Big Data. Big Decisions
InformationWeek
Special Coverage Series


Blue Jeans Offers Free Videoconferences For Military Families

Home for the Holidays allows up to 25 military members and their families to connect from PCs, mobile devices or videoconference rooms during the Christmas season.

10 Best Business Tools In Google+
10 Best Business Tools In Google+
(click image for larger view and for slideshow)
Members of the U.S. armed forces who are unable to get home for the holidays in person will still be able to see their loved ones over a free videoconference connection.

The Home for the Holidays program runs from December 20, 2012 to January 2, 2013 and is supported by Blue Jeans Network in partnership with Military Association Benefits Group, Military Comm Networks and associated companies. Blue Jeans offers an inexpensive cloud-based videoconferencing service for bridging between different brands of videoconferencing equipment, mobile devices and other services like Skype and Google Video Chat. To get on a call, service members will be able to take advantage of any of these channels or Blue Jeans' own browser-based video client.

More Insights

Webcasts

More >>

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

"We tried to roll out this program last holiday season but ran up against interoperability and scalability challenges," Dennis Butts, CEO of Military Association Benefits Group and several affiliated companies, said in a statement for the press release. "With Blue Jeans on board, having soldiers and family members spread across Google, Skype and a host of room-based systems used by the military is simply not an issue."

[ Reducing travel expenses are a common reason SMBs turn to videoconferencing, but there are other benefits to consider. See 4 Uses For Videoconferencing Beyond Cutting Costs. ]

To make a reservation, contact the Military Association Benefits Group (MABGI) at homefortheholidays@mabgi.us or call 715-395-7076.

"There are over one million servicemen and women who are away from their friends and family over the holiday season," added Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of Blue Jeans Network. "Whether serving overseas, or stationed at one of hundreds of bases in the United States, there shouldn't be any impediment to these families seeing each other over the holidays."

For families without computers or mobile devices, physical locations have been reserved throughout the United States where the families will have access to the videoconference resources they require. A complete list of locations is available at http://mabgi.us/Association_Connect.html.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr or Google+. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

Social media make the customer more powerful than ever. Here's how to listen and react. Also in the new, all-digital The Customer Really Comes First issue of The BrainYard: The right tools can help smooth over the rough edges in your social business architecture. (Free registration required.)



Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

BYTE encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, BYTE moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. BYTE further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.

Follow InformationWeek

By The Numbers

What Are Your Primary Concerns About Using Big Data Software?

Base: 417 respondents at organizations using or planning to deploy data analytics, BI or statistical analysis software
Data: InformationWeek 2013 Analytics, Business Intelligence and Information Management Survey of 541 business technology professionals, October 2012

What Do You Think?

What's your attitude about SQL analysis on top of Hadoop?
We want fast, standard SQL analysis capabilities on Hadoop ASAP
Hadoop is for unstructured data; SQL is for relational databases
We'll give SQL on Hadoop a try, but relational DBs will remain the mainstay
Given strong SQL support on Hadoop, we'd nix the data warehouse
We're not interested in Hadoop
No opinion



Related Content

From Our Sponsor

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Business leaders often need a visual snapshot of data to quickly grasp and use it. This paper identifies five challenges in presenting data and how visual analytics can resolve them. Solutions are suggested to overcome the challenges of: speed, data clarity, data quality, displaying meaningful results, and dealing with outliers.

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Today's competitive advantage requires a deeper understanding of your business, your market and your customers. As an IT executive, you can drive that knowledge transformation. In this white paper, learn how to make decisions as a strategic business leader and three steps to begin an analytics initiative within your enterprise.

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

High-performance data visualization turns sophisticated analyses into meaningful graphics, leading to faster and smarter decision making. In this white paper, learn how visual analytics can transform big data, with additional features such as real-time functionality, mobile compatibility, robust applications for technical groups and accessibility for nontechnical users.

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Financial performance, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, strategic decision making - every business goal can extract value from big data, and the time for doubt or inaction has long passed. In this Economist Intelligence Unit report, in-depth interviews with data pioneers reveal the link between the effective use of big data and the bottom line among other results.

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Which came first, the data or the decision? This white paper makes the case for having a decision in mind, then tailoring big data's volume, variety and velocity to achieve business results such as overcoming customer dissatisfaction or creating well-informed strategies in real time.

Informationweek Reports

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

The challenge of big data is real, but most organizations don't differentiate 'big data' from traditional data, and nearly 90% of respondents to our survey use conventional databases as the primary means of handling data. We'll help you understand what constitutes big data (it's not just size) and the numerous management challenges it poses.