Last week's APAN29 conference was astoundingly well attended and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the delegates but most importantly the speakers that took the time out to present at the Video Workshop held on Thursday.
The contributions to the program were fantastic and feedback from attendees so far has been that we got the format right and covered a good spectrum of topics of interest to the sector both nationally and internationally.
A number of external parties requested that we stream or otherwise video conference the event but with the exception of our featured keynote speaker, there were simply too many events in the main APAN conference program that required video conference support happening at the same time. I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank Darren French who worked tirelessly, especially on the Thursday of APAN, to ensure that all remote video sessions were supported during this hectic schedule.
The day started with an update from Roy Meuronen, Ben Loveridge and Mark Foster on the Streaming Media Project Group as well as a great last minute live demo from Ben of a University of Melbourne live stream from their specially constructed studio as well as a demo of the UStream application on the iPhone which was well received and gave some good insights into the direction of live video distribution.
Arno Besse presented on the Desktop Video Project Group and detailed some of the findings of the group that were presented to the SPUSC Conference last November, with particular regard given to the video and audio hardware recommendations as part of the group's interim update.
For those that weren't able to attend in person, I have been provided the following copies of the presentations from the speakers that have given permission for their work to be republished.
Kathy Reid (Deakin)Kathy's talk was a refocussed examination from the update given at last May's AARNet/Monash Video event. The presentation details that you don't have merely 100 endpoints, you have a videoconferencing 'fleet' and that a well defined videoconferencing roadmap and management metrics are sorely needed to achieve any kind of consistent outcomes in service provision.
Garvan Long (IPFocus)Garvan presented an update on the real world trials and tribulations of Implementing and Supporting video in Education. The presentation was a great overview on the common classes of faults in service provision and he locked down the classes of faults seen to four distinct groups - configuration, hardware, software and PEBRAC (you'll need to open the presentation to find out more).
Simon Horne (H323.net)Simon's update covered the future directions of H323 with a technical understanding of some of the recent improvements and additions to the protocol with special regard to NAT determination (H.323.23) and point to point media (H.323.24). The focus of the talk was on some of the enhancements that have already been adopted into the protocol stack or were on their way to enhance the end to end user experience along with the use of FOSS tools such as GNUgk.
Jason Woolridge (Evidence Technology)Jason from Evidence Technology (one of the Australian suppliers of Vidyo) gave a presentation on the use of scalable media as part of the H.264 SVC implementations that are employed in this product, and how desktop video conferencing is becoming more and more prevalent over lower quality networks due to the advancements in the field.
On the
11th of February, in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Advanced
Networkers (APAN) conference, we have been very lucky to secure a day
long Video Workshop which is entitled ‘Leading Video Conference
adoption in the Education and Research sector’.
APAN brings together a myriad of networking experts from across Asia,
The Americas and Europe with a diverse group of talented speakers
presenting locally on topics relevant to National Research and
Education video conference service providers.
Featured speakers at this event will include:
-
Lynnette Whitfield (Polycom)
-
Garvan Long (IPFocus)
-
Simon Horne (H323.net)
-
Kathy Reid (Deakin)
-
Jason Woolridge (Evidence Technology)
Topics will range from streaming media with updates from the
in-progress AARNet Streaming Media project group, video conferencing
desktop developments including the provision of VC services to
disparate networks beyond the NREN boundaries, the ad-hoc vs centrally
booked/scheduled developments in MCU capacity and centralised video
transcoding services and will also include a panel session on the
future of collaboration services and the role of the NREN in the next
3-5 years.
Please register now for the APAN event (8-11 Feb 2010) which will be
held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney. The cost of the week long
registration including all social events and dinners is $555. The main APAN registration website and full conference registration site is located at:
http://apan.net/meetings/Sydney2010/
Limited day registrations at $195 may also still be available. Please contact
Joan.Hummer@aarnet.edu.au for further information.
A "Video Anywhere" event took place at Deakin University's Management Centre at Waurn Pounds today. Approximately 40 representatives mainly from Victoria, plus from Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand attended the event. The event was hosted by Deakin University and sponsored by iVision, Tandberg and AARNet.
