BlueJeans Network Exec Shares What Enterprises Should Look for in a Video Solution
Video conferencing is a highly attractive tool for companies of all sizes and industries because it affords businesses the ability to bring people and teams together for collaboration and conversation regardless of location. In the past, traditional video conferencing solutions (often referenced as legacy systems) were notoriously expensive and complicated to use, proving to be more of a luxury than a necessity for most businesses. But within the past few years and thanks to the various advances in video communications--as well as the decentralization of the modern workforce--video conferencing now has a more mainstream appeal.
Today, companies across all industries are leveraging the power of video in the enterprise. Video lets companies reach many people quickly and cost-effectively. It helps removes barriers and allows businesses to get real results, fast. Plus, with multiple use cases, video communications have no doubt become an essential component of work productivity. In order to unlock the power of video, it is important for businesses to choose the right solution.
In this article, Garrett Ruiz, Marketing Director for BlueJeans, offers advice on what enterprises should look for in a video solution and shares how BlueJeans, a leader in cloud video conferencing, is making video accessible to everyday workflows.
Joining the Enterprise Video Revolution
According to a MarketsandMarkets™ report entitled, "Enterprise Video Market by Type (Webcasting, Video Content Management, Video Conferencing), Deployment Mode, Application (Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration, Corporate Communications), Vertical and Region - Global Forecast to 2022,” the enterprise video market is projected to grow from an estimated USD $16.34 billion in 2017 to USD $40.84 billion by 2022, representing a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.1%. The report also identifies two of the key drivers of the market’s growth: the rising demand for video as a tool to improve communications and collaboration across the enterprise, and the increasing adoption of cloud technology.
Given the benefits of video communications as well as the plethora of video solutions available today, it’s not surprising that more enterprises are seeking to adopt video in the workplace and into their daily workflows. But what does it take for a business to get the most from this enterprise video revolution? According to Ruiz, there are two questions an organization must ask themselves when thinking about an audio and video solution:
What's the challenge you (the video solution provider) are helping me solve? - Before investing in any video platform, an organization must first identify what they need video for. Is it to manage a distributed workforce and cut on travel costs? Is it to connect the entire company? Or perhaps is it to deploy a video solution that doesn’t create additional work (and headaches) for the IT department? Identifying the specific challenges a business faces is crucial to finding the right video solution.
How does your video solution fit in with my existing environment? - “A company should also consider how a solution fits as to not be disruptive to the business workflow,” shared Ruiz. “Is it going to work with an existing investment, and can I leverage the dollars I’ve already spent?” Ruiz revealed that interoperability used to be an issue for businesses. Questions such as “what’s on the other end?” and “can that equipment connect to my service?’ limited the ability of many businesses to communicate via video. “But a lot of those challenges have been solved to make video conferencing more accessible without any fancy equipment,” stated Ruiz. “Users now have the option to access a meeting straight from their desktop and through other tools.”
Kicking Off the Enterprise Video Revolution with BlueJeans Network
New video communications solutions, such as those offered by BlueJeans Network, strive to address the pain points experienced by businesses that have suffered working with legacy video conferencing. By committing themselves to making video meetings possible and entirely easy from anywhere and on any device, BlueJeans seamlessly delivers secure, scalable, and interactive two-way conference call services for the modern enterprise. 
BlueJeans started as a company that was (and still is) driven to solve one major problem: the issue of interoperability with video. “BlueJeans first developed a solution to connect Skype to existing rooms with legacy systems (equipment from providers like Cisco, etc.),” stated Ruiz. “Skype was not interoperable with these room systems, which means if a user wanted to conduct the meeting from their desktop in conjunction with a meeting room, this wasn't possible. So BlueJeans created a bridge, and this evolved beyond that first solution to the overall idea of solving interoperability between disparate room system vendors like Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, etc. These were considered walled garden solutions that could not speak to one another, so we created a cloud-based bridge to provide switch protocol that, regardless of the vendor system, could talk to one another,” he explained.
Fast forward to today, and the company has evolved to offer a platform portfolio of cloud-based meeting solutions. Their range of solutions now include onVideo Meetings, a touch-to-join video conferencing solution for up to 100 attendees; Primetime Events, a video solution for town hall meetings and all hands events; onSocial Streaming, a self-service, professional grade video calling and broadcasting platform for Facebook Live; and Huddle, a video conferencing solution for video-enabling conference rooms.
Why BlueJeans Shines in the Video Market
With so many video solutions on the market, what makes BlueJeans unique? According to Ruiz, there are three things that make BlueJeans unique: simplicity, security, and immersive experience:
Simplicity - “This is aimed at two audiences as far as we are concerned: the first is the IT or tech person, and the second is the end-user,” said Ruiz.
