Member Mention: Informata

Author:

August 2009

Redefining VNOC Services
Imagine telepresence and video meetings automatically connecting without the need for human intervention. Imagine this, and you imagine VNOC Symphony! Like the great composer Bach recites, “All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.” In the same way, VNOC Symphony performs the hard work to produce video meetings; the user simply presses the right keys to select the desired locations.

Scheduling a meeting is simple with the reservation widget. The user selects the city locations to be included in a telepresence meeting and clicks the button. Within seconds, the conference sites connect seamlessly. It’s that simple. No longer will VNOC services always require a live operator to manage meetings. Automation has redefined VNOC services, providing accurate, efficient, repeatable and affordable meeting management for small, medium and the large enterprise.

VNOC Symphony is a suite of applications that redefine VNOC services from the ground up, creating a framework of interacting web-services within a serviceoriented architecture. Users have multiple ways to view the same information, schedule complex meetings, or launch telepresence conferences. Using multiple interfaces, VNOC Symphony supports Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, an intuitive web interface, an animated Microsoft Silverlight interface, Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft OCS and the Blackberry, among others.

VNOC Conductor: the Process Engine Core
At the core of the logic is a runbook engine called VNOC Conductor which polices meeting setup, maintenance and teardown in an enterprise environment according to an organization’s process rules. Numerous parameters are configurable to ensure departmental or global directives are followed, including setup times, startup messaging, teardown messaging, in-progress meeting modification messaging, custom messaging, remedial functions, escaltion processes, email and SMS notifications, charge-backs, conflict management and many others processes that regulate a complex enterprise deployment.

Business process and implementation logic compiles into runbook processes during Iformata’s customer on-boarding phase. Iformata works with stakeholders within the organization to integrate current business practices with Iformata’s VNOC processes that are specific to the organization. VNOC Symphony stores these processes to follow conference reservation, conference management, fault management and impromptu meeting practices that match the needs of the organization.

An Entirely New Toolkit of Interacting Widgets
Numerous tools are available to users and administrators in the form of widgets, which are interacting web-services that communicate with VNOC Symphony’s framework. Each widget provides a unique toolset, such as the reservation widget, the helpdesk widget, the reporting widget and many others. A Digital Airlines widget plots live conferences on a geo-spatial interactive map, showing all point-to-point and multipoint meetings graphically. Users may pan and zoom the map from world view to street level, even showing multiple video systems interconnected on a campus network in close proximity.

Iformata plans to release information necessary for corporations to write their own widgets and share this technology with other companies. This will enable businesses to create specific tools to meet their unique needs and share solutions with other users. This open-source approach should rapidly grow the base of tools available for video management.

Several reservation widgets already exist to provide numerous options to users. A full featured reservation widget allows users to see photographs of each
meeting room, add participants to each site, choose MCU framing, view time zones of each location, and modify in-progress meetings, among other features. An express scheduler widget lets users quickly create a reservation with as few keystrokes as possible, listing the last ten meetings and ten sites as possible quick start selections. A meet-now widget enables users to request immediate video services for sites selected, whether by web interface or mobile application.

The helpdesk widget allows users to view real-time information of remedial action in-progress, or to report issues for assistance or corrective actions. An automated ticket opening system based upon device threshold monitoring and interrogation will be available later this year.