Mr Peter Brusco (ITS Director, Deakin University) welcomed attendees, he set the scene for the day with an introduction to Deakin University where he described the increasing use of video conferencing and digital signage across the university.
Mr Alan McMeeken (CIO, Monash University) set out efforts to achieve a virtual organisation where media richness builds on trust. Monash university use video conferencing extensively on a national/international level, this works because in most cases in person relationships have been formed beforehand. Alan believed the days of a standard operating environments are over, diversity is key with the passive and deliberate integration of video technologies as key to extending reach. Monash has a strategy based on the establishment of a robust suite of collaboration tools, a centralised support service, engagement with external service providers such as cloud computing, ARCS etc, and the need for appropriate training, support and reference services to discover tools and services. Alan believed that investments in video conferencing were delivering travel time and cost savings and fewer greenhouse gases.
Ms Audrey William (Research Director, ICT Practice) from Frost & Sullivan spoke about key trends in the Australian Unified Communications market. Audrey explained how the global financial crisis had impacted on unified communications spending, many companies expected more from less. With recent video conferencing vendor mergers and acquisitions the net result was increased complexity for the customer. Audrey believed services integration with unified communications technologies was critical for effective collaboration service returns to be achieved. Instant Messaging was driving unified communications uptake, whilst mobile solutions for the enterprise were growing significantly and also adding to complexity. Audrey pointed to the importance and value of systems integrators to help customers achieve their collaboration and communication service outcomes.
Audrey Williams - Frost-Sullivan (PDF)
Mr Shervin Fathinia (Solutions Architect, iVision) presented on issues related to communicate anywhere with his thoughts on what needed to be resolved to make that happen. Shervin started with audio conferencing, where in-dial invites worked easily as the phone "just works" similar to email and SMS. That approach does not always apply with video conferencing. The use of presence and desktop video were key enablers but they need to be applied across the board for effective collaboration. Achieving that can be difficult because researchers have different functional needs and multiple applications are readily available, managing them all adds more work to the end user. Shervin mentioned developments with Cisco IME that claims to extend Unified Communications functionality beyond the enterprise to Business-to-Business situations.
Shervin would like to see the establishment of a reverse eENUM service for URI based dialling or SIP+DNS solution as an alternative to the E.164 dial plan. More needs to be done to enable click to call within address books, the future may include voice activation to contact someone, the future connection options will be very different. Shervin expects an increased use of streaming/video on demand apps, video portals to support teaching and learning, and a move from technology silos. He concluded by saying that more needs to be done to achieve SIP/H.323 seamlessly.
Mr Jeff Wang (Unified Communications Solutions Specialist) from Tandberg spoke about the Tandberg Mgt System 12.5 advanced reporting features and the newly released Movi 3.0 desktop video solution. Jeff's talk centred on "a Management and Desktop Video Solution to Achieve the Vision of Video Anywhere". TMS 12.5 had reporting enhancements to support large video deployment support for E20 (video telephone) and a new hierarchical structure to aid large scale deployments in 000's endpoints. New reports also made it easier to calculate port utilisation and spare capacity to aid in MCU capacity planning.
Jeff then covered Movi 3.0 + vcs + expressway + TMS as a combination back end for desktop video. Movi 3 uses a new graphical user interface, with support to a H.263/H.264 and compression for efficient HD JPEG decoding for 3 times faster HD video. Jeff demonstrated the PrecisionHD camera using MJPEG for high speed still shots over USB2.0, showing how the use of an "intelligent network" based on local gateway MAC address to sense bandwidth to transmit/receive enabled great results over a 3G wireless network connection.
Jeff-Wang - Tandberg Management System 12.5 (PDF)
Simon-Mills - TMS-Deakin University (PDF)
James Sankar (Director, Applications and Services), AARNet, spoke about the significant increase in use of the AARNet conferencing service and encouraged the community to undertake quality assurance tests either to proactively address any inst A to inst B issues or to use the service to sign off on a new installation. A new monthly QA automated test scheme has started to provide details of any access to endpoint issues via email (on an exception basis), the frequency may become daily in the near future.
