planning a video conference or telepresence project

inrich.coIndependent communications technology advice

Planning a video conferencing or telepresence projectPublished: 11th February 2013Richard [email protected]: @inrichcoPhone +44 7979 835 027

Planning a video conferencing or telepresence project

Table of Contents1. Summary.......................................................................................................................................4

2. Understand the solution types and components...........................................................................4

Solution types....................................................................................................................................4

Immersive telepresence....................................................................................................................5

Solution components.........................................................................................................................8

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................10

Tech corner......................................................................................................................................11

3. Understand the potential budget ranges.....................................................................................13

Budget ranges..................................................................................................................................13

Immersive room build.....................................................................................................................14

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................14

4. Understand the potential project timelines................................................................................15

Timelines.........................................................................................................................................15

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................15

5. Understand the market...............................................................................................................16

Market size......................................................................................................................................16

Vendor leaders................................................................................................................................16

Supporting service providers...........................................................................................................17

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................17

6. Determine your requirements.....................................................................................................17

Approach.........................................................................................................................................18

Business requirements....................................................................................................................18

Functional requirements.................................................................................................................19

Technical requirements...................................................................................................................20

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................20

7. Get hands on experience.............................................................................................................21

Approach.........................................................................................................................................21

Make a checklist..............................................................................................................................22

Potential questions..........................................................................................................................22

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................23

8. Select your provider....................................................................................................................23

Approach.........................................................................................................................................23

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Timelines.........................................................................................................................................24

Potential pre-qualification questions...............................................................................................24

Request for proposal.......................................................................................................................25

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................25

9. Implement the solution...............................................................................................................26

Timelines.........................................................................................................................................26

Checklist..........................................................................................................................................27

Lessons learned...............................................................................................................................29


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1. SummaryThis guide provides the information you need to make an end to end plan for your telepresence or video conferencing project. In this guide “telepresence” means either “telepresence” or “video conferencing”.

This guide is based on the experiences and lessons learned by end user organisations who have implemented telepresence projects.

This guide covers from personal systems to immersive room systems.

This guide is structured as follows:

Understand the solution types and components – This section provides a foundation on the basics of telepresence.

Understand the potential budget ranges – This section provides guidance on a budget that is vendor neutral and requirements neutral. The objective is to highlight what drives the budgets and the ranges possible.

Understand the potential project timelines – Much like with the budget guidance this section highlights what drives the timelines and the ranges possible.

Understand the market – This section provides a high level overview of the market including equipment vendors and supporting service providers.

Determine your requirements – This section provides guidance on the key requirements and their considerations.

Get hands on experience – This section provides guidance on what to look for during solution demonstrations.

Select your provider – The previous sections will enable you to complete an informed provider/s selection process. This section provides guidance on how to best select your provider.

Implement the solution – This section provides practical guidance on the solution implementation and considerations for the longer term solution operation.

2. Understand the solution types and componentsThis section provides a high level understanding on the types and components of a telepresence solution. This is important as the remainder of this guide will refer to the types and components defined in this section.

Solution typesTelepresence definitions vary between manufacturers however the following three types are generally accepted:

Multi-screen rooms systems – These are often dedicated rooms purpose built for group telepresence.

Single screen room systems – These are often installed in rooms that operate as general meeting rooms. Group conferencing is also possible however the multi-purpose nature of


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the room can mean a lower quality telepresence experience when compared to multi-screen room systems.

Personal systems – By definition these systems are for individual use. These include systems that often double as computer monitors and software systems that run as a client on a laptop.

The following picture illustrates examples of each of the above systems.

Picture 1 – Clockwise from top left: multi-screen room system, single screen room system, personal system that doubles as a computer monitor, and personal system leveraging a tablet.

The following table shows the relative differences between solution types.

Multi-screen room system

Single screen room system

Personal system

Number of local users Small or large groups Small groups 1Dedicated room Yes Sometimes NoCost Very high High LowDedicated equipment Yes Yes SometimesImmersive Usually Sometimes No

Table 1 – Telepresence systems types

As can be seen above multi-screen room systems have a very high relative cost. This is due to the investment to achieve an immersive experience. A full definition of “immersive” follows next.

Immersive telepresenceAn immersive solution aims to make you feel like you are sitting in the same room as your video connected colleagues. The point at which a solution becomes immersive is arbitrary, but, the more


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techniques used, the more effective the result. The following table provides a list of features generally agreed to contribute to an immersive solution.

Feature Immersive contributionLife size Life size images provide the most significant immersive contribution. Life size

images can be a challenge when you have more participants than screen real estate. Either you maintain life size images by using voice activation to switch video between active speakers or you reduce participant size to keep all participants on screen. Some solutions achieve this by allowing both options. The below image shows how participant size has been reduced on the left side of the screen.

Eye contact There is a significant increase in participant engagement when eye contact is established. This effect is better when the cameras are aligned to the eyes of the displayed participant. Some companies achieve this by using a screen that can display images while also having a camera directly behind, at eye level.


