Need a video conferencing solution

[Raghavendra Rai]

Hi all,

I am new to VC, can anyone suggest me a solution for the below requirement.

I have a customer, who has a branch with 50 users, his network infrastructure has mixed vendor devices. Like fortigate firewall some other brand switch and all.

Now he need a Video and audio conferencing solution in one of his conference room, he is interested in Cisco solution (ofcource cost effective).

Is there any Cisco solution that I can think of in this case? his requirement is more of room conferencing, the white board and and the presentator in the conference room should be captured in the camera.

Can you please suggest?

Thanks,

Raghavendra

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

You can look at the Tandberg Profile Series for multipurpose rooms with VCS for call control and firewall traversal. Cisco is at the very begining stages of folding the Tandberg products into CUCM; however, this is likely a one-two years away from completion. For now, I would sell Tandberg as a self-standing solution and just add a SIP trunk from VCS to CUCM.

[William Bell]

I agree with Jonathan on this one (+5 J.). Even if Tandberg wasn't part of Cisco I would recommend looking at their product portfolio. In your case, this is mainly because it sounds like you have a strong requirement for interoperability with different vendor gear. The Tandberg VCS call control is feature rich and can act as a SIP registrar or H.323 Gatekeeper.  The H.323 portion is pretty important for compatibility and interoperability. H.323 is more prevalent in video than is SIP.  Though, you definitely want to have a forward-looking vision that includes both.

The VCS and VCSe are very powerful and you can accomodate all sorts of call scenarios and achieve very good interop.

Tandberg also has a management suite called TMS that can actually manage some 3rd party (non-Tandberg/non-Cisco) video devices.  Depending on the scope of your deployment, you may want to consider TMS. Though, if you are talking about a small number of endpoints, then TMS can be considered an optional component.

The Tandberg endpoints are very solid. Modern endpoints are typically capable of supporting SIP and H.323 stack simultaneously. Though, there are a couple that are either SIP-only or H.323-only.

In the Multipoint arena, I would also recommend Tandberg.  They offer a hardware-centric media solution which means you don't have to worry about the funny math you get with solutions based on software media "DSP" technology.

I have heard rumors on the time frame when you can order Tandberg equipment from the Cisco parts list. It is in the works and I won't repeat the rumors here because, well, they are rumors.

HTH.

Regards,
Bill

[manipandey]

Please keep following in mind before finalizing the design

1) Network and firewall equipment compatibility

2) Call Agent ( whether Cisco Call manager or there exist a 3rd party PBX), Phones Type and check the interoperatibility among them

3) Cisco has it's own solution based on Meeting place express and Meeting place but given the fact that Tandberg is part of Cisco, I will go with Tandberg solution with Tandberg end points and VCS as suggested above.

4) Which Protocol to use? My preference will be H323  -

5) There will be some bottleneck specific to scheduling as Cisco and Tandberg solution has multiple overlap in this side and in some cases one need to have CUVCM also as well as VCS but I believe by the time you are in implementation phase this may have been sorted out by Cisco.

Polycom also is something you can look on but my preference is Tandberg which is now Cisco :-)

Cheers

Regards

Mani