Video collaboration service provider Blue Jeans has revealed plans to expand into Europe after announcing its launch in the UK.
The firm claims to be the only solution allowing users of different videoconferencing services – from Cisco to Skype – to communicate with one another, and has taken a 30% share of the market in just two years.
The company just raised $50m in VC funding, taking its total to $100m, and is using some of the cash to set up a team in London to act as its EMEA base, with Britain being the US firm’s second largest market after North America.
Around 700 British businesses are talking for an average of 10 million minutes per year through the cloud-based service.
Ex-Cisco exec James Campanini has joined the company as EMEA VP to oversee the expansion.
He said: "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.
"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."
He added that the time was right for videoconferencing to grow, with the rise of BYOD and home and mobile working becoming a normal way of conducting business.
"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," Campanini said.
The news came as Blue Jeans announced an Android app which will appear in the Google Play store tomorrow to extend its offering to Android devices.
It already has an iOS app out, which it says is placed 180th in the Apple Store business apps for iPad.
But it hopes to capture more of the Android market, with IDC predicting the operating system to have a 75% share of the smartphone market by the end of the year.
This is in addition to improvements to its audio service and the ability to share content while in a video conference.
Blue Jeans has partnered with InterCall to integrate InterCall’s audio conferencing solution, Reservationless-Plus, into its own video network, while it has added built-in chat capabilities and a new screen-sharing widget to allow presenters to see meeting participants while delivering a talk, enabling them to gauge people’s reactions.
CCO Stu Aaron said: "With every new feature, partnership, and customer, we continue to disrupt and extend the reach of the video communications market, proving that today the most powerful tool for business is still the human face."
Picture of James Campanini
