InterCall and Blue Jeans Network Connect to Redefine Business Collaboration

SOURCE: Intercall

CHICAGO, November 13, 2013 – InterCall^®, a subsidiary of West Corporation and the world’s largest conferencing and collaboration services provider, announced today the integration of Blue Jeans Network video with InterCall Reservationless-Plus^® audio conferencing, giving organizations the ability to easily enhance their meetings through face-to-face communication.

InterCall Reservationless-Plus audio conferencing lets people host conference calls anywhere in the world on any type of device.  With more than 400,000 access ports, InterCall has one of the largest proprietary IP-based global conferencing platforms in use today.

Combining Reservationless-Plus with the Blue Jeans service now enables up to 175 people using a mix of audio and video to participate in a single conference.  By merging audio and video, these two companies are creating a global collaboration platform that makes meetings easier to schedule, join and experience regardless of whether people connect from traditional phone lines, mobile devices or by video.

“People are interested in using video to improve collaboration, and they want a simpler way to connect,” said Rob Bellmar, Senior Vice President of Conferencing and Collaboration for InterCall.  “Integrating our Reservationless-Plus and the Blue Jeans services gives hosts a simple way to start meetings on-the-fly, while participants can easily click-to-join from anywhere on any device, and experience the high quality audio and video conferencing that they expect.”

Among the benefits of the new InterCall and Blue Jeans integration:

• * Simple scheduling with one tool for video and audio meetings
• * One common code, one meeting invitation and multiple ways to join
• * Additional in-meeting controls, such as a list of participants, active talkers and mute/un-mute capabilities
• * High-quality voice for both audio-only and video attendees

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, 75 percent of all businesses will use collaboration technology tools in 2013 and nearly 90 percent will employ them by 2015.  Studies prove that face-to-face video helps people meaningfully connect, reducing hostility, fostering empathy and improving communication.

Capturing more than 30 percent of the video conferencing market in just over two years, Blue Jeans Network has disrupted legacy players with a unique cloud model and the ability to connect users across conference rooms, desktops, and mobile devices, bridging the gap between increasingly dispersed social and business networks.  Blue Jeans is extending the reach of video conferencing beyond specialized rooms to everyone who can’t be in them.

“As video collaboration services transition from hardware to the cloud, Blue Jeans Network can deliver easy, accessible live video conferencing, regardless of location or device,” said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of Blue Jeans Network.  “Our company is fulfilling the appetite for face-to-face communication by delivering an easy-to-use, scalable solution.  The combination of Blue Jeans Network’s rapid growth in the video conferencing market along with InterCall’s global presence and strength in the audio conferencing industry is creating an unstoppable force.”

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 anytime, 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, please visit http://bluejeans.com.

About InterCall
InterCall, a subsidiary of West Corporation, is the largest conferencing and collaboration services provider in the world. Founded in 1991, InterCall offers telephony, messaging, webcasting, virtual environment, and conferencing and collaboration tools for businesses of all sizes, from large global enterprises to small or regional companies. With a global footprint and broad service capabilities, InterCall’s flexible models for hosted, managed and on-premise communication services help companies get the most out of their business processes.

InterCall’s strong U.S. presence, including four call centers and 26 sales offices, is bolstered by operations in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. For more information, please visit InterCall.