Tech Lover 9

The widespread adoption of cloud computing in business-critical applications such as storage and CRM has set the stage for conquering another, video conferencing cloud computing offers compelling, fundamental advantages in this product category: lower cost, automated fail-over, and much easier to scale versus video-specific routers, multipoint control units (MCUs) and other infrastructure hardware solutions.  But as experienced IT managers know, there’s more to video conferencing than meets the eye, literally.  What about bandwidth consumption and manageability?
In recent announcements Nefsis highlighted the advantages of its cloud-based delivery platform with respect to bandwidth efficiency and manageability, too.  In summary, Nefsis uses a combination of 1) dynamic video scaling, i.e., adjusting video quality and bandwidth consumption in real-time, on a per-connection basis; 2) QoS mechanisms; and 3) built-in diagnostic tools to provide a complete IT toolkit for efficiently using, managing and capping bandwidth consumption.

The QoS mechanisms allow IT staff in QoS-enabled environments to assign different traffic priorities or performance levels to the Nefsis video conferencing application and its users.
These video conferencing QoS mechanisms include:

• Tagging data packets so traffic is managed on QoS-enabled network segments
• Compatibility with QoS policy controls that reserve resources
• Negotiating a network connection to determine if adequate bandwidth is available, receiving admission and adapting bandwidth consumption as required
• Lowering bandwidth consumption  – on  a per connection basis – if network conditions degrade via Nefsis’ dynamic video scaling

Nefsis cloud-based video conferencing features and these detailed bandwidth management tools provide IT staff a complete, business-grade video conferencing solution that can easily be tested and deployed throughout their organization.

Cloud-Based Video Conferencing Benefits Network Users and IT Staff

In a typical video conferencing application, first the feature-functional requirements must be met for its intended users. Then, IT staff concerns regarding security, desktop reach (aka firewall and proxy traversal), and bandwidth manageability must be addressed.

A good business-grade video conferencing solution pick-ups where consumer online services fall off, adding security, multipoint HD video, advanced collaboration tools, and firewall and proxy traversal as needed to support both desktops and conference rooms.

Nefsis cloud computing and multi-core, parallel processing technology easily handles these communications and processor-intensive tasks.  With Nefsis, you can even play an HD media file, such as a training movie, and discuss it during your video conference.

And, with the latest tools mentioned above – dynamic video scaling, built-in diagnostics, and QoS compatibility – Nefsis video conferencing addresses IT staff concerns regarding bandwidth consumption and manageability.

Now, it’s easy to start small.  Business-grade video conferencing can easily be accomplished over most existing networks, with no major investment in infrastructure hardware or bandwidth expansion.  This benefits small-to-medium sized businesses by dramatically reducing the financial risk of video conferencing, while providing distributed enterprise networks an easy way to scale video conferencing as needed.

Moving Video Conferencing to the Cloud  

While this article focused on QoS and related tools for managing bandwidth, it’s important to note that these capabilities are in addition to the fundamental advantages of moving video conferencing to the cloud: load balancing, automated fail-over, and scalability versus previous generations of infrastructure solutions.