Strategy BlueJeans by Verizon – UC News


welcomes the new regime On May 18 2020, Verizon welcomed 390 new employees after officially closing the deal with BlueJeans Network, Inc. The integration of BlueJeans into Ver- izon’s Advanced Communications portfolio was considered critical, now more than ever, to keep businesses ranging from small organizations to some of the world’s largest multinational brands, operating at the highest level. BlueJeans products complement Verizon’s mobile-first business solutions, like One Talk, and will be deeply integrated into Verizon’s current and future 5G product road- map. Here, Paul Scholey, BlueJeans by Verizon’s Senior Vice President Interna- tional discusses the strategy behind the acquisition.


UC News has interviewed Paul Scholey on two occasions in the past as Blue- Jeans has built a significant presence in the enterprise collaboration space. Now, allied with Verizon, one of the world’s leading telcos, and a leader in 5G, Scholey believes in a very bright future for the combined UC group.


UCN: “So Paul, what was Verizon’s po- sition in UC before the acquisition of BlueJeans?”


PS: “They didn’t have anything that was comparable, but they’ve got all the services that you would expect of a major telco - a major service pro- vider. But when it came to the video world, the world that we’ve kind of well-known as inhabiting and in which we are one of the leading lights, they resoled solutions from partners. They had partnerships and reseller agree- ments with a few of the players that you might imagine in the marketplace. You know, the great and the good like Cisco, Teams, Zoom and the like. But they didn’t have anything compatible of their own. So that was clearly one of the reasons behind the acquisition, along with supporting support new business models. The interesting area for me is obviously the event space where they’ve really lifted the game from being able to provide something for


fifteen thousand people, up to 50,000 participants.”


UCN: “Does this expansion in the numbers change the categories of event that can be supported?”


PS: “Absolutely. That makes it pos- sible to look at a whole different set of events. I mean, things like popular music events, popular sports events. Yeah, a huge variety of things. But the thing that I think the list of partners for is and interesting, one area where I thought there was perhaps a gap is when you’re dealing with events de- signed to be moneymaking, in particu- lar things in the entertainment sector. A possibility might be a partnership with prior or one of the ticketing ser- vices.”


Event proliferation


PS: “We’ve already done that, to a certain extent. We’ve seen a huge amount of uptake in events currently. The world is changing. I think that’s a given, right? Everyone is looking to new business models. Everyone’s look- ing at how to support their workforces in this new world. And we’ve seen a huge uptick in demand for events just over the last few months during Covid. We’ve seen many customers go from maybe doing one traditional town hall a month to doing multiple in one day, simply as a means of engaging their workforce as it goes home. So we’ve


seen, generally speaking, a huge up- tick in the events platforms. And it’s not just for the internal market.”


Artistic focus


UCN: “We are hearing a lot from a struggling arts sector – are they em- bracing the technology?”


PS: “We are seeing a huge push in virtual events. So we are close to the start of the event season - the big tech events, the big artistic events and the big scientific events. Here people would normally get into a big conference room, wherever they may be, perhaps the O2 Arena, or some- thing like that. These are not happen- ing at present, so we’ve seen a gener- al trend of events moving online. Of course, it’s a different use case. Some of these events, particularly in the ar- tistic world, you don’t always need to monetize them. You don’t need to sell tickets. For others, you need to per- haps have a front-end white labelled paid ticketing system. That’s got to in- tegrate with the events platform so you can track those that have a ticket.” PS: “Either way, you need to know who is authorized to come into the event.


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