Hey All, Just wanted to throw in my $0.02 on the subject. As a long time user of AccessGrid with many facilities + a server/bridge etc - when we started transitioning away from AG we had many of the same concerns that have already been discussed.
The solutions we went with are a combination of Vidyo, standard h.323 videconferencing (LifeSize, Cisco) and IOCOM. With the gateway capability of both Vidyo and IOCOM system we can bridge one to the other fairly seamlessly. The point I'd strongly suggest is to ensure that any system you are purchasing/looking into is capable of connecting using standards based protocol - preferably h.323 and/or SIP. By ensuring this capability, it allows us to connect these systems very easily for large calls handling a range of desktop and room based systems. The Vidyo gateway allows connection to h.323, SIP or telephone, is used extensively and works well. The IOCOM <-> h.323 connection is a little less quality; however last I checked they were working on it and I expect that it is improving. This includes sending HD quality video as well as a HD quality content feed. Also, regarding the ability to have multiple live camera feeds within a single room (in addition to the content feed), given the HD resolution and quality of the cameras that come with these systems, we have not often found the need for such a setup. Multicamera may have been important when we were dealing with CIF resolutions, but now with HD, a single camera can comfortably pick up multiple people around a table with quite high clarity. You can still have multiple cameras and switch between them if required, but the value of having multiple HD video feeds live from a single room is a fairly rare use case. For the rooms/setups where this is truly necessary (lecture halls) we run multiple codecs in the room concurrently. Regarding price, it is still a bit of a range. Nothing is free ;-) h.323 systems and back end are still the most expensive but those prices are dropping constantly. The ease of use (especially when you layer in the ability to centrally control/manage and schedule the devices) is really attractive. IOCOM is fairly reasonable and given the past connection to AG, the IOCOM guys are always willing to discuss options. Our most used technology, though, has been Vidyo. Relatively reasonable price given what you get - bang/buck. Especially given range of options (recording, control, management), devices (ios, android), platforms (windows, mac, linux) etc. With CERN selecting Vidyo, it also made the choice a little easier. One complicating factor - the rapidly changing landscape of collaboration technologies, especially cloud based solutions. Many of the decisions we made regarding the collaboration systems/services we would support were made a couple of years ago which was a substantially different place. BlueJeans, Vidtel, Magor are all worth investigating too. I'm willing to share more information regarding our infrastructures/experiences with anyone if you want to discuss more. Sorry for the long email, but I think its a great group and a great discussion point. The more information we share, the better our collaborations in the future. Cheers, Todd On 13-06-05 08:17 AM, John I Quebedeaux Jr wrote: > Greetings again! > > At LSU/Louisiana as part of our NIH grant (going on 11 years now - a > couple of renewals down the road) we're still utilizing the AG but > evaluating SeeVogh and other possibilities for all of the reasons brought > up. > > Our success with AG has been entirely due to my supporting/training each > of our sites so that we have consistency with the experience and quality > (cue all the hard work Jason did with the QA) and having multicast support > across our statewide optical network. > > I'm glad to see this discussion; i'm seeing commonality here and the > mention of SeeVogh repeatedly has strengthened that i might be going down > the right path for an alternative solution that can utilize our existing > hardware. Our testing is going well, except for some older CPU's bogging > down on the video display side due to how much i'm testing, it's going > well. > > -John Q. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services 3. A single system of record for all IT processes http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j _______________________________________________ accessgrid-tech mailing list accessgrid-tech@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/accessgrid-tech