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Background consistency

Having the walls, tables and carpets identical across telepresence rooms allows them to naturally blend together. The more effectively this is done the more likely you will feel the video participants are in the same room and vice versa. This effect is further enhanced when screens bezels are removed. Some companies achieve this by projecting the video connected participants onto a transparent screen removing any chance of difference between backgrounds.

Huddle 70 room by DVELighting Regular office lighting has the objective of illuminating horizontal surfaces such as

desks and tables. Telepresence lighting includes emphasis on horizontal lighting to illuminate faces and, so, achieve more lifelike video. Some companies achieve this by building horizontal lighting into their systems.

Audio Directional audio, especially in multi-screen rooms, means audio and picture location is matched. Some solutions will allow you to close your eyes and you can tell if the video participant is seated on the left or the right side of the display.

Acoustics An immersive effect is enhanced when all participants can talk and listen without raising their voice or straining to hear. Immersive systems recognise that, much like in recording studios, the best result from a microphone is achieved in a sound proof room without echo. Combined with quality directional speakers, the resulting audio will feel like all participants are in the same room. For long meetings this significantly reduces the fatigue. Many solutions achieve this result by specifying ceiling, wall and floor finishes that reduce echo and sound proof the room.

Table 2 - Features that contribute to an immersive effect


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Solution componentsIrrespective of the type of end point the following diagram illustrates the key components of a telepresence solution together with three example traffic flows;

Point to point call – Two end points in a video conference using the network to connect. Multipoint call using an endpoint with MCU capability – Three end points in a video

conference using Multi Conference Unit (MCU) capability in one of the end points to bridge a multi party video conference.

Multipoint call using the MCU including gateway call to Company B – Three end points in a video conference using a central MCU to create a multi party video conference. In addition a participant from Company B is included by using a gateway to travel between Company A and Company B networks.

Diagram 1 – Components of a telepresence solution with example traffic flows


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The following table provides details of each component.

End point Each end point, regardless of type, has: Camera/s. Microphone/s. Speakers. Screen/s. Controller (handheld remote or desktop touch panel). Signal processing resources to establish and then code and decode video

and audio. These may also include local room processing to remove echo.

Multipoint Conference Units (MCU)

MCU provide the functionality to join multiple parties into the same conference.

MCU functionality is available directly from an end point or on centralised resources. Some high level considerations are:

End point based MCU effectively provide dedicated capacity to the end point while also becoming the aggregating point for all video streams, enabling the conference to occur.

Centralised MCU provides capacity that can be shared across all end points, and the aggregation of video stream can reduce network load to remote sites while also using MCU processing units more efficiently.

A centralised MCU is usually not cost effective for small end point deployments.

This functionality can be provided by 3rd party exchanges so long as you have a connection to the 3rd party exchange to start with.

Centralised MCU functionality is increasingly becoming available on virtual platforms such as VMware.

Gateways Gateways provide functionality to connect to other systems on either the same or different networks. They include the ability to:

Connect to other types of telepresence systems. Connect to systems across different networks including the Internet, ISDN

or private IP networks. Manage traffic and capacity between systems and across networks. Create security boundaries between networks.

This functionality can be provided by 3rd party exchanges so long as you have a connection to the third party exchange to start with.

Network bandwidth

The network bandwidth required to carry traffic between end points, gateways and MCU varies between 256kbps and 18Mbps. The considerations that determine this include:

Number of screens: the more screens for a given resolution the more bandwidth required.

Video resolution: the higher the resolution the higher the bandwidth. MCU location: the MCU location influences how bandwidth is aggregated.


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Management systems

Management systems, and related actions, include:

Monitoring health and usage of end points, MCUs and gateways. Allocating network bandwidth and MCU resources according to capacity. Booking, scheduling and setting up conferences. Provisioning software upgrades. Pro-actively scanning rooms at regular intervals to check functionality. Providing live help to users booking or participating in a conference.

The above functionality is sometimes referred to as the scope of a Video Network Operations Centre (VNOC). VNOCs can be established within end user organisations or outsourced to 3rd parties.

Table 3 - Components of a telepresence solution

Lessons learned The importance of management systems is often underestimated. Poor management systems

can make even the best end points unreliable and difficult to use. Quality management systems will enable you to maximise system performance, increase reliability, and provide insight into how the systems is being used.

Often organisations focus most effort on end point vendor selection when completing a telepresence project. This section clearly shows there are many other technology components and factors to consider in an end to end solution. This will be important to remember when selecting provider/s in section 7.


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Tech cornerThis section provides a very brief overview of the protocols and standards used for telepresence.

Signalling protocols – Signalling protocols define how a call is established between end points. H.323 and SIP are the most common.

Resolution and frame rates – resolution defines the number of pixels that make up an image. Common resolutions with horizontal and vertical pixel count in brackets are; CIF (352 x 240), 4CIF (704 x 480), 720p (1280×720) and 1080p (1920 × 1080). The relative difference in total pixels is shown in the below diagram. High definition is accepted as starting from 720p. Frame rate is the number of frames per second that provide video, common values start at 30 frames per second with 60 frames for better quality video.

