Verizon's shuttering of BlueJeans earlier this month sent shockwaves around the UC and collaboration world.
In a message emailed to BlueJeans’ service members — and published by 9to5Google — on Tuesday, August 8, Verizon confirmed that the platform's suite of products was being “sunset” due to what the vendor described as an evolving and volatile market situation.
Verizon acquired BlueJeans — a business-targeted video conferencing app — in a deal estimated between $400 and $500 million in spring 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The acquisition was based on Verizon identifying a market opportunity to compete with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangout as the world adapted to the new reality of remote and hybrid working.
Just over three years later, the sun has set on the BlueJeans project. It begs the question — Where did it all go wrong?
"They were definitely at that 'buy, borrow, build' decision stage during the pandemic," Craig Durr, Senior Analyst, Futurum Group, told UC Today. "'I need to have some kind of video conferencing service integrated with what I'm doing.' And they went with the buy option."
Durr suggested that one of the main challenges for BlueJeans was trying to balance converting the existing Verizon customer base over to the BlueJeans service and growing net new customers.
"I think they tried both strategies," Durr said, "but I didn't pick up on a large transition on internal harvesting of people who were using Verizon services for business telephony and things of that nature. Using that for unified communications or as an entryway into unified communications, inclusive of video. I just think it was an example of them not being able to integrate it properly or get that proper conversion rate going."
Evan Kirstel, Social Media Strategist, BCStrategies, wryly noted the steep acquisition price of BlueJeans couldn't have helped with the burden of market expectation: "I think we all spent too much money during the pandemic. We didn't spend $500 million on BlueJeans but too much money on Amazon!"
"All kidding aside, I think it shows the challenges that Verizon and its peer AT&T have in the enterprise, that they're kind of the Walmart of enterprise communications," Kirstel expanded. "They're great when you know what you need to buy. You go into the store, take it off the shelf, and get a good price.
"But that's not going to sell and market and position you as a product in the 'Walmart' store. That's what was lacking. It was that go-to-market, that selling, that marketing, that positioning, that hyper-competitive landscape in video that they sadly couldn't differentiate themselves from."
Irwin Lazar, President, Metrigy, highlighted that not only was Verizon struggling to differentiate itself in a crowded UC space but that it was "competing against its partners".
