HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway

Media Network Services (MNS) is one of the first tenants at Innovation House and MNS’ CEO Hans Fredrik Johansen joined the opening via Telepresence from Oslo, Norway, to give a speech about Interactive Communication in HD and the future of Telepresence. The global Telepresence network service was of course provided by MNS.

Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske was also present at the opening of Innovation House.

Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske

Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske

All photos: Håvard Kallestad

While most companies have experienced a positive ROI on their video conferencing investment, the best is yet to come as most businesses have not started to use video conferencing for B2B.

A small but rapidly growing number of organizations have opened up their infrastructure for B2B video conferencing with external organizations and gain the additional ROI of more frequent face-to-face meetings (via video conference) across functions such as:

• Sales (initial sales meetings, renewals, account updates)
• Marketing (product launches, road shows, press conferences)
• Support (call centers, case resolution)
• Purchasing (RFP/RFI Q&A meetings, meetings with vendors)
• R&D (meetings with partners, suppliers, manufacturers)
• M&As (Confidential board room discussions)

To facilitate B2B video conferencing, a number of components have to be addressed from an infrastructure perspective, including:

• Firewalls
• DNS setup for incoming calls
• Public signaling and call-control infrastructure
• B2B address book
• Internet network quality

Download the technical white paper Enabling an Enterprise for B2B Video Conferencing to gain best practice insight on how to enable an organization’s infrastructure to support B2B video conferencing.

Read the announcement: Touchline Video to become distributor of MNS’ Global Video Conferencing Network

Three factors have surfaced as important when advising clients on network strategies for HD video conferencing:

• Calling pattern
  Where do they call? Internal and/or external? Local, regional, and/or global? B2B and/or B2C? A-to-B and/or A-to-arbitrary-destinations?
• Expected growth
  Where do they expect to grow? Increased utilization of endpoints due to new calling patterns? Deployment of new endpoints and software clients?
• Available QoS bandwidth
  What QoS bandwidth is made available on their LAN/WAN? Can changed calling patterns and expected growth be accommodated? Are remote satellite offices supported by a QoS network?

The CIO Guide to Video Conferencing Network covers all the various network alternatives available and is recommended reading for both service providers and IT staff responsible for clients’ network operations.

MNS’ Global Video Conferencing Network is often recommended as a supplement to clients’ existing LAN/WAN, specifically when clients want to call:

• Remote offices with limited QoS bandwidth on their LAN/WAN
• B2B and B2C (“We want to call vendors, partners and customers”)
• Arbitrary destinations (“We don’t know who we will call tomorrow”)

Or simply to offload their existing LAN/WAN as their video conferencing utilization increase.

Visit www.medianetworkservices.com to learn more about MNS.

Engage prospects’ remote locations in a HD call in the first sales meeting
Call arbitrary destinations (the more remote the better, e.g. London to Singapore or Hong Kong) in HD quality over MNS’ Global Video Conferencing Network.

Provide prospects with a trial without worrying about the network
Email software clients (e.g. MOVI) or ship trial equipment to the prospects, once connected to the Internet, prospects can enjoy HD quality to arbitrary destinations.

Reduce deployment time
As MNS’ Global Video Conferencing Network only requires an endpoint to be connected to Internet over a normal business internet connection, resellers can get clients connected and up & running within hours.

When talking to resellers of MNS’ Global Video Conferencing Network, these areas separate and together speed up the sales cycle and enable resellers to increase the value of initial orders. Furthermore, enabling clients to place HD video calls to arbitrary destination (internal, external and B2B) speeds up video conferencing utilization and adoption, paving the way for additional products and services, increasing client revenue.

Visit Media Network Services to learn more about the Global Video Conferencing Network. We also recommend reading the CIO Guide to Video Conferencing Network.

The same principle applies for most of us in the business world. We don’t want to be deserted on an island that puts limits on the way we conduct business, interact and cooperate with other organizations.