Diagram 2 – Relative video resolutions

Video standards – Video signals rely on network connections to travel between end points. To make the most efficient use of this network connection, various standards exist to compress the signal. As illustrated in the below diagram, in general, the bit rate required to transmit a given video signal decreases as compression complexity increases.

Diagram 3 – Relationship between compression complexity and bit rate

Common compression standards, in increasing complexity, are H.261, H.263 and H.264. H.264 has many versions available including that used for Blue-ray discs and YouTube. Much industry attention




has been given to the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) version of H.264 which allows end points with different resolution and frame rate capabilities to communicate without the need for transcoding (e.g. taking a 1080p signal from a HD room system and transcoding the resolution into a 360p signal for a tablet device). Transcoding requires processing capacity, so, if this can be avoided, it saves cost. H.264 SVC avoids the need for transcoding by providing a bit stream with multiple resolutions and frame rates.

Audio standards - Common standards for coding and decoding voice include G711 (non compressed), G.729 (compressed) and G.722 (wideband audio).

Data sharing standards – H.239 is a common standard for enabling end points to share content (for example PowerPoint slides). Using H.239 with a telepresence system is sometimes called “people and content”.

Interoperability standards – Single screen systems from different vendors and between different organisations can communicate using the standards identified above. A key part of initial negotiation between end points is determining common capabilities and agreeing the standard to use.

Multi-screen systems however do not have an industry standard for connectivity. Cisco has released the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) to facility interoperability, however interoperability is limited between organisations that chose to adopt the protocol.




3. Understand the potential budget rangesThis section provides guidance on the budget ranges possible. This, together with the next section on timelines, will provide context when you review the market and consider your requirements later in this guide. You will refine your budget when selecting your provider as covered in Section 8.

Budget rangesThe following table should be used as a guide only, due to variances between vendor solutions and configurations, such as redundant equipment. The table shows how the average cost per end point over 5 years can vary from about $10k to over $1 million.

Multi-screen room system

Single-screen room system

Personal systems

Upfront1

Per end pointsCore

Immersive room build

$300k$150k$100k2

$30k$150k$50k2

$0 to $5k$150k

Not applicableOngoing (per month per room)

NetworkManagement

$10k$3k

$0k3

$1k$0k3

$100Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over 5 years

e.g. four end points = $4.6m

($1.45 upfront + $3.12m ongoing)

e.g. four end points = $1.7m

(230k upfront + $60k ongoing)

e.g. 40 ends= $360k

(up to $350k upfront + $6k ongoing)

Average TCO per end point $1.15m $425k $9kNote % of1 Assumes all equipment is purchased (“purchase model”) with 30% discount off RRP including installation. “Video as a service” models (no upfront equipment to purchase) are available for the core which effectively decrease the upfront and increase the ongoing costs. From a total budget guidance perspective, the total cost of ownership is comparable between a “purchase model” or “video as a service” model, as core costs are not a significant component.2 Room build costs vary greatly, see Immersive section that follows.3 With just 4 rooms often existing network bandwidth can be used without impact.Components of a telepresence solution

Table 4 – Potential budget ranges of a telepresence solution




Immersive room buildThe budget considerations for immersive solutions are outlined in the table following.

Feature ConsiderationRoom size Multi-screen room sizes can be quite large. For example the Polycom 8 seat

solution requires floor space of almost 5.5m by 6.5m (or18ft by 22ft). Determine if you have the required space or if you will need to extend your target room.

Sound proofing Walls, ceilings and floors will need treatment to make the room sound proof.

Air conditioning Air conditioning modifications often involve moving the fan cooling unit in the ceilings away from the telepresence room to meet noise specifications. An increase of the air conditioning capacity may also be needed to handle the additional heat from the room equipment.

Lighting Immersive specifications aim for an even vertical and horizontal distribution of light. This eliminates shadow and bright spots which in turn provides much better quality video. Standard office lighting will not meet this requirement.

Finishes Finishes includes wall paint, carpet, ceiling, and doors. The specifications for finishes will have acoustic objectives (to reduce echo in the room) and also to keep all rooms looking the same to enhance the immersive effect.

Table 5 – Budget considerations for immersive solutions

Average room costs will vary greatly given the above considerations. More remediation is often required in multi-screen rooms as vendor specifications are more rigid (i.e. less optional remediation) and room size is more likely to need extension. An average of $100k per multi screen room and $50k per single screen room is not unusual for large scale deployments.

Lessons learned The total cost of ownership for room systems is very sensitive to the ongoing costs, particularly

when the solution life is often 5 years. Personal systems can have very low upfront costs. This occurs for software only solutions that

leverage a user’s PC for video, audio and processing. The ongoing costs of personal systems can also be very low. This is because of the significantly

lower bandwidth requirement. Vendor immersive specifications are similar, so, you can use any specification to get budgetary

guidance on the room build from a building contractor. This will help prevent surprises and delays later in your project.




