It's one thing to win an award. It's another matter entirely to win the same award two years running. That's why 8x8's newest award is particularly special; it's won the top slot in the IHS Infonetics (News - Alert) Cloud UC Service Provider North America Scorecard for the second year running.

The Cloud UC Service Provider North America Scorecard addresses the best firms providing both cloud and hosted unified communications (UC) services throughout the region. The study makes a particular focus on results, including looking at criteria like the installed base of seats involved with a company's product line, the overall financial stability of the firm, the market strategy the firm uses to address the wider market, and several other criteria.

IHS (News - Alert) Infonetics' research director for VoIP, UC and IMS, Diane Myers, commented on what goes into the award, and also noted that there are some issues for 8x8 (News - Alert) as well. Perhaps the biggest issue was that 8x8's installed base was heavily weighted toward small businesses, a point that even Myers noted was starting to change as 8x8 went “upmarket.”

8x8 wasn't alone toward the top of the rankings; also scoring high were Comcast, RingCentral, West IP Communications and Vonage (News - Alert), with Vonage making the biggest jump in the rankings thanks to a series of acquisitions that bolstered its customer base. The second rank of leaders in no particular order include Verizon, Thinking Phone Networks, Star2Star, Mitel and Broadview Networks (News - Alert).

We're likely to see the tangible impact of this ranking before long, as 8x8 is set to announced the results of its fiscal fourth quarter 2015, as well as its full-year results, on May 20. We also know that 8x8 has been very busy of late, with a recent report showing that they linked with Arrow Systems to deliver a new UC cloud partnership. Zendesk also recently came on as one of 8x8's partners in the field, allowing the companies to offer a bundled cloud-based solution geared toward the contact center.

Only time will tell if 8x8 can take the top honors for a third time, but with a plan of abundant partnerships and an improved reach into larger firms, it's clear that 8x8 is posing a significant challenge to anyone else out to take that top slot away.