Last Friday August 18th there was a new SfB Broadcast featuring Eddie Clifton from Pexip and i wanted to give a summary on the broadcast. Also recommend watching the video and checking out the Questions and Answers from the session that Graham Walsh from Pexip has posted on the Microsoft Tech Community Site link here

Lets dig in!

Presented by Delanda Coleman and Eddie Clifton

Eddies been in the VC business for many years worked for Polycom, Tandberg and other big vendors and worked on many large worldwide deployment. At Pexip they looked at what problems needed solving across organisations.

When video conferencing is used properly it drives productivity over traditional methods. Pexip looked to create and join large expenses legacy VCs or Modern VCs to the new and exciting PC based and modern based VC with the largest vendor SfB.

Pexip says they are the Rosetta Stone of the VC world (Not the software) where they  takes lots of different video languages and protocols and take them into one conference. very clever way of looking at it. More info on the ancient Rosetta Stone here

What are you seeing out there ?

We see large amount of companies with a large appetite for video conferencing

• People want a more authentic experience
• 20 Billion $ plus industry
• bringing Skype for business and VTC and Audio conferencing into one conference is a new thing.
• enabling working from different places, working mothers working from home and flexible working. Video can do a lot of things

There are challenges!

Many large organisation cant move to the cloud due to laws, data restrictions so on premises has to be key and specialist area is on premises video interoperability and at the same time is a hybrid solutions so you can be on premises and in the cloud at the same time.

Equipment was made traditionally of specialist hardware and processors and average VC bridge was over a million dollars yes a 1 MILLION Dollars (Reminds me of Dr Evil)

Pexip wanted to bring a solution based on standard Intel hardware and processors, everyone knows how to use it in a standard environment and go anywhere and buy a server and add the software and do it 8000 / 9000 dollars and massive savings in cost. By implementing solutions in large corps they can leverage existing vtc’s and Sfb in amazing ways.

Companies use Pexip where they were using 4/5 million mins of year up to 110 million minutes of video per year in a very short time and increasing usage of SfB, Azure and other technologies.

Reduced cost of computing to distributed workforces

Challenges with Hybrid and mixed environments ?

• People don’t sit in offices all day and are out and about, working from home, train stations and client sites
• Pexip allows you to bring everyone into one meeting to enable quicker decision making. You can bring people from cell phone, laptop, tablet, legacy vtc systems, surface hub, Skype room systems etc etc
• Also you can share data as well!! All the different devices and you can also share data such as website, videos, excel , PowerPoint and enabling collaborating.
• When people don’t see video being used they will move back to audio conferencing
• Its key to get people using video and embracing video and embrace productivity with so many use cases.

There is a large amount of VTC equipment that gets written off over 5,6,7 or more years and you want to use this and Pexip will allows you to gradually move from legacy devices to new modern VTC, so saves a hard switchover. This can include thousands of VTCs and hard switching can be a problem, also you can have different sites with different architecture so makes multiple architecture and complex and Pexip are all about simplicity.

The user doesn’t know anything and Pexip do everything in the background, if you a SfB user you see the usual interface and the same for each device. Its all native to the user and the client. Pexip makes complex workloads very simple for users

Fundamentals of interoperability

• Hundreds of protocols to translate and present them in a common way
• Join experience needs to be good and the same your used to
• Audio, Video experience good and data sharing is key
• Gradually bringing users into the new world

Easy to Administrator and Manage

• Single pane of glass for administration globally!
• Azure and IAAS and hybrid computing you can create very reliable environments for VCs and Pexip allows resilient architect and testing
• Management is KEY!

Scalability

Beauty of Azure they allow elastic compute and when utilization is high you can add compute and low you can shut down. Also allows you to not have to pay and upkeep and manage large infrastructure when your not using it.

Pexip name their solution affinity

From above Pexip can handle hundreds of gateway nodes

Each green dot is a gateway showing utilization these can be deployed in private datacentre of IAAS such as rackspace also in cloud compute such as Azure.

Scenario

Quarterly based calls for all staff and this can be spread geographically across multiple nodes. Infrastructure can be scaled up and then scale down and reducing costs.

• Pexip is distributed and using local hop to local datacentre.

PEXIP are all about simplicity and efficiency!

Ways we can bring Pexip into SfB

1. Standard SfB schedule meeting via Outlook, same as you would before. Pexip adds information to the bottom of the invite for VTCs to join. Seamless to users and no training needed.

2.Peer to Peer calls

• A SfB client calling a VTC device
• Pexip creates direct link to VTC

3. Escalation mode (adding another person/VTC)

Add them via SfB UI and add them in the call. they could be on legacy VTC or SfB.

Simplicity

Some people cant move to the cloud but Pexip allows them to maximise utilization of their VTC and benefits of the modern meetings with SfB.

Some companies move slow and will get there in the end but this help

Lync 2010 and Lync 2013 users are all covered!

DONT FORGET DATA SHARING

Data sharing in all modes is available

Pexip is VBSS (video based screen sharing) and an example on surface hub when user draw on whiteboard it uses the latest data sharing methods to give a good and full motion video on data sharing. Data sharing is key and its not just video translation its data as well!

Questions

Pexip with SfB Online Meeting ?

Yes

Register VTC endpoints with Pexip to simplify VTC infrastructure?

Yes, you don’t need the legacy call control environment anymore.

Does Pexip work with legacy OTBP protocol for legacy VTC?

Yes, we work with ecosystem of partners, this is niche requirement Pexip would work with partners to do this with Pexip. 4 or 5 companies that can handle this.

Outlook integration – third party add in required ?

No, Add is from Pexip solution

Any insight into Pexip onsite MCU ?

Yes, its essence is standard HP or Dell running hyper V and can be a conference node. customer with 10,000 users with the ability to join a call.

Pricing model ?

Its cheap ! $3.99 USD per user per month

You have to buy server as well.

Content sharing as 1080p or higher desktop resolution?

720 or 1080p

Do i have to use Skype meeting id to join a meeting ?

Yes

Any roadmap on enabling media bypass ?

No sure on that question

Will you standout at Ignite in Crazy pants (Trousers) ?

Yes, Booth 1001

How to contact Pexip

two weeks time

• PSTN Conferencing updates over the last year
• New business models
• New features

Two weeks after – Microsoft IT behind the scenes at Skype meeting broadcasts

After that its Ignite and filming from Studio floor!