Blue Jeans pushes mobility, flexibility for video conferencing

Blue Jeans Network, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, announced this morning a few new features for its cloud-based unified communications platform.

The company has dubbed them "Room to Remote" -- that is, features that allow business video collaboration to occur outside the traditional boardroom environment.

The new bits:

• "Mobile Meetings," a free iOS app that allows for video conferencing with desktops, laptops, mobile devices and traditional (Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, Sony, Huawei, Microsoft Lync, Skype, Google) endpoints;
• A partnership with Tely Labs that allows customers to turn meeting rooms into video conference rooms (at a cost of about $1,000) by pairing a TelyHD Enterprise Edition appliance with any flat-screen television;
• Support for dual HD streams (for interactive video and content sharing) and a new "slider" that allows each meeting participant to control their experience.

The first gives the company a major mobile presence, the second gives it a vehicle to expand its enterprise footprint and the third is simply an incremental UX upgrade. Nothing radical, but certainly useful in the company's bid to popularize flexible, easy-to-use video conferencing.