James briefly mentioned the 2010 focus on extending enterprise based unified communications features across AARNet via Cisco, Microsoft OCS, Avaya IMS, OpenSER, and possibly Session Border Controllers. The work will require recruiting a senior engineer and issues such as dial plans, directory services and Skype integration are important aspects. James also provided an early insight into iSee a virtual world platform for desktop video that would add a further dimension to video conferencing, this is currently in Alpha test phase and is being developed by Smart Services CRC.
James Sankar - AARNet-NVCS-Update (PDF)
Jamie Nicol (Deakin University) spoke on Digital Signage that has been developed using Cisco digital media solutions (latest generation is 4400G) that acts as a set top box and can be managed remotely. LCDs were chosen as static images would burn on plasmas. The screen are able to pick up EthernetDVB multicast TV streams. 36 units have been installed across 4 campuses. It was important to note that ownership, content control and standards are very important. Jamie shows some future uses of digital signage that can support interactive features via mobile phones acting as keypads on YouTube (See Gesturetek clips 1 and 2).
Jamie-Nicol - Digital-Signage-Deakin University (PDF)
Brett Adams (Deakin University) shared experiences in the use of a resource mgt system to remote manage audio visual equipment based on virtual servers which are now as standard for new installations delivered via iVision.
Brett-Adams - RMS_Deakin University (PDF)
James Sankar (AARNet) concluded the day by thanking the speakers, the hosts and sponsors, the key points from the day were as follows
1. Growth in technology options, recession is driving a "more from less" attitude, mergers and acquisitions (Cisco+Tandberg, Logitech+LifeSize, Polycom?) are adding complexity for the customer, add to that more applications including integration to the virtual world!
2. There are an increasing number of applications and services to
support, administer and manage versus a huge proliferation of
non-supported products online and users that want to use whatever they
want.
3. Unified communications aims are to offer a more usable interoperable enterprise solution for VoIP, IM, Presence, personal and room based video conferencing, integrating with services is important, system integrator expertise is recommended.
4. A key challenge is how to connect organisation A to organisation B? This requires support at both organisations, AARNet plays a coordinator role here too, currently its based on E.164 dial plans, we need to move to more intuitive options based on names such as reverse ENUM, DNS+SIP, issues related to Directory Services and privacy, authenticity still prevail.
5. Future product offering most ensure there is support for IPv6, this is critical for the Asia-Pacific region in particular.
6. Measuring Greenhouse Gas savings is still a bit of an art, models and tools are emerging and being developed but these need to be less intrusive of the end user. A manual audit approach of conferences booked on the MCU was suggested as an interim solution. The key is determining whether a meeting would have required travel if video was not available. That is the more difficult question to answer.
7. We will see even greater commoditisation in the "cloud" or access to external services such as NVCS, ARCS, uptake depends on the credibility of the service and the priorities within each organisation when it comes to allocating resources for service delivery (in-house vs external).
8. There remains a desire to integrate Skype, the Skype architecture though proprietary is based on VoIP and even with a Gateway is not scalable, AARNet has applied to be part of SIP for Skype trials that would help bring Skype into the Unified Communications World via a standards based approach.
9. Technologies, applications and services need to be integrated for a suitable ROI to be attain based ideally on a set of strategic goals and benchmarks, suitable organisation structure (with ownerships, responsibilities) and support from experts (vendors, system integrators) to achieve video anywhere credible services.
10. The Association of Education Technology Mgr's (A/V community) will meet at UniMelb/Monash in 2010, this could be an opportunity for a future video event, that would leave one other event to host earlier in the year in Victoria (April/May), hosts are welcomed to contact James at AARNet.
Photos available from the day at http://picasaweb.google.com/aarnet.pics/VideoAnywhereDeakinUniversity#
Links to photos, videos and presentations from the first event at Monash University can be found at
The Applications and Services team held a second training workshop at Queensland University of Technology. Over 50 attendees came from UNE, UNISA, SCU, CSIRO,
USQ, SCQ, UoA, UWS, QUT, VU, QU, QLD Health, DET QLD, St Aidan’s Anglican
School, QUESTACON and our sponsors Polycom, Cisco, Sony, LifeSize, Electroboard
and IPFocus.
