A recent survey of 4,000 employees across the U.S. and Western Europe revealed that 85 percent of today’s modern workforce both expects and uses live video as part of everyday life. Increasingly, global teams and remote workers connect over live video communications technologies to communicate, collaborate, and even retain employees as well as recruit new hire candidates.

This communications revolution hasn’t gone unnoticed: IDC (News - Alert) predicts that by 2017 60 percent of enterprise unified communications-as-a-service deployments will be cloud based, and Gartner forecasts the value of the UC market at $42.4 billion by 2019. To look at these numbers, it becomes clear just how fierce competition in the cloud-based UC space is about to become.

But like the opportunity, the demands on businesses in the web videoconferencing space are just as intense. Ease of use and high quality are paramount, where even minor glitches can erode vendor credibility. This means simplicity, scalability, speed, and flawless connectivity have become central issues to online communications providers – essential elements to deliver to global customers to compete.

BlueJeans Network, a global leader in cloud-based video communications services, has based its business model on the notion that most live video communication tools in business haven’t made the grade, and that video is still too hard for a number of reasons. Universal interoperability to connect videoconference rooms, people, and devices hasn’t evolved to meet expectations, and delivery of top video quality at scale has fallen far short of industry promises. Videoconferencing is one of the final frontiers of the consumerization of IT.

Seeking to address some of these pain points, BlueJeans entered into a partnership with Equinix (News - Alert) to leverage the data center and interconnection company’s Interconnection Oriented Architecture and Equinix Cloud Exchange. Coming to the table with a footprint of more than 145 International Business Exchange data centers, presence in 40 global markets, and proven operational reliability of Platform Equinix (with global uptime of 99.9999 percent in 2015), Equinix was one of the only solutions able to provide direct virtual connections to services simultaneously from a single port. And Equinix’s vast and vendor-neutral network of more than 1,150 networks and carriers offered BlueJeans even more: enhanced flexibility and choice, with increased safety, speed, and reliability.

BlueJeans embarked on the deployment of an Interconnection Oriented Architecture with Equinix in three regions to decentralize and distribute its infrastructure, and provide greater agility and scale by bringing data closer to end users. The result has been lower latency and superior application performance, something that gives BlueJeans the ability to offer direct connection to its cloud-based services as well as gain access to leading network service providers.

The proof is in the pudding. BlueJeans’ cloud-based corporate video platform has hosted participants from 12,000 cities in 200 countries on seven continents, and the company is on a more than one billion-meeting-minutes-per-year trajectory, having pulled in more than 25 million participants. Finally, BlueJeans has evoked the trust of some of the world’s most respected companies, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix, Red Hat (News - Alert), Rosetta Stone, and Sephora.

As Dan Nater, BlueJeans’ vice president of operations, put it, “Equinix Cloud Exchange is rocket fuel for us.”

BlueJeans recently unveiled its Enterprise Video Cloud, a secure platform and extensible architecture that delivers business video communications on a global scale by uniting single-click video experiences with powerful IT management tools and ecosystem of integration partners.

With approximately 1.2 billion mobile workers worldwide and enterprises focusing on extending the range of productivity services that can be deployed on and accessed by a diverse range of devices, the BlueJeans-via-Equinix universal interoperability to connect more conference rooms, people, and devices is a key selling point. Anything from one-to-one video meetings, to engagements supporting 5,000 attendees is accessible by one-click access to live, multipoint, interactive video.

“The direct connections we establish through Equinix are faster, more secure, and more reliable than ever before,” added Nater. “The increased safety and speed available versus the public internet has us aiming to greatly accelerate deployments among global enterprises.”

Bill Long is vice president of interconnection services at Equinix Interconnections (www.equinix.com).