4. Understand the potential project timelinesThis section provides guidance on the potential project timelines. This, together with the preceding section on budget, will provide context when you review the market and consider your requirements later in this guide. You will refine your project timelines when selecting your provider as covered in Section 8.

TimelinesThe below table provides a guide on project timelines. In general, the milestones require sequential execution. It may be possible to compress timelines by determining your requirements while getting hands on experience. However, to keep the timelines conservative, this is not assumed. Each milestone aligns to a section of this guide which provides the supporting detail.

Milestone Duration (weeks)

Assumptions Further detail

Know the market

1 This is primarily a research exercise so can be done quite quickly if time is dedicated.

Section

Determine requirements

3 Assumes a week to define requirements, a week for stakeholder review within your organisation and a week for formal requirements signoff.

Section 6

Get hands on experience

2 2 weeks is allowed as demonstrations can take time to arrange and loan equipment is not always available.

Section 7

Select your provider

10-14 Includes pre-selection process, RFP process and contract process.

Section 8

Implement the solution

16 Includes conceptual and detailed design, WAN link installation (if applicable), room remediation (if applicable), MCU/ bridge installation (if applicable), end point installation, operational readiness, testing and end user training and promotion.

Section 9

Total 32-36Table 6 – Potential project timelines

Lessons learned Project timelines can be dramatically reduced if you already have a preferred provider and can

skip many of the activities in the 10-14 weeks allocated for selecting a provider. Keep this in mind when reviewing the above table and see Section 8 for more detail.

Project implementation is highly sensitive to the type of solution required. An immersive room system that requires WAN upgrades will take significantly longer than deploying software based personal systems using outsourced MCU and bridging services. Keep this in mind when reviewing the above table and see Section 9 for more detail.




5. Understand the marketThis section is not a substitute for completing your own market research. Rather, this section is intended to help you to target additional research that will benefit your project.

Market sizeThe size of the global telepresence market is outlined in the below table. As can be seen, room based telepresence is over half the market with immersive and personal systems less than 10% each.

Product type % of marketTelepresence 54.9Video MCU 19.5Immersive telepresence 9.3Personal videoconferencing 9.1Others 7.2Total 100Source: IDC Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing and Telepresence Market Share by Product Type (Factory Revenue), Q4 2011.

Table 8 – Telepresence market size

Vendor leadersThe market share of the leading vendors is identified in the below table. Cisco (which includes the former Tandberg) has just over half the market, and Polycom the only other vendor with more than 5%.

Vendor % of marketCisco 50.6Polycom 26.3Lifesize 5.0Teliris 2.6Vidyo 2.5Others 13.1Total 100Source: IDC Top Five Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing and Telepresence Vendors, Revenue Market Share, Q1 2012.

Table 9 – Telepresence vendor leaders




Supporting service providersThe vendors identified in the previous section provide the end points and core systems to establish conferences. To create an end to end solution, there are many additional components required. The below table identifies the additional supporting service providers to consider.

Provider type Description ExamplesEquipment vendor partners

Telecommunications companies, systems integrators and specialised video products and services companies who sell vendor equipment directly to end user organisations.

AT&T, BT

Network providers Provide the connectivity between equipment on your organisation’s network or on external networks.

Masergy, AT&T, BT, Orange Business Services, Tata Communications Services

Video services providers Provide hosted MCU and bridging services. Also provide management services such as booking, monitoring and issue resolution.

Glowpoint, Teliris, Bluejeans

System integrators Systems integrators aggregate the various products and services identified in this table to provide an end to end solution. Some end user organisations may choose to do this themselves.

IBM, Dimension Data

Table 10 – Supporting service providers

Lessons learned To help maximise the quality of the end to end solution, vendors will often certify or provide

guidelines to the providers of the additional solution components. For example; Polycom has a Certified Immersive Telepresence VNOC Service Provider List and Cisco has a guideline on Delivering a Cisco TelePresence Network Connection Service. If your organisation decides to act as a systems integrator make sure that you understand the certifications required.

6. Determine your requirementsThe reference point for evaluating the success of your project will be the requirements you define. Requirements definitions that are incomplete or do not have stakeholder support jeopardise your project success. This section provides guidance on the requirement to consider and how to use the resulting defined requirements to reach a successful project outcome.




ApproachFor this section we categorise requirements into three:

Business requirements – These are the primary requirements for your project and directly feed into your project business case (project business case is not covered in this guide, however). The business requirements will be used to measure the success of the project, once implemented.

Functional requirements – These requirements are determined with reference to the business requirements. Functional requirements provide the detail on how the business requirements will be delivered.

Technical requirements – These requirements will need to be considered when determining the functional requirements. It may be that the technical requirements place either limitations or opportunities on the functional requirements possible. Technical requirements include considerations on alignment to IT strategies.

