Press Release - Blue Jeans taking strides into the UK

Cloud-based video collaboration service will connect the country face-to-face and drive business productivity

New EMEA GM and channel partners announced

13 November 2013 — London, UK – Blue Jeans Network, the leader in interoperable video collaboration services, representing over 30 percent of the worldwide video conferencing services market, officially launched in the UK today. This move capitalizes on a rapidly growing presence in the market. The UK already boasts nearly 700 businesses consuming approximately 10 million minutes a year on the Blue Jeans service, making it the second largest market for Blue Jeans behind the US.

The Blue Jeans service boosts collaboration and productivity for businesses of all sizes with a scalable, easy-to-use service for face-to-face video meetings and rich content sharing across the widest range of conference rooms, desktops, and mobile devices. Blue Jeans is the only solution in the world today that can connect both business and consumer video conferencing tools, including TelePresence, video room systems (H.323), SIP, Skype, Google, Microsoft Lync, browsers, tablets, smartphones and audio callers, into one single meeting. The cloud-based service is used every day by consumers in over 12,000 cities on all seven continents.

As Blue Jeans gains significant market share, the UK and European markets are core to the company’s global growth strategy. The company recently closed a new $US50 million round of venture financing in September to fuel its growth and to expand its presence into key markets. To lead these efforts in EMEA, the company has now named James Campanini, a former Cisco and WebEx executive, as VP/GM EMEA based in London. The company also has added two notable channel partners to help drive growth and serve customers throughout the UK and EMEA. The partnerships are with InterCall, one of the world’s largest audio and conferencing service providers, and Imago Group Plc, one of Europe’s largest virtual video solutions companies.

“The Blue Jeans service is experiencing record growth across all facets of its business, including customers, users, usage, bookings and revenues, largely at the expense of legacy hardware based solutions from industry incumbents such as Cisco and Polycom,” said Campanini. “The company has achieved this growth in other parts of the world, and is now looking to emulate this success in the UK and European market.”

“The time is right as the UK workplace is evolving and trends like BYOD and home or remote working are becoming commonplace, particularly for people tired of rail and motorway commuting,” Campanini added. “The global nature of business means you can be dealing with people in Japan in the morning and California in the evening. Blue Jeans aims to help break down barriers created by geography, time zones and travel costs, and enable meaningful, productive and efficient face-to-face meetings without a hefty price tag.”

UK Customer Base

The UK is already home to a wide range of Blue Jeans customers, from large corporations and local government to entrepreneurial start-ups. UK customers include organisations such as Newcastle University; Forum for the Future, a sustainability focused non-profit based in London; and Pole Star, the leading provider of fleet management, ship security, and fisheries monitoring systems to the maritime industry, based in London.

“With a business that operates 24/7 around the globe, Blue Jeans helps us bridge the gap between time zones and people. Using Blue Jeans, our teams are more connected and synchronised,” said Peter Davies, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Pole Star. “We use Blue Jeans to run regular management and sales meetings, monthly board meetings, and development meetings with people all over the world. Blue Jeans is great for us because our staff use a mixture of room systems, PCs, and tablets to connect globally, even while in the field, and Blue Jeans handles it seamlessly.”

Channel Partners

“Blue Jeans creates immediate value for our customers who have already invested in video conferencing endpoints for their conference rooms. Now they can connect those endpoints with all the people that cannot access these rooms but have access to a desktop, laptop, or mobile device with a camera,” said Ian Vickerage, Managing Director at Imago Group. “With so many colleagues now accessible over video with just a simple click, people will find it easy to do more video conferencing.”

“We are thrilled to complement our strong portfolio of audio conferencing and business collaboration tools with Blue Jeans,” said Morgan Whipp, VP Sales & Marketing for InterCall EMEA. “In the short time we have been working with Blue Jeans, we have already seen a tremendous appetite for the service here in the UK amongst our customer base eager to meet face to face with their colleagues, partners, and customers.”

The partnership with InterCall is part of a wider global partnership, and today the two companies also announced that they have integrated Blue Jeans video conferencing with InterCall Reservationless-Plus® audio conferencing, affording customers even more ways to join a meeting.

About Blue Jeans Network
At Blue Jeans Network, our mission is to make video communications as easy and pervasive as audio communications, enabling more effective collaboration at work, at home, and on the road. Our cloud-based conferencing service makes this possible by enabling customers to connect with each other seamlessly any time, anywhere, and from practically any device. The Blue Jeans Network extends high quality video communications beyond the traditional boundaries of specialized conference rooms and into the mainstream, allowing individuals and employees throughout an enterprise to interact more effectively with each other, and with their customers, partners, suppliers, family, and friends. Blue Jeans Network is a private company headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information go to: https://www.bluejeans.com or follow the company @BlueJeansNet

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