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