Video Collaboration opportunities The offer for South African Universities

Introductions On secondment from Jisc – the UK NREN organisation Working at TENET as an NREN Exchange Fellow till December 2016 This presentation will describe the SA NREN Videoconferencing and Web–conferencing services and how they can support the work of higher education and research in South Africa

What’s on offer? Two services for different needs – Videoconferencing (Vidyo) – Web conferencing (Mconf)

Why provide collaboration shared services for South Africa? Video collaboration has come of age – New software based architectures for video and audio routing and encode/decode – The Scalable Video Codec (SVC) and WebRTC – Desktop and mobile computing power and ubiquitous webcams – Flexible cloud like provisioning options – Integration options for existing H.323/SIP estate Open source robust alternative to proprietary web-conferencing platforms Robust network Cost

Problems with old school conferencing ‘Standards based’ conferencing – Expensive – It needs proprietary room CODECs and back end MCUs – Licensing and support costs – Inflexible – Generally lacks cost effective clients for desktop/laptop/mobile use – Generally stuck in expensively equipped boardrooms It does not scale well for big meetings – Big meetings mean many MCU ports = more expense – Big tranches of web conferencing licences don’t come cheap It is hard to share capacity among different organisations and users The quality is not that good – Tends to take quality down to lowest common denominator Latency

Instead of… Jisc Study -

Connecting to Mombassa Link up between academic in Cape Town, Heads of Institutions in Kenya and the University of Nairobi

TENET’s Chosen Service Standardised on Vidyo Capacity sufficient to support all of South African Higher Education and Research institutions Support for integrating existing H.323/SIP endpoints Freely available desktop, web and mobile client endpoint software – Native WebRTC using SVC support next year Free at the point of use Integration with institutional Directory Systems Skype for Business integration available

Vidyo characteristics Wholly software based – Infrastructure and clients (rooms and personal devices) run on off-the- shelf hardware – Use off-the-shelf peripherals (cameras, audio devices) High quality – up to 4K and 60fps on suitable hardware Uses SVC and intelligent routing to adapt well to fluctuating network conditions End points do the encode/decode/composition Support via transcoding Gateway for H.323/SIP endpoints Replay, Recording and Streaming Cross platform client OS support – Windows, MacOS and Linux – iOS and Android High quality content sharing Supports distributed infrastructure deployment

End points - Rooms Use existing H.323/SIP endpoints via VidyoGateway Use Vidyo badged rooms – Range of form factors and capabilities to suit a range of scenarios – Use off-the-shelf peripherals – Mobile trolley set up available Use VidyoRoom SE – all the capabilities but you provide the hardware (i5 or i7) – Receive up to Ultra HD 4K video (3840x2160), transmit up to 1080p60 – Transmit high frame rate Audio / Video content up to 1080p30 – Content sharing up to 4K content encode and decode Connect to H.323/SIP endpoints via VidyoGateway Connect voice (SIP) only via VidyoGateway 20 

Vidyo Endpoints Desktop and Laptop – Clients for MacOS, Windows (XP – 10) and Linux – Up to 1080p30 encode and UHD 4K (3840x2160) Decode on suitable hardware (i7) – Show up to 8 participants and content on separate screen – Automatic Echo Suppression Invite unlimited guests to meetings Calendar integration (Outlook and Googl ) Mobile – Android and iOS Web (for guests) – Small one-time plugin download currently – Native SVC based WebRTC coming soon

End points – Mobile and web Mobile – Android & iOS – Encodes up to 540p30 decodes at up to 720p. – Display up to 4 participants Web – Encode up to 720p30 – Decode up to 2880 x 1800 up to 60 fps – Guests download a small plugin and join through browser (Native WebRCT support coming soon) 22

Use cases foruniversities Teaching and learning Collaboration with external partners – In South Africa, more widely in Africa & rest of the world Internal collaboration for teams in dispersed locations Admin meetings between different locations Management and steering group meetings Outreach and dissemination Mentoring and professional development Vivas HR applications – interviews

Benefits for Universities Cloud like shared service – One pool of licenses shared across multiple users and countries – Resilience – Extensibility Start small, grow the infrastructure as needed Not “rip & replace” – existing H.323 estate can continue to participate Reduced costs from elimination of expensive MCUs and associated support costs Performance! Robust enterprise quality platform (Vidyo) – Good support from distributors in country and from Vidyo Open source – community for Mconf – under active development by Brazilians

Mconf Web conferencing platform based on Big Blue Button Open Source Collaborative development between SANREN with RNP (Brazilian NREN) Will be managed by TENET going forward

27 Technical Implementation of Mconf 5 servers in South Africa: Brazil Global network SA 3 x Mconf-Live (back-end : distributed in Cape Town and Pretoria, adding to existing Global Mconf infrastructure) 1x Mconf-Web (front-end web portal) 1x Recording Server

Success stories Usage this year (to ): 839 users across 126 meetings Average meetings size: 6 participants Largest meeting: 33 participants Growing number of logins through Main clients: H3Africa and H3BioNet: 32 Bioinformatics research groups distributed throughout 15 African countries and 2 American partner institutions - Monthly seminars and weekly meetings (UCT involvement) Rhodes University: Post graduate meetings between supervisors and students, Class for Creatives and Dramatic Writing students CSIR: Coastal Systems Advance Mathematical Modelling (CSAMM) workgroup, Emerging Knowledge for Local Adaptation Project (EKLA) SANBI: South African National Bioinformatics Institute – Combat TB project Adhoc project meetings

Next steps Both services free at the point of use for SA NREN beneficiary organisations Mconf authenticates with SAFIRE, so is another good reason for joining Individual ‘Tenant’ areas for supported organisations on Vidyo Training – Eastern Cape 26 th April (Rhodes) – Western Cape – May (TBC) – Gauteng June Weekly test session for Vidyo – Thursdays at 11:00 Consultancy and advice on rooms and integration options

Contacts Rob Bristow