Business requirementsBusiness requirements need to be defined by the business stakeholders of the project and definitely not by IT or technical stakeholders. Business requirement should be both outcome based and measurable. If they are not outcome based is difficult to define how they will be achieved, and if they are not measurable it is difficult to define when they are achieved. Some examples of business requirements are below:

Save 10% of executive travel costs by providing an effective alternative to face to face Board meetings.

Enable executives to meet “face to face” when travel time would otherwise only permit a telephone meeting.

Reduce travel costs for design staff by 10% by providing an effective alternative to sharing of concepts that require face to face demonstrations.

Reduce hiring time for international staff by 1 week and $5,000 by providing an alternative to flying potential candidates for interviews.

Enable sales engineers in New York to support customer meetings in a new London office without needing to hire a sales engineer in London.

Enable training staff in one city to provide face to face training to offices in other cities/ countries without needing to hire/pay for training staff in other locations.




Functional requirementsThe following table provides a list of common functional requirements that organisations need to consider. These are provided to stimulate thought and ensure the requirements reflect the needs of your organisation.

Requirement ConsiderationDo you want an immersive or non immersive solution?

Immersive solutions attempt to make participants feel like they are in the same room. A system that has life size images, camera angles that achieve eye contact and high definition video helps to achieve this. These solutions have stringent requirements on the room environment such as lighting, acoustics and, even wall colour, to enhance the immersive effect. See section 2 for more information on achieving immersive solutions.

How important is it to connect to other telepresence, video or telephone systems?

Consider the needs of travelling executives, external company directors or even organisations you work closely with. This will require consideration of public room availability and interoperability with other telepresence solutions.

How many people need to use the system?

There maybe Board meetings that may have larger groups than normal. Also consider systems for individual users (e.g. in executive offices, home workers, or users who travel).

How important is it to share PC content?

Consider the type of content (e.g. static PowerPoint versus detailed Excel versus movie files) and the type of content displays (dedicated individual or larger common displays).

How much space do you have? Do you have the physical room space required without the need for extensions (the space required for a 6+ seat room can be very surprising)?

Do you want dedicated or shared use rooms?

Are there tradeoffs between the telepresence experience and room flexibility?

Which cities and countries might you expand to in the future?

What is the capability of solution supply and support in those regions?

How intuitive is the system to find other locations and establish a conference?

Consider if you expect users to self-serve or not.

Do you need a live service to take conference booking requests and a live service to assist users who need help?

What resources, tools and expertise are required?

What level of service availability do you require?

This is important as service levels greater than 99% often require redundant solutions to meet availability levels. For example, two or more MCUs or bridges and dual WAN links to a site.

Do you want to be able to record conferences?

How do you want to distribute recordings of the conferences, who should recordings be available for, and what sort of storage you require (from a security and time perspective)?

Table 7 – Common functional requirements to consider




Technical requirementsThe functional requirements outlined earlier will need to be considered in the context of your technical requirements. It may be that certain functional requirements are not possible or that some functional requirements not considered can be delivered with relatively low effort. The following table provides a list of technical requirements to consider.

Requirement ConsiderationSecurity Are telepresence conferences to be treated just as

unencrypted telephone calls or is there a business need for additional security such as encryption and physical constraints to rooms (e.g. swipe card access)? What constraints will your IT security policy place on connecting with third party networks?

Network What is the existing capacity and utilisation of your network connecting target telepresence locations? Is there sufficient spare capacity to cover telepresence traffic and will the network support real time, delay sensitive, traffic?

Legacy video If applicable, will your legacy video technologies support interoperability with modern telepresence systems? If not what upgrades are required?

Alignment to Unified Communications strategies

Do you have an existing Unified Communications strategy covering desktop clients for presence, instant messaging and video? If so how does this strategy align to the telepresence technologies and, in particular, personal telepresence systems providing video on user’s desktops?

Alignment to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies

Do you have an existing BYOD strategy covering the devices available for personal communications? If so how does this strategy align to the telepresence technologies and, in particular, providing video on user’s smartphones or tablet PCs?

Alignment to outsource strategies Does your organisation have a strategy to outsource or in-source technologies? How does this influence your approach to telepresence and to integration (if applicable) to existing technologies.

Table 7 – Common technical requirements to consider

Lessons learned When defining requirements, involve all stakeholders from your organisation, including business

stakeholders, operations teams, and technical teams so that missed requirements do not cause project delays.

Keep the requirements in draft status until after getting hands on experience. Some requirements, such as the importance of an immersive experience, cannot be assessed by a paper only exercise.

Have all stakeholders signoff the requirements, even when in draft status, so that there is a formal baseline for the next phases of the project.

The requirements that you define as a result of this section should be used as the basis of all decisions. If necessary update the requirements, but do not make decisions without ensuring




that they are consistent with the requirements. If you keep this strict approach you will avoid a delivering a solution that misses a requirement.

Note that none of the business requirements examples provided in this section actually mentioned “telepresence”. It may be possible to meet the business requirements listed without using telepresence, e.g. travel costs could be reduced by 10% by renegotiating prices with a travel supplier. It is important business requirements are technology independent, as technology is an enabler, rather than an outcome. This will avoid any questioning the validity of the business requirements coming at a later point in the project.

