Group communication tools in Higher Education and Research Real-time communication tools forming a complete group communication solution Poznan/Utrecht, June 8, 2004 (1.0) Innovation Manager

2 Our customer base Diverse: universities (2 levels), libraries, academic hospitals, research institutions Each has distinct infrastructure (firewalls!) No direct relationship between SURFnet and end-users Co-operating with Kennisnet, educational service provider for all other forms of education (primary and secondary schools and professional education)

3 Our challenge How can we offer interesting services over our network? Be innovative Economy of scale Middleware services Whitelabeling

4 Group collaboration suite Webconferencing Groupsite Chat & Call Provide support for online collaboration, both synchronous and a-synchronous

5 Group collaboration media Instant Messaging, chat Voice over IP Video conf.Desktop- sharing, Application- sharing , forum, Listserv, News Voic Video-mail, Streaming Presentation Documents Project info TEXTAUDIOVIDEO SYNCHRONOUS/ DATA ASYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATION REAL-TIME COLLABORATION

6 Integration! ‘Just’ a webcommunity is not enough Interaction between all means of communication reached by integrating as many as possible Support wide variety of possible use: –Lectures –Project based education –Ad-hoc collaboration –Student associations Team site Web conferencing Call & Chat

7 Why Rich Media Communications? Presence is main starting point for session initiation! First tests show: voice is considered valuable addition to chat Video has been an niche, will become common by making it easy-to-use EASE OF INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION AND USE

8 Webconferencing: Click to Meet Real time audio+video Chat Presentations Application sharing cobrowsing

9 Presence/IM: LCS2005+MS Mess. Chat & call Presence roster 1 on 1 Video conferencing Chat

10 Shared documents Picture gallery Contacts Calender Forums Teamsite: MS Sharepoint

11 General features Single Signon using Active Directory Interaction between the three platforms: –Start webconference through Messenger or team site –Go to teamsite from Messenger or webconference –Invite people in webconference through messaging, mail, SIP or GDS

12 Cross platform support Presence and IM can only be accessed by MS Messenger. Since penetration grade is about 95% in The Netherlands, this was regarded sufficient. Jabber support is on the roadmap, also aiming at interworking with existing SER SIP platform Team site can be accessed with any browser, advanced functions (presence integration) only accessible through IE Webconferencing can be accessed by any H.323 or SIP compliant endpoint, advanced functions only accessible through IE

13 Deployment & Application Pilot intended with 20 groups, 250 users has grown to 87 groups and 680 users October-April Group-owners at various institutions are our contact persons Hosted in our Application Lab Non-blocking connection to our backbone Good connectivity at institutions

14 After the pilot Designing architecture Contracting maintenance and support organisations Selection of webconferencing platform Ordering and configuring equipment and software Promotion A-Select, SIP, GDS, Jabber, common document storage