Microsoft
OCS Workshop:
Sandra
Lee-Joe
from Microsoft gave a structured talk highlighting Microsoft’s current OCS platform
and shared the OCS roadmap for 2010 including the R2 release of Microsoft OCS. Garvin Long from IP Focus shared his
experiences with OCS and how the participants could get the most from their Video
Conferencing installations. Vanessa
Sulikowski from Cisco highlighted how Cisco products integrate with
Microsoft OCS.
Jouni Stroja and Mr Craig Windell from QUT highlighted the
importance of planning, staff training and effective communications being
important considerations to avoid OCS being viewed as more than a telephone
replacement exercise but as a suite of applications to empower users to work in
new and more productive and collaborative ways. Craig and Jouni took the attendees on a tour of their trials
with different OCS and Alcatel PABX integration options and concluded with
details about a new SIP based approach.
Room acoustics workshop:
Peter Patrick from
Scientific Acoustics presented a slightly modified version of his seminar on
room acoustics presented at the Wollongong event. The audience was largely made
up of technical support personnel though there were both educators and course
design experts who were interested in more of the impact that a badly designed
sound schema would have on education than quantifying the physical attributes
of a space directly.
Peter explained how audio factors
impact on a dynamic teaching space by citing various case studies where similar
issues have occurred. Many of the attendees were glad that more ‘mythical’
aspects of audio collection and dispersion has been explained.
Polycom Workshop:
James Brennan and Lynnette Whitfield
from Polycom led the session. James covered the entire Polycom product range highlighting
Polycom’s OCS functionality. James
focused on Polycom’s desktop video solution and management solutions. He also provided details of the Polycom
roadmap for 2010.
The
new RMX4000 MCU and the RSS4000 recording streaming server (that is designed to
operate together to create a seamless MCU and recording solution) was announced
for the first time.
Video as a mission critical application:
Garvan Long from
IPFocus covered elements needed for a video service to be considered able to
achieve true high availability up time, this was a highly interactive session.
From endpoints to infrastructure
Garvan highlighted the need for control plane redundancy across management
systems, gatekeepers and bridging/gateway hardware. Power and data network
redundancy focus should be about ‘getting the plumbing right’ for positive user
experiences with video system deployments to be achieved.
All things Audio Visual:
A mixed session of talks from various parties:
-
Robyn
Smyth and Deb Vale of UNE presented on the pedagogical impacts of video
from the ALTC Rich Media Technologies project, in which participants
worked together in small groups to whiteboard concepts and ideas on
furthering implementations of video within teaching and learning spaces
- Derek
Powell from the University of
Queensland and The Association of Educational Technology Managers spoke about the Audio Visual perspective for
video conferencing and teaching spaces and how Video over IP advancements
are bringing ICT and AV expertise together to achieve meaningful results.
- Vanessa
Sulikowski of Cisco shared
details of the AARNet and National LambdaRail inter-domain Telepresence demonstration
at Questnet 2009, where a Cisco TP1000 and Cisco TP500 system were
demonstrated with standard definition based connectivity to conventional
endpoints as well as high definition connectivity to USA NLR connected
TelePresence suites across four institutions.
- Jouni
Stroja of QUT outlined the efforts made
to date by the Desktop Video Project Group and the likely outcomes of recent
application tests.
- Jason
Bordujenko presented on SIP
entitled ‘Bringing it all together’ looking at what concepts of SIP as a
standard have been moving well and which parts have stagnated as well as
addressing the key goals of interoperability and what it means to end
users.
- Nathan
Gardiner from New Zealand’s Advanced Video
Collaboration Centre (equivalent body to Australian NVCS) took a look at
the inception of the service through the REANNZ KAREN network and how
their efforts to host a bridging and booking platform have been
progressing and what core competencies are being worked on to bring
support to educational and research bodies embarking on video deployments
in NZ.
Polycom
Keynote talk:
Marci Powell, Global Director for Higher Education and Corporate
Training at Polycom and Chairman of the Board for the United States Distance
Learning Association shared her extensive experience in distance learning and
e-learning in applications related to life long learning and innovations. Marci
joined live via video from Texas, USA.
Photos from the day: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/aarnet.pics/QUTWorkshop14October#
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