If you already have an existing telepresence solution (perhaps referred to in legacy terms as “video conferencing”) then it may provide a valuable insight to determine why this existing solution does not meet the business requirements for your telepresence project. This will help make sure that any deficiencies are addressed and, if applicable, any past mistakes are not repeated.

7. Get hands on experienceThe primary objective of getting hands on experience is not to select your provider/s. Rather it is to experience the range of solutions possible so that you can validate your requirements. For example, deciding the importance of an immersive solution requires the effect to be experienced.

ApproachIt is impractical to get hands on experience of each provider, so, you may want to take the following approach:

Use your requirements - Focus on experiencing any of the defined requirements that were difficult to decide on. Use the hands on experience opportunity to refine the requirements. Remove any providers that you are certain cannot meet a requirement.

Use your market research – You can make more informed judgements on where to focus your time if you already understand the vendors and supporting service provider solutions.

Align to your procurement policies - If your organisation has a policy of using existing IT providers whenever possible, then understand what telepresence products and services they provide and determine if there is gap against your requirements

Aim for contrast - Get at least two equipment vendor demonstrations so you can contrast solutions

Take another look - Remember that you can always get another round of hands on experience as part of the provider short listing and formal provider selection process.




It is important to note that getting hands on experience applies to equipment vendors but also to all the supporting service providers. We suggest this can be achieved through:

Demonstrations – Book sessions with equipment vendors at their demonstration centres. Check if any of the demonstration centres include integration with supporting services that may be of interest, e.g. VNOC services.

Borrow equipment - Borrow equipment for use in your company. This can be especially useful to personal telepresence systems when combined with externally provided MCU services (i.e. no core network required to be installed).

Peer companies - Find other companies who use the same equipment or services you are interested in. This can be through your own networks, telepresence user groups, or provider referrals.

Trial services – Most video service providers have trials available to use their hosted MCU and bridging services.

Make a checklistUse the following points to make a checklist for assessing the solution demonstrations:

Prepare a feature list - Make a list of the features that you want to see in advance of the demonstration. Make sure all features can be demonstrated, in particular those features related to interoperability.

Keep a record - As each feature is demonstrated, keep a record of the result. It can be easy to miss a feature or forget the result. This will help when comparing results across solution demonstrations.

Do not just watch - As features are demonstrated ask to try them directly yourself. You will get a first hand view of how user friendly the system is, and problems will be highlighted rather than stepped over.

Have a real meeting - To get a true feel for the meeting experience take at least 30 minutes and complete a real meeting. The longer you spend in a connected conference the more you will appreciate the subtlety of the experience.

Potential questionsSome potential questions you may wish to ask at the hands on session are:

If observing an immersive system, how many of the features identified in Section 2 are used? Can you demonstrate how the system interconnects with telepresence systems from other

vendors? (consider both single and multi screen systems) Can you demonstrate how laptop data is shared and how, if possible, this is done with

another vendor solution? Can you demonstrate how a user establishes a multi point call? How is a multipoint call affected when one of the connected systems has a poor connection?

(Is only that connection affected or does it affect the overall quality of the call?) Can you demonstrate a meeting set to auto-start at a designated time? Can you demonstrate integration with calendaring tools such as Microsoft Outlook, to

simplify the scheduling of calls?




Can you demonstrate connecting audio only participants to a telepresence call and how is this done? (consider how easily a user or admin person can complete this task)

Can you demonstrate how calls are both placed and accepted (consider calls within your organisation and also to external end points)?

Can you demonstrate how the system upscales lower-resolution systems that join the call, so that they are seen at higher quality in telepresence rooms?

Can you demonstrate connections with SIP and H.323 systems simultaneously?

Lessons learned Demonstrations and loan equipment can take many weeks to organise. To prevent delays make

requests with solution providers and with attendees from within your company as soon as possible.

The quality of telepresence experiences can be quite subjective. For this reason make sure your target users are included as part of the real meeting organised using telepresence. This is an excellent method to gain user input into the selection process.

When you finish getting hands on experience, revisit you requirements document and verify that they are still valid and re-release to your stakeholders.

8. Select your providerThis section helps you select the provider or providers who will deliver the best value for money telepresence solution to your company.

ApproachThis is best achieved by first completing a provider pre-qualification process and then inviting the more promising providers to a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

Completing a pre-qualification process as an input to the formal selection process has the following advantages:

Relevant and quality proposals from the formal selection process – It allows the formal selection process to target providers who you already know have attractive proposals rather than getting distracted by proposals that are not viable. It also lets providers know that if invited for a formal response that you will seriously consider their proposal.

Refined budget estimates – By asking for budgetary guidance it provides the first opportunity to refine the estimate made in section .

Refined timeline estimates – By asking for timeline estimates it provides the first opportunity to refine the estimate made in section .

