JOINT PROCUREMENT OF VIDEO SERVICES FOR THE GÉANT COMMUNITY

As the results of the mini-survey and the TF-WebRTC consultation indicate (please, read the details below), now there is a window of opportunity to conduct a joint European scale tendering procurement for video conferencing services. GÉANT, NORDUnet and some selected NRENs are willing to join forces for the benefit of the entire GÉANT Community. The result of the tender is intended to make available multiple vendors' products that NRENs who signed up for the tender can call-off with both hosted and unhosted infrastructure options.

NRENs will be approached and informed primarily via TF-WebRTC but also other channels. If your NREN is interested in a) signing up for the tender, b) offering procurement expertise or c) covering the costs of the preparations, please contact Peter Szegedi at GÉANT (peter.szegedi@geant.org).

SURVEY ANALYSIS

Note that this mini-survey was primarily triggered by the particular Vidyo/CERN/GÉANT offer. Our NRENs' diversity is clearly reflected in the results!

1 - Background

A meeting was held at the GÉANT offices in Cambridge in February 2015 between David Foster (CERN IT and GÉANT board member) and GÉANT Senior Management. It was discussed whether the GÉANT would be prepared to provide a contractual mechanism to allow SWITCH to use CERN based infrastructure for the provision of video conferencing services. The driver for this was the costly support for Cisco MCU systems that SWITCH would incur after expiry of their contract in August 2015.

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