Article written by Rob West<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve got Lync, or another Voice over IP and collaboration solution in your organization, you\u2019ve likely also got another video conferencing solution. Or, let\u2019s say that you only have one, but your clients and partners have another one or two or three.<\/p>\n
What happens when you want to bridge these together? How can you get your clients and partners to join you in a videoconference if you have incompatible technologies?<\/p>\n
The traditional way is to spend a lot of money. A. Lot. Of. Money. Bridging solutions for videoconferencing are often in the US$50,000 to $100,000 range. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but expensive either way.<\/p>\n
Hardware bridges, or \u201cMultipoint Control Units\u201d (MCU) are great because they do their job well. But if you are a small or medium sized business, they are a bitter pill to swallow, especially if your videoconferencing use or adoption is less than it could be. Its pretty challenging to understand how, as adoption grows, your MCU capacity will need to grow as well. It\u2019s too easy to buy way too much or way too little capacity and then end up paying for it in wasted ROI.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m working on a project just like this – trying to bridge a Cisco\/Tandberg system to a Microsoft Lync system. The primary use case is providing the ability for Lync users to join Tandberg conferences (and vice versa) and enjoy the same \u201cpeer video status\u201d as their colleagues (i.e. showing up in the \u201cBrady Bunch\u201d format, being able to participate in application and document sharing.)<\/p>\n
Yeah, you probably saw this coming if you read technology blogs at all. Some companies out there are working to help organizations unwilling or unable to commit to a hardware MCU by providing a bridging technology in the cloud.<\/p>\n
The concept is simple: instead of installing a proprietary hardware-based MCU, you create a videoconferencing \u201chub\u201d on the Internets and each participant dials in using there preferred technology. The hardware and software on the back end does the bridging and translation from technology to technology, feeding back the other participants to the requesting participant in their format of choice.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a confusing sentence. One other way of saying it: it just works.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCloud MCU\u201d model works like this:<\/p>\n
This is pretty cool, in concept. What it means is that small or medium sized businesses can select a cheap, easy-to-deploy videoconferencing system and be assured that if they choose the right Cloud MCU, they can bridge with their partners, vendors, clients and colleagues no matter what technology they use (within reason.)<\/p>\n
The best thing about this concept is that it follows the principle of \u201cembrace and extend\u201d and allows for more productive flow<\/em>. The less a user has to stop and think about how to join a videoconference or invite someone they don\u2019t work with, the greater the chance for adoption.<\/p>\n In addition, increased adoption leads to other benefits: greater trust in and facility with video underwrites corporate calls for reduction of travel. Users will travel less if they can get what they need out of video meetings, and they can get it quickly and easily.<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to try this, there are more than a few options. But – here\u2019s an easy one: I invite you to sign up for BlueJeans.com<\/a>. Yeah – I don\u2019t know what the name has to do with the technology. I also don\u2019t know why the company\u2019s logo bears a suspicious resemblance to JetBlue\u2019s. Perhaps its the fact they used the same font\u2026<\/p>\n Oh, and BTW, I\u2019m in no way affiliated with BlueJeans. Probably never will be now that I\u2019ve called them out on their font\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n BlueJeans has a 14-day trial – more than enough time to give it a whirl, especially since you don\u2019t need to hire an engineer to do any fancy integration work. If it turns out the workflow it imposes works for you and your users, they have quite an attractive tiered monthly pricing model.<\/p>\nTry it?<\/h2>\n