Companies implementing video conferencing often experience low utilization and adaption rates. In our view, this is due to two types of islands (keeping issues related to system interoperability aside):

The company island

For most companies, the initial roll-out of video conferencing has an internal scope with the ROI mainly being related to travel reduction related to internal meetings. Endpoints are installed in different meeting rooms and offices and software clients may be deployed to some or all employees. Due to the nature of such implementations with an internal scope, companies choose to utilize (or upgrade) their existing LAN and WAN. The island works perfect for internal calls but for external and B2B video calls (locally and globally) they often face challenges related to the lack of DNS set up for URI dialing or firewall settings.

The network island

Some organizations have connected the company island to a third-party network island enabling video conferencing between multiple company islands (assuming they subscribe to the same network island). The network island solution is perfect when having a predetermined calling pattern but does not accommodate calling to arbitrary destinations as each arbitrary endpoint requires a dedicated link to one of the network island’s Points of Presence (POP), which typically takes 45-60 days to set up.

The ocean connecting all islands

In the spirit of our island analogy, Media Network Services (MNS) represents the ocean connecting all islands. MNS operates a Global Network Service dedicated and optimized for HD video conferencing between arbitrary destinations, making it a great supplement to existing closed networks when wanting to call global and B2B.

The uniqueness of MNS is its fully meshed and redundant carrier grade network with 50+ PoPs around the world combined with MNS operating as an ISP in all regions, peering with all other local ISPs. The advantage is that a company island can get an immediate global footprint for internal, external and B2B HD video conferencing, simply by using its local ISP as last mile.  It is sufficient that only one participating endpoint is subscribing to MNS. If connected to MNS, an endpoint on the company island can call to any other endpoint connected to the internet with a HD quality previously only experienced on closed high capacity networks.

To learn more about the various network alternatives for video conferencing, we recommend reading the CIO Guide to Video Conferencing Network.

When the network starts getting congested at peak hours, typical measure taken by the network operator is to “throw more bandwidth” in the network, alleviating the problem.  This is however a temporary measure. The application traffic levels are ever-increasing, and will fill the available network eventually.

The root cause of the problem is that the Internet services are governed by economy as much as the technology, and that the video conferencing is the most quality-sensitive application on the Internet. A network that is functioning very well for almost all applications may be perceived as insufficient for interactive HD video.  Keeping the network at the level that is satisfying even for HD interactive video application is not a good economy for a typical Internet service provider.

Download the The CIO Guide to Video Conferencing Network to learn more about the various network options available for video conferencing.

Any destination, any organization

Trend 1: I want to reach any destination
As a result of increased globalization, video conferencing users expect to reach any destination around the world with the same quality experience they have when calling company internal, locally or regionally.

Trend 2: I want to call any organization
With the growth of unified communications within organizations, people expect it to take place between organizations as well. Video conferencing users want to be able to call internally, externally and B2B with HD quality.

Increased quality and frequency

Trend 3: I want to experience HD quality
As HD becomes the norm in everyday life, people expect the same experience in the corporate world. Meeting rooms and desktop users will increasingly be set up with HD quality video conferencing equipments and systems.

Trend 4: I want to call more
The more video conferencing become part of the “new way of working”, both for scheduled meetings and ad-hoc interactions and collaboration, the more people would want to use it as an alternative to picking up the telephone or writing an email.

The network challenge

These four trends, individually and together, represent enormous challenges when assessing and planning for future network demand. On one side, you do want to accommodate for these trends, on the other wide you do not want to over-dimension network capacity and reach from a cost perspective. Ideally you are looking for a network strategy that provides flexibility and scalability based on demand, today and tomorrow.

Media Network Services (MNS) operates a Global Video Conferencing Network that combines the reach of internet with a carrier grade network enabling video conferencing users to call arbitrary locations with a quality formerly only experienced on closed dedicated networks. Please visit Media Network Services to learn more.

