Oblong Industries' Futuristic Collaboration Tech Moving to Mainstream; Revenue and Staff Both Grow 50+% Year-Over-Year

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 6, 2016) - Oblong Industries, the developer of spatial, immersive, and gesture-enabled technologies for the new era of collaborative work, today announced 50+% growth in revenue year-over-year in each of the last three years, and 50+% growth in worldwide headcount more recently.

The company, founded by MIT Media Lab researcher and award-winning computer scientist John Underkoffler, was also recently named a "Cool Vendor" in Gartner's 2016 report on Human-Machine Interface, further validating its unrivaled work in creating the next generation of computer interfaces and collaborative work environments. That work, along with Underkoffler's vision, can be seen in this two-minute video.

Driven by the need for a more advanced way to collaborate across teams and offices, companies like Accenture, Boeing, NTT, NASA Aeronautics, Sarah Cannon, and IBM now use Oblong's technology -- either as a custom solution or by way of its flagship product, Mezzanine™ -- to deliver Infopresence. The technology allows their teams to visualize data and link international teams, global assets, and content in a compellingly more visual, engaging, and collaborative way. Infopresence literally surrounds teams in information, creating a truly immersive workspace with a fluid user interface for better, more informed time-critical decisions.

Paul Rein, Chief Financial Officer at Sarah Cannon, the global cancer institute of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) said, "At Sarah Cannon, we are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to bring staff, physicians and other clinical leaders from across our markets together to share expertise in the fight against cancer. The Mezzanine technology provides a platform for collaboration with our partners around the world by enhancing communication and content sharing in real-time. On behalf of the patients we serve, we are excited about the prospect of leveraging this technology to bring the best minds in cancer care together throughout the Sarah Cannon network."

Explosive Growth

In addition to its 50+% revenue growth, Oblong's lead generation grew by 150% year-over-year and its pipeline by 50%.

"We've really just scratched the surface of how broadly this technology will be adopted -- though we're moving toward critical mass," Underkoffler said. "The way we interact with computers hasn't changed for 30 years. Now it's time for the world to step across the threshold of an entirely different way of working. We believe the concept of Infopresence is the core of this 'future of the work'. It's here today and deployed in some the world's largest companies -- but we're also adding to those cutting-edge implementations with strong interest and adoption further down the enterprise scale spectrum."

Oblong also grew its headcount by 50% to accommodate the growing demand, including the strategic senior hires of

• Vice President of Marketing - Lilian Bories, an experienced marketing leader with previous roles at Nestle and Avery Dennison
• Vice President of Hardware Engineering - Ed Suski, an electrical engineer and former chief technology officer for divisions of GE and United Technologies
• Head of Federal Sales - Mike Friedel, a federal sales and management expert, specializing in complex enterprise-wide solution sales formerly with Akamai and ATG
• Head of EMEA Channel Partners - Steve Pryor, an AV industry veteran hailing from Cisco
  
  

Oblong also opened offices in Atlanta and Los Altos over the past year, in addition to opening locations in Chicago, Houston, and London in 2014.

Award-Winning Tech and Team

CEO Underkoffler, who brought gesture-based technology to life in "Minority Report" and the "Iron Man" series, was also named the winner of the prestigious 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Interaction Design in association with the Smithsonian Design Museum. First launched at the White House in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the annual awards program celebrates design as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of the impact of design through education initiatives.

Oblong was designated a "Cool Vendor" in the 2016 Gartner Report on Human-Machine Interface. This research evaluates interesting, new, and innovative vendors, products, and services.

Leading AV industry journal Commercial Integrator just awarded Mezzanine by Oblong Industries with 2016 BEST Award for Collaboration at the InfoComm 2016 conference in June.

About Oblong Industries
Oblong Industries' innovative technologies change the way people work, create, and communicate. With roots in more than two decades of research at the MIT Media Lab, Oblong's flagship product Mezzanine™ is an immersive visual collaboration solution that defines the next era of computing: multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device, multi-location. Mezzanine's groundbreaking Infopresence capabilities multiply the effectiveness of distributed organizations and catalyze new, more effective, more collaborative workflows. Oblong is headquartered in Los Angeles and supplies Mezzanine systems to Fortune 500 enterprise customers and reseller partners including IBM, Accenture, and Dentsu Aegis Network. Learn more at www.oblong.com, and connect via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.