Clarifying formal selection approach – By asking appropriate questions about product and services capabilities you can verify the best way to approach the formal RFP process – for example, do you need separate network and equipment procurement approaches or do you need a single provider of an end to end integrated solution?




TimelinesThe below table provides a guide on the selection process timelines:

Milestone Duration(weeks)

Assumptions

Pre-qualification process

3 Allow 1 week for initial shortlist, 1 week for providers to respond to a questionnaire and 1 week to review and finalise the shortlist.

Prepare an RFP 2 This assumes you start preparing the RFP concurrent to the pre-qualification process.

Time for responses

2 – 4 In the pre- qualification process, ask providers how long they need to respond to the RFP, if invited.

Evaluation 2 This assumes a 1 week intensive evaluation followed by 1 week to share the result with stakeholders before notifying provider/s.

Contract preparation

2 – 4 The process will be longer if with multiple providers or for global contracts requiring local agreements in different regions.

Total 11 – 15Table 11 – Timeline for the overall selection process

Potential pre-qualification questionsAn effective pre-qualification process will ask minimal questions and request short answers. This will mean you can ask many more providers to the pre-qualification process and efficiently filter the providers to invite to the formal selection process.

The scope of the pre-qualification questions should be guided by your finalised requirements. If you are unsure on any requirements, the pre-qualification provides a further opportunity to make refinements – for example, if you are undecided about buying your own MCU equipment or using an externally provided service.

The below is a list of potential pre-qualification question to choose from (to provide context to the providers, you will need to provide then with a statement of your requirements, or the options that you are considering, so they can respond to questions on budget and timelines):

Please provide details (including third party sub contract or resell arrangements) for any of the following product and services you provide:

o Immersive telepresence room systems.o Telepresence room systems.o Personal telepresence systems.o MCU or bridging products.o Network services.o Video services (hosted MCU, bridging services, booking services, monitoring

services).o Systems integration (end to end solution integration and management)

Please state your experience in providing the above products and services. Please provide budgetary guidance, with any options highlighted, on the statement of

requirements.




Please provide a delivery timetable estimate, with any options highlighted, to meet the statement of requirements.

Do you have a facility to demonstrate the requirements identified? Are there any requirements that you cannot demonstrate?

Will you be able to provide 3 customer references relevant to the requirements identified?

Request for proposalThe following checklist provides a guide in preparing your RFP or equivalent and the subsequent evaluation:

r Use your requirements document and ask if the provider can deliver each item.r Include any relevant questions that you raised during the hands on experience (section 6)

and provider pre-selection.r Review the checklists provided in the implementation section (section 9) to decide if you

want the provider to include any activities within RFP scope.r Specify that materials lists are clearly identified, including equipment they own and

equipment you buy.r For completeness, include standard procurement items such as; evaluation criteria, contract

terms, method to treat variations, payment milestones, warranties, termination etc. We assume your procurement department will have a standard process for covering these items.

Lessons learned Getting the right contact in the provider organisation who can respond to pre-qualification and

RFP questions is not always easy. The provider will want to qualify you before applying any effort. For this reason get your potential provider contacts early and let them know a pre-qualification process will be held.

Before confirming the final providers it can be useful to make sure all key stakeholders have attended a demonstration of the end point solution. This is only relevant if any key stakeholders were not available as part of the hands on experience in section 7

Make sure that provider availability claims are consistent with their IT architectures and supporting professional services. For example, a bridging service with more than 99% availability will usually require redundant bridging equipment. Engineering support with an SLA of 4 hours onsite will not be possible to achieve if that support is a plane flight away.

Providers will need to assume certain utilisation levels to determine the capacity required to meet your requirements. This is critical as capacity will influence price. For example will the MCU require enough processing for 5 concurrent conferences or 10? As such, ask for capacity assumptions to be stated.

If you require an immersive telepresence system, plan to identify and select a building contractor, so that when you finalise your telepresence selection, you can roll directly into starting the room remediation, as required.

Providers are aware some customers will prefer an end to end approach and will develop a total solution using sub contract arrangements with third party service or product providers. Understanding the sub contract capability will become important in overall proposal evaluation.




One item not covered in this guide, but important in the formal provider selection, is understanding how to migrate services away from the provider at contract conclusion. At some point the future products and services will be replaced, thus, understanding the potential complexity and cost may influence the evaluation process.

9. Implement the solutionThis section provides timelines and considerations for implementing your telepresence solution.

TimelinesThe below table provides a guide of potential implementation timelines. Adjust for what is relevant in your organisation.

Milestone Duration (weeks)

Assumptions

Conceptual design

2 Conceptual design enables the technical approach to be formalised before spending time on detail. Key architectural items such as high availability, disaster recovery, network interconnect points and bridging / MCU locations should all be determined.

Detailed design 2 The detailed design provides the level of information required for configuration of equipment to start. Details such as network addressing and firewall rules are included.

