VIDEOCONFERENCING: what to consider at implementation

Experts of Mind company note that in the technical plan the main requirements to the VKS systems are scaling and a possibility of reservation. It provides the continuity of video conference in case of failure of any elements of a system. For customers also important that the purchased solution was compatible to the existing IT infrastructure. Besides, often the list of customer requirements includes an opportunity for work on personal computers without installation of the additional software.

"As a rule, the large companies already use products VIDEOCONFERENCING of other producers, - Vladimir Mind comments. - These products are integrated into their IT infrastructure along with a set of other programs. The new solution should be built in the existing system of the software which is sometimes unique and very difficult optimum. Therefore each case on Mind product introduction, one may say, is unique. He turns on a set of different integration works which are not so simple for scaling afterwards on other projects. Thus, the companies of large business require individual approach and to develop one universal solution for different customers is impracticable. With medium business the situation is simpler — we can provide to customers ready-made solutions under their specific needs. Time of sale and installation of a product in architecture of the companies is as a result reduced".

Requirements to communication channels

It is recommended that total bandwidth for all main types of traffic (a voice, video, data) did not exceed 75% of the general capacity of communication channels.^[1]

Base speed of connection for each pair of terminals the band of 768 kbps is considered.

It is necessary for acceptable quality of a video conferencing that the data transmission channel met the following requirements in one direction:

• loss of packets <=1%;
• delay <= 850 мс;
• variation of a delay (jitter) <= 30 мс;
• QoS support.

Experience of communication with customers from the different industries demonstrates that if before implementation of VKS occurred generally in the oil and gas industry and power industry, then today the market changed, the circle of clients extended — both financial companies, and transport, and retail are also interested in similar service. It allows to draw conclusions concerning what moments geographically distributed structures need to consider at a stage of planning of corporate VKS.

What needs to be considered at a planning stage

As a rule, all VKS systems begin as internal and owing to this fact are constructed on IP technology. The reason of creation of VKS on IP is quite simple: at that time, until the network is used for a video conferencing, it with success can service other corporate tasks;

The corporate network is at the disposal of the company constantly, and, as a rule, the cost of its service does not depend on employment degree. Therefore eventually the VKS system begins to service requirements not only the top management of the company: there are regular local and global video conferences in the directions (for example, the financial commissions, stock reports in different warehouses, meetings on shipment of goods). An important role of the VKS system can be played in processes of corporate training — we will tell when the chief accountant trains accountants of branches, the personnel manager trains colleagues at places, the head of service of sales provides trainings with subordinates in the different cities, etc. Thus, initially it is necessary to project the VKS system taking into account these circumstances so that afterwards this technology was available to most divisions of the company.

The general recommendations about the choice of terminal equipment of VKS are like that.

For meeting rooms the VIDEOCONFERENCING group codec with information display system — as a rule will be an optimal solution, these are two LCD panels for demonstration of the speaker and demonstration of the presentation.

Optimal solution for top heads — the VIDEOCONFERENCING group codec + a LCD panel; it is possible to bring the shown presentations to the additional monitor.

For line managers the optimal solution is a monitor with the VIDEOCONFERENCING built-in codec and the built-in camera. As a rule, the same monitor is also the PC monitor.

For the staff of different divisions (finance, the personnel, technical specialists) an optimal solution is the notebook + software of the VIDEOCONFERENCING.

Now there were VKS codecs capable to create a session of VKS with six — eight participants without use of the VIDEOCONFERENCING separate server (MCU). Therefore potential customers have an opportunity at the first stage to create VKS network without big initial capital costs. For example, to bring together participants of a multipoint session of a video conferencing on one of VKS terminals.

One more method lower initial costs — instead of the 'iron' terminal to purchase the software of VKS. The communication quality (as well as the price), of course, will be lower, but a set of services will remain almost same.

The customer needs to remember that any, even the most perfect equipment of VKS will remain just 'iron' if channels are not capable to provide guaranteed quality communication.

All VKS projects begin with the requirement to provide the most productive equipment and the wide bandwidth. Eventually understanding comes that the standard de facto providing acceptable business quality is the band of 768 kbps for work on corporate IP network. The possibility of the organization of several local VKS based on the central MCU allows to improve considerably business processes on several activities of the company at once. The VIDEOCONFERENCING modern servers are capable to create several multipoint communication sessions at the same time. So different divisions of the company can use VKS server resources for multipoint connection and at the same time not interfere with each other.

Example from practice In conclusion we will give a specific example of requirements to VKS for network customer company. This project was performed in several stages:

• design of infrastructure of network;
• installation and setup of trunk and network equipment, testing of communication channels;
• installation and setup of the VKS servers and terminal equipment of VKS in eight branches FGC 'Magistralnye elektricheskiye seti' (MES);
• installation and setup of terminal equipment of VKS at the enterprises of backbone networks (more than forty 40 PMES).

Experience shows that ensuring guaranteed quality of communication becomes the most difficult and important task in projects of such level. As VKS is the synchronous (Real-time) application, it is very sensitive to delays and loss of packets and is exacting to performance management. Considering geographical remoteness of branches, quantity of trunk and network equipment, the problem with a delay of packets and their loss always comes to the forefront. In this case the great value is purchased by setup of the coordinated work of the equipment and the software of a trunk segment and 'the last mile'.

Certainly, to consider all described moments and to provide the high level of hardware VKS, serious financial resources, long-term experience of projects implementation and profound professional knowledge are required. It is quite difficult to reach it by forces of own IT service occasionally and it is not always justified from the economic point of view even for very large corporations. For this reason some of them begin to give support of VKS on outsourcing. About what problems customers and contractors face during implementation of such outsourcing projects, we will tell in our following material.

Notes