reporting unit.

We account for computer software developed or obtained for internal use in accordance with ASC 350-40, Internal Use Software (ASC 350-40), which requires capitalization of certain software development costs incurred during the application development stage. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management has authorized and committed project funding, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. Once the project has been completed, these costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be three years. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded in research and development expense on our consolidated statements of operations.

As part of the process of preparing our consolidated financial statements we are required to estimate our income taxes in each of the jurisdictions in which we operate. This process requires us to estimate our actual current tax expense and to assess temporary differences resulting from book-tax accounting differences for items such as accrued vacation. These differences result in deferred tax assets and liabilities, which are included within our consolidated balance sheet. We must then assess the likelihood that our deferred tax assets will be recovered from future taxable income and to the extent we believe that recovery is not likely, we must establish a valuation allowance.

Significant management judgment is required to determine the valuation allowance recorded against our net deferred tax assets, which include net operating loss and tax credit carry forwards. The valuation allowance is based on our estimates of taxable income by jurisdiction in which we operate and the period over which our deferred tax assets will be recoverable. As of March 31, 2017, the net deferred tax asset on the consolidated balance sheet represented the projected tax benefit we expect to realize. We maintain a valuation allowance against the portion of our deferred tax assets that we believe is not more likely than not to be used to reduce our income tax liability.

During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 and 2016, we evaluated the need for a valuation allowance against our net deferred tax asset and concluded that we needed less of an allowance because certain California net operating losses expired in fiscal 2017 and 2016 and will not be utilized. Therefore, we decreased our valuation allowance by approximately $0.8 million and $1.1 million, respectively. As of March 31, 2017, the net deferred tax asset on the consolidated balance sheet represented the projected tax benefit we expect to realize.

We have received inquiries, demands or audit requests from several state, municipal and 9-1-1 taxing agencies seeking payment of taxes that are applied to or collected from the customers of providers of traditional public switched telephone network services. We recorded $0.5 million, $0.4 million and $0.1 million of expense for the years ended March 31, 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively, for estimated tax exposure for such assessments.

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Stock-Based Compensation

We account for our employee stock options, stock purchase rights, restricted stock units, and restricted performance stock units granted under the 1996 Stock Plan, 1996 Director Option Plan, the 2006 Stock Plan, the 2003 Contactual Plan, the 2012 Equity Incentive Plan, the 2013 New Employee Inducement Incentive Plan and stock purchase rights under the 1996 Employee Stock Purchase Plan (collectively "Equity Compensation Plans") under the provisions of ASC 718 - Stock Compensation. Under the provisions of ASC 718, stock-based compensation cost is measured at the grant date, based on the estimated fair value of the award, and is recognized as an expense over the employee's requisite service period (generally the vesting period of the equity grant), net of estimated forfeitures.

Compensation expense for stock-based payment awards is recognized using the straight-line single-option method and includes the impact of estimated forfeitures. Compensation expense for restricted stock units with performance and market conditions is recognized over the requisite service period using the straight-line method and includes the impact of estimated forfeitures. ASC 718 requires forfeitures to be estimated at the time of grant and revised, if necessary, in subsequent periods if actual forfeitures differ from those estimates.

To value option grants under the Equity Compensation Plans for stock-based compensation, we used the Black-Scholes option valuation model. Fair value determined using the Black-Scholes option valuation model varies based on assumptions used for the expected stock prices volatility, expected life, risk-free interest rates and future dividend payments. We used the historical volatility of our stock over a period equal to the expected life of the options. The expected life assumptions represent the weighted-average period stock-based awards are expected to remain outstanding. We established expected life assumptions through the review of historical exercise behavior of stock-based award grants with similar vesting periods. The risk-free interest rate was based on the closing market bid yields on actively traded U.S. treasury securities in the over-the-counter market for the expected term equal to the expected term of the option. The dividend yield assumption was based on our history and expectation of future dividend payout.

To value restricted performance stock units under the Equity Compensation Plans, we used a Monte Carlo simulation model.  Fair value determined using the Monte Carlo simulation model varies based on the assumptions used for the expected stock price volatility, the correlation coefficient between the Company and the NASDAQ Composite Index, risk-free interest rates, and future dividend payments.  We used the historical volatility and correlation of our stock and the Index over a period equal to the remaining performance period as of the grant date. The risk-free interest rate was based on the closing market bid yields on actively traded U.S. treasury securities in the over-the-counter market for the expected term equal to the remaining performance period as of the grant date. The dividend yield assumption was based on our history and expectation of future dividend payout.

Recent accounting pronouncements are detailed in Note 1 to our Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

We periodically review certain key business metrics, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of our operational strategies, allocate resources and maximize the financial performance of our business. The selected operating statistics include the following:

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____________

The increase in cost of service revenue for fiscal 2017 from fiscal 2016 was primarily due to a $2.6 million increase in third party network service expenses (due to increased call volumes associated with our subscription revenue growth), a $0.6 million increase in licenses and fees, a $0.6 million increase in stock-based compensation expenses, a $0.5 million increase in amortization expense, a $0.4 million increase in payroll and related expenses, a $0.4 million increase in computer supply expenses, and a $0.2 million increase in temporary personnel, consulting and outside service expenses.