Blue Jeans Network, a video conferencing company founded by a serial entrepreneur who has sold two companies to Cisco, is adding another $25 million to its coffers from NEA, Accel and Norwest Venture Partners.
Interestingly enough, quite of bit of that capital will be going toward a marketing campaign meant to woo enterprise customers away from other video conferencing providers. Such is the nature of enterprise-focused companies, which often needs a more marketing and sales-intensive strategy to acquire customers.
The company’s already got a billboard in San Francisco (pictured above) and the goal is to get more companies to switch from pure audio conferencing to video conferencing. Blue Jeans counts Facebook, Match.com and Stanford among its clientele. Today’s round brings the company’s total funding to just shy of $50 million.
Paired with the funding today are a few product updates. Blue Jeans recently launched a browser-based conferencing solution that’s inter-operable with everything from Skype to Google Hangouts, Cisco or Polycom. Then there are some minor feature releases like the ability to build customized log-in pages and single sign-on for employees.
The company recently released a new product meant to kill those expensive video conferencing units called MCUs or multipoint control units, that can cost north of $250,000. Blue Jeans’ video-conferencing service starts at $299 per port (or per party involved in calls).