Premiere Global's CEO Boland Jones describes the early days of PGi and how the company's vision, mission and capabilities have evolved since he founded the company 18 years ago.
"It was 1991. I realized that men and women in the military had a basic problem. It was difficult for them to connect with their loved ones and cell phones really were not affordable to the masses at that point. We created a technology that we believed could keep those people in touch as they were mobile in their daily lives. Whether they in MacDill Air force base in Tampa, or Fort Campbell Kentucky at the 101st division of the Army, I had a way for them to connect to their families easily and inexpensively.
It was a pre-paid calling card that would work from anywhere in the world. It's won a Smithsonian Institute award for invention. You could dial an 800 number into this card and actually leave a voice mail message. People could make calls from this card and so forth and so on.
We had three or four people in the company at the time, we had two developers and then myself and another sales person and that went on to having a show of our associates on every base in the world and so the company grew significantly during that time and then became more of a business service beyond the military service. The military service crossed over to the civilian service and became a part of the mainstream of originally corporate America and people started carrying these cards around. The technology was so enticing to them because they could handle all of the things that they normally would do everyday in an office while they were mobile.
And so, through those transitions, the company has grown to around 3,000 people today."