The Telepresence-enabled Norway Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai was used by both the organising team and sponsors including Wilhelmsen, DNV, Statoil, Kongsberg Gruppen, Skaugen, Aker and Jotun. Sponsors introduced guests at Expo 2010 via Telepresence to executive management and expert personnel throughout the world. The Norway Pavilion team used the platform to stay in touch with their headquarters and offices throughout the world.

Norway Expo 2010 chose a Cisco TANDBERG’s Telepresence system combined with the global video conferencing network cloud powered by Media Network Services of Norway.

 Espen Guterud, Pavilion Director at Norway Expo 2010, said: “The main reason for selecting MNS was its ability to combine the reach of Internet with a carrier grade network dedicated and optimized for video conferencing. Having experienced true High-Definition video conferencing from Shanghai to arbitrary destinations, I am truly impressed by the network quality and reliability of MNS’s cloud.”

 The MNS network was deployed in four weeksand includedg a dedicated link from Shanghai to Hong Kong. About 2000 calls were made by video conferencing and Telepresence users around the world. Of the 226 million packets sent, only 231 thousand packets were lost ( 0.1%).

The MNS Video Conferencing Cloud consists of more than 50 Points of Presence (PoPs) around the world connected in an overlapping topology by multiple international carriers enabling clients’ video conferencing traffic to be distributed globally and routed to its destination.

The cloud is monitored by the MNS 24×7 Network Operation Center to ensure optimal routing, quality and availability. A business quality Internet connection is usually sufficient between the client’s network and the nearest PoP, while private leased lines are implemented where needed. The cloud features guaranteed Quality of Services (QoS) enabling the optimum video conferencing experience between anyone, anywhere.

MNS provides flexible and reliable network solutions serving the global video conferencing market. The solutions are tailored for a wide range of video conferencing equipment from standalone SIP-based desktop or home office units to complex corporate video conferencing infrastructure including Telepresence Suites, Video Communication Servers (VCS), and Multipoint Control Units (MCU) in a global deployment.

MNS has 8 Core PoPs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Oslo, San Jose, Singapore, and Washington DC. And 48 Service PoPs with infrastructure to connect any network present at the location. More at: www.medianetworkservices.com

In an historic first for CNN, Cisco and CNN have partnered to build custom Cisco TelePresence sets that will be used by CNN to transform their live news broadcast from traditional one-way feeds into engaging, two-way communications. CNN has never before provided branding of technology within its news coverage to an Advertiser.

On October 14^th, CNN launched custom Cisco Tandberg TelePresence sets (C90 units) in their New York, Washington D.C., and Atlanta Bureaus. These will connect with Cisco Tandberg EX90 units in the office of David Gergen (Harvard University) and home office of Mary Matalin and James Carville (New Orleans) for live political news coverage. This will be a significant advance for these key CNN contributors and will aid the network in bringing them on-air with greater ease and frequency for “mid-term elections,” “America votes,” and ongoing political news coverage. TelePresence interviews will appear across CNN programming, multiple times a week, as Gergen, Matalin, and Carville make frequent appearances across different shows. The next install will be an EX90 in the office of Principal Steve Perry (Hartford, Connecticut), connecting back with studio TelePresence units, for his weekly segment on Anderson Cooper 360 and American Morning. Integrations with Steve Perry will launch in January. Source: MVC Blog 

How do they secure high quality TelePresence sessions with contributors in remote and arbitrary locations?

CNN, through its partners Cisco and Straight Up Technologies, connects and bring in its remote contributors over the MNS Global Video Conferencing Network Cloud.  The network cloud combines the reach of Internet with a carrier grade network dedicated for video conferencing providing its users the following benefits:

• Highest possible quality across networks
• Unique deployment time even to remote locations
• Ability to call arbitrary locations, anywhere in the world

To learn more, please visit Media Network Services.
Also watch CNN Debuts Interviews Via TelePresence.