Now that work from home (WFH) and hybrid work technology has exploded in popularity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many integrators are starting to see the benefits of the resimercial market, but are unsure of what products and services to work with. With that in mind, CE Pro reached out to Eric Spadafora, vice president & general manager, BlueJeans by Verizon, to learn what services and products the company offers for residential and resimercial integrators, how BlueJeans can be a helpful tool for WFH clients, and much more.

CE Pro: With the use of AV conferencing systems exploding in 2020-21, what does BlueJeans offer users vs. some of the other platforms?

Eric Spadafora: BlueJeans by Verizon offers a secure video collaboration platform for the hybrid workplace. Thousands of organizations, from growing businesses to Fortune 500 leaders, use BlueJeans for hosting video meetings and large interactive events.

BlueJeans was built for the enterprise from the ground up to streamline organizational communication, which required a strong focus on security, interoperability and manageability from the start. Over the past year, we’ve expanded our product portfolio to better support the work-from-anywhere explosion. Taking our strength in enterprise to the remote worker, new features include Virtual Backgrounds, Reactions and Smart Meetings for all users — including real-time transcription, meeting highlights for crowd-sourcing meeting notes and ESPN-style highlight recap video reels.

Furthermore, we are constantly testing our platform for performance, resilience, and quality and working with customers to ensure we are addressing their biggest needs for a video conferencing and events platform. One way we do this is by capturing meeting feedback live. Our end-users are asked to rate their experience after every single meeting. This Q-Score data helps us understand where issues may be present and enable our teams to quickly diagnose and troubleshoot areas before real problems emerge.

CE Pro: How does BlueJeans fit into the hybrid workforce integration opportunity?

Spadafora: Providing a video conferencing platform that enables teams to work productively from anywhere — whether at the office, at home or on the go — has always been the driving force for BlueJeans. Providing interoperability and device flexibility are a big part of this.

We expect that this sometimes on-site and sometimes at-home will become the status quo going forward. And with this, we are seeing an entirely new category of purpose-built video devices being provided to remote workers who can’t be tied to the desktop but still require the highest quality, full-featured video experience. These devices have the power to provide a digital canvas for whiteboarding, annotation, and an array of collaborative features.

Organizations are now proactively adopting a hybrid model shifting more meetings and events from office-centered to distributed gatherings. This shift puts more focus on video and audio quality, reliability and security, which are strengths that Verizon and BlueJeans together can deliver very well given Verizon’s extensive 5G networks and BlueJeans’ heritage as a video conferencing innovator.

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CE Pro: What makes BlueJeans a viable tool to help WFH?

Spadafora: BlueJeans is the bridge between dispersed and distributed teams. We’ve put a lot of thought into the hybrid workforce and the tools necessary to make connecting through video seamless for small and large-scale meetings and events. Especially in a hybrid environment, it can be hard to stay engaged, speak up and “be heard” as a remote meeting participant.

This year we introduced several new features designed to help our users combat video fatigue, maintain privacy, boost engagement, and enable meaningful collaboration from wherever they choose to work and on whatever device they choose to use. Everything from virtual backgrounds and profile images for non-video attendees to interactive video tiles and participant reactions were delivered to enhance the remote user experience.

Finally, our latest Dolby Voice update introduces a new audio library for real-time keyboard noise suppression that automatically filters out typing sounds.

CE Pro: Will BlueJeans add dealers in the residential market?

Spadafora: We are always looking into new partner integration opportunities that can help make the virtual and hybrid meeting and events experience easier and more robust for our customers. We’re looking forward to what the future holds.

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