Equipment delivery

4 Equipment delivery obviously varies, thus, adjust this pending supplier advice.

Room remediation (if applicable)

6 This is only applicable for immersive room environments. Room remediation will take up to 6 weeks if physical works such as sound proofing walls or moving air conditioning cooling units are required. See section 2 for immersive room build considerations.

MCU/ Bridge installation (if applicable)

2 This is not applicable if third party MCU and bridging services are used.

WAN link installation (if applicable)

8 This is not applicable if you leverage your existing WAN. If you don’t, some time for auditing existing WAN performance and applying any necessary performance changes should be allowed.

Operational readiness

2 Define support processes and responsibilities for the operational phase of the solution.

End point installation

2 2 weeks assumes all locations can be installed in parallel.

Testing 2 Verify that both technology and processes work as expected.

End user promotion and training

2 Make users aware of the solution and comfortable using it.

Table 12 – Potential implementation timelines




The diagram below shows the upper duration for each milestone with a total duration of 16 weeks. Most milestones require sequential execution as their output drives the milestone that follows.

Diagram 4 – Potential implementation timelines

ChecklistThe following checklists may be useful when planning each of the implementation phases.

Conceptual design

r Is the approach to providing each of the solution components in section 1 identified?r Can you clearly identify how each of your requirements defined in section 4 will be

delivered?r Is the conceptual design consistent with the proposal provided by the successful RFP

respondent?

Detailed Design

r How will management services integrate? (E.g. monitoring services)r Is the approach to security detailed? (E.g. encryption of signalling or media, password

management for administration or connectivity to third party devices and or networks)

Consider the following items if you plan to use your existing network to provide connectivity between end points:

r How will video traffic prioritisation occur over other traffic? (I.e. how will your network bandwidth be allocated to video traffic and how will video traffic be tagged)

r How will network services such as network time, DHCP and directory services be provided?r How will your video dial plan integrate into any existing dial plans?




WAN link installation

r If applicable, have you considered the logistics of establishing new WAN connections? (E.g. landlord approvals, external and internal building cable runs)

r If applicable, have you considered the long lead time often required for WAN connections?

Equipment delivery

r Have you considered the space required to store your deliveries? (Room systems can take substantial space when first delivered. Immersive rooms can be more than a dozen pallets of equipment. If applicable consider the receipt, storage, and transport logistics within your site. Delivery is often to your building loading bay and no further).

Room remediation

r Do you know what room remediation is required, if any? (Your provider will define the room remediation requirements for an immersive solution. Expect to do work on your ceiling, lighting, floors, walls, doors, and air conditioning).

r Do you know the power and network port requirements that you need to provide? (The table locations will require power and network ports for use by the room participants. Thus, expect to provide up to two power outlets and a network outlet per seat).

End point installation

r Do you need to plan for installation outside of business hours? (i.e. do the rooms need to be used during the day by others?).

r Have you got a plan to remove rubbish during the installation? (This is most relevant to immersive solutions where the packaging required for removal is significant).

Operational readiness

r Do you have a process for assisting users who need help?r Do you have a process for users to establish conferences?r What is the process for how booking conflicts will be managed?r What is the process for addressing issues or problems?r Have you defined a role responsible for promoting, measuring and reporting if the

telepresence solution is achieving the original business requirements defined?r Have you defined a role responsible for the overall service as the ultimate point of escalation

for issues or problems?r Who is responsible for managing the service lifecycle? For example new feature releases,

critical software or hardware updates, or vendor end of life announcements.r Who is responsible for reporting on, and managing as need be, service availability, service

utilisation and solution capacity?r Is as-build documentation available that defines how the telepresence solution is

configured?r Is there guidance than can be re-used when additional end points are added to the solution?




Testing

r Have you tested that your room remediation meets the required criteria? (Your provider will include test criteria to confirm remediation completed for immersive purposes is acceptable. For example, this can include tone generators to measure echo, light meters to measure lux levels and noise meters to measure sound proofing).

r Can you test that each of your requirements defined in section 6 are met? (Use your defined requirements and complete appropriate tests for each item).

r If applicable, can you prove that your WAN can support the necessary video traffic? (If you have new WAN connections, consider insisting on long held traffic generators to prove the network stability).

r Can you prove your network availability or redundancy? (Specifically verify equipment that includes redundancy or high availability).

End user promotion and training

r Do you have a plan for walk in days? (You may want to consider connecting conferences between several locations and invite users to walk in at anytime to experience telepresence.

r Do you have online materials available? (This can be helpful for users who cannot make face to face training and as a reference source for users to refresh themselves on functionality).

r Do you have any user champions? (Initial training can tend to be forgotten or miss people who were out of the office. User champions provide a way for knowledge to be embedded into various part of the organisation and thus hopefully continue to be passed on over time).

Lessons learned Unlike personal telepresence systems, users often attend room based telepresence systems

without their computer. As such, it is helpful for each room system to clearly display how to connect a call and how to ask for help.

Have a process testing day where each process is validated through simulated cases. This can be an effective way to transfer processes from a written document into day to day action.



planning a video conference or telepresence project

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