For the IT people, Ruiz says that BlueJeans seeks to make it simple for them to purchase, deploy, monitor, and manage the solution. “We want to make their life easier by rolling out a tool that allows them to monitor dashboards and other tools in one centralized control area,” he explained. “We want them to be able to view all network items and make them aware of user issues, then allow them to be proactive. Ultimately, we want to give IT one platform that scales easily for different use cases (small company, big meeting room, etc.).” 
The second audience would be the end user. According to Ruiz, BlueJeans has focused on making their offerings drop-dead simple for the end user. “We worked really hard to include interoperability and bring one-click join options so that the user isn't struggling through getting a meeting going and can instead focus on the work that needs to get done,” he said. BlueJeans is making video accessible from everyday workflows through integrations. The company now offers integrations with various third-party applications such as Skype for Business, Slack, HipChat, and Workplace by Facebook.
Security - “We really are an enterprise-grade solution, and so we put a lot of emphasis on security,” said Ruiz. “We have done a lot of work with both our data centers and technology stack to ensure that we are SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. We keep customer data safe and user info protected through multi-layered security, whether that's single sign-on or by locking meetings with passcodes. We have a strong security story that helps put us in a position for the enterprise.”
Immersive experience - Another thing that makes BlueJeans stand out is its mission to create immersive experiences for users. BlueJeans does this by providing HD video meetings from anywhere with clear audio and screen sharing and in-meeting collaboration tools that allow participants to feel like they are in the same room.
“We have customers in all different verticals and industries, and we are focused on delivering our solution to the enterprise market,” stated Ruiz. “But regardless of size, our solution is for any business that needs to collaborate and to get work done.”
The Future of Enterprise Video
So now that there is more of a focus being placed on video collaboration, what does the future hold? Ruiz believes that there is a bright future for the enterprise video market. As an industry, he believes there is a lot that video providers can improve on, specifically in regards to how they can consolidate and standardize across the board. “We have the opportunity to do that by simplifying the IT stack,” said Ruiz.” By consolidating we can help customers bring web conferencing, audio, and video into one tool to reduce costs. Ultimately it comes down to the use cases: what are the features and functionality you care about? Small to medium-sized businesses may decide that they won’t host meeting with more than 10 participants and that they don’t need interoperability with other systems; instead, they have a simple environment. But where BlueJeans shines is when companies need enterprise scalability, resiliency, and interoperability to connect with other tools. BlueJeans offers the opportunity to work with heterogeneous environments backed by security that larger corporations care about.”
Ruiz also identified a number of market trends on the rise in the video market, namely:
- The SMB market - BlueJeans is an enterprise-focused solution, bringing proficiency in interoperability, an emphasis on security, and integrations with popular productivity tools, all of which make them an appealing choice for large enterprises. But BlueJeans also made sure not to miss out on the SMB market. “[BlueJeans] recently rolled out a number of tiered packages that are geared towards the small to medium type businesses, along with a self-service e-commerce platform for SMB customers,” said Ruiz.
- Integrations - “One other trend we are seeing is that there’s a lot of focus on the integrations piece,” he said. “How do tools work with other solutions? The end users are using a number of integrations (ie. Skype for Business, Office 365, etc.) and other products/tools.”
- Improvement of audio quality - One of the most common issues among users is not the video but is actually the audio. To remedy this, Dolby Laboratories and BlueJeans recently teamed up to deliver superior meeting experiences. Integrating the best in business Dolby voice audio stack was big for BlueJeans, and Dolby has done fantastic work in that area to eliminate echoes through noise cancellation and spatial-wide based sound.
- Artificial Intelligence - Ruiz also believes that AI will be a hot trend in the near future. “There could be AI recognition of a recorded meeting, and AI could tag prominent keywords so when you go back to a recording and search a phrase or term to easily see where the phrase or term was mentioned in the meeting. AI will be more ingrained in services.”
Visit BlueJeans website to learn more about their range of video solutions and how they are helping modern enterprises unleash the power of video.
About BlueJeans Network
BlueJeans Network, the world’s leader in cloud video conferencing, is committed to making video communications easy--anywhere and on any device. Founded in November 2009, BlueJeans was initially built to solve the issue of interoperability with video. Today, BlueJeans has evolved into a platform portfolio of cloud-based meeting solutions (whether one-on-one, multi-party, or live streaming) that can scale all the way up to large broadcast streaming events. BlueJeans is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has a number of offices in the states as well as other locations across the globe.
