OBLONG BRINGS THE CONCEPTS OF CONTENT AND COLLABORATION BACK TO REMOTE WORKFORCE PLATFORMS

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

Oblong OBLG President and CEO Peter Holst was a featured speaker at the Benzinga Small Cap conference May 13, 2021.

The global pandemic has forced 500 million workers to remote workstations and platforms such as Zoom XTNO to get their work accomplished remotely. But Los Angeles-based technology company Oblong OBLG believes that content is the next frontier and is best positioned to drive that to a new level of collaboration.

Oblong, a company of 50 designers, programmers and hardware engineers, has formed a key development and distribution partnership with Cisco CSCO that enables applications to be developed across multiple screens and devices to send its current hardware-based solution to the cloud.

"We're in the business of user engagement. We've all been Zoomified and Microsofted to death. Our platform allows people to participate as a group instead of just one person, giving them the opportunity to collaborate and make decisions faster," said Oblong President and CEO Peter Holst. "Content is the new disruptor. Our platform and the way we're distributing content and engaging people is the next frontier of how collaboration is going to work."

Oblong was founded in 2006 to deliver a better human-computer interface. Its flagship product, called Mezzanine, brings data sets, workspaces and communication channels to life across multiple screens in multiple locations. The platform allows interaction from different types of input devices simultaneously, including touch screens, phones and tablets, and frees users from sitting in one place, tied to one device.

Mezzanine is a scalable collaboration system with three specific principles, including quicker decision-making, more team engagement and the ability to meet from anywhere.

The company has an established customer base of many Fortune 500 companies and currently has 26 million shares outstanding and a $100 million market cap. Oblong reported revenue of $15 million in 2020.

"We've invested $100 million in technology focused on engagement. We're the only provider delivering a collaboration experience using multiple streams of content and connecting simultaneous locations," Holst said.
"Our technology expands the existing addressable market. We believe there are 500 million participants right now in the virtual meeting space, and there are 200 thousand conference rooms out there. That's a big addressable market for Oblong moving forward."

In his presentation to the Benzinga Small Cap audience, Holst pointed to some of Oblong's investment highlights, including:

A $1 billion to $2 billion addressable market and 2 times the user-base expansion because of the pandemic

Key Tier-1 distribution partnerships

A global distribution agreement with Cisco WebEx

10 times growth from anticipated Mezzanine cloud revenue in the next 3 to 4 years, driving gross margins

"The mission now is to use all that intellectual property and really monetize it. What we're doing now is using all that institutional knowledge and putting it in a wrapper in a cloud environment where people can consume it day-to-day," Holst said. "We're not here to replace the platforms being used right now but to dramatically enhance them. We're making the word collaboration become what its true intent was: Let's talk."

Learn more about Oblong at www.oblong.com.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.