It’s been another cold but exciting week here at UC Today, with a slew of thrilling stories to sort through for all of our passionate journalists. As the year draws to a close, there’s still plenty of activity in the industry.
While some of our press releases have been positive, like the story about Five9 partnering with Google Cloud on a new solution for customer experience – others haven’t been nearly as joyful. For instance, both Fuze and BlueJeans have had lay-offs to deal with over the last week.
Here are some of the most important announcements that we think that you’ll want to hear about before you head into next week.
BlueJeans Lays off 40% of its Team
Christmas just got a lot colder for some of the staff at BlueJeans over the last week. With a valuation of around $727 million and pretty impressive revenues, you would think that the video conferencing and collaboration company would be celebrating a fantastic end to the year. However, just a couple of days ago, the CEO, Quentin Gallivan, announced a “strategic decision” to cut back on staff members and optimise resources for profitability.
According to reports, the company has removed 40% of its workforce of 500 people, leaving numerous people without employment as the holidays approach. Some people have commented on the bad timing of the recent layoffs. Others have suggested that the decision might have something to do with the growing demand for integrated tools like Microsoft Teams over singular products like BlueJeans for video conferencing. Read more here.
Fuze Loses a Quarter of its Global Workforce
It’s not just BlueJeans that are sending employees home with less than jolly spirits this holiday season, however. Fuze have also reportedly gotten rid of around 25% of its staff members worldwide. It seems like many individuals in the UC space are going to be starting 2020 with a job hunt.
The CEO of Fuze, Colin Doherty, has also been replaced with the company’s CFO, Brian Day, who published a blog post about the recent upheaval. The official announcement outlines a decision by the company to play to the “strengths in the enterprise” market going into the new year. There are a few references to “critical challenges” in the global organisation too, and a demand to help companies transition to the cloud. Like BlueJeans, Fuze seems to be focusing on reducing costs and increasing profits.
Cisco Updates Webex Meeting App
It’s not all bleak news in the unified communication, collaboration, and customer experience tech environments, of course. Cisco, one of the leaders in the collaboration marketplace, recently announced that it’s making some enhancements to the Cisco Webex Meetings experience. The changes to the technology come with the November update, named WBS39.10.
