Background
This document describes the work undertaken to supply SWITCH (NREN) with the ability to deploy Video conferencing services to replace an ageing Cisco-based MCU service currently in use.
A meeting was held at the GEANT Association offices in Cambridge in February 2015 between David Foster (CERN IT and GEANT Association board director) and GEANT Senior Management. It was discussed whether the GEANT Association 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.
Since February 2015, GEANT Association Product Management Team (GAPMT) have been working methodically through the necessary steps to deliver such a service to Switch, starting with discussions with Vidyo and CERN on the principle of a tri-party agreement for the supply of a managed Videoconferencing service, using Vidyo licenses hosted on CERN infrastructure.
Survey outcome
We have received 13 NREN answers so far; 10 from the TF-WebRTC community participants and 3 from outside.
List of NRENs who answered:
DFN, RENAM, MREN, GARR, LITNET, PSNC, NIIF, HEAnet, ARNES, NORDUnet, UNINETT, JISC, FCCN.
Results:
1) Most of the NRENs are willing and able to host vc services in their own infrastructure (85.5%)
2) Some NRENs would be happy to take vc services from other partner NRENs, others not. No extremes though. (54% more likely, 46% less likely).
3) Asking about the specific Vidyo/CERN/GÉANT service, it is "less likely" that NRENs would take it. (61.5%). 2 answered are definitely not and 3 answers are more likely.
Detailed analysis
1) Looking more into the details, it turns out that LITNET, HEAnet, JISC and NIIF already have Vidyo services. HEAnet and JISC are sharing the same Vscene/Vidyo service of JISC.
- What I learned off-line is that HEAnet would be interested in comparing the JISC Vscene/Vidyo offer with the Vidyo/CERN/GÉANT offer.
- Both NIIF and JISC would be interested in integrating their existing Vidyo services with a third-party service but only for offloading peek demands from their own service to the other. Kinda back-up/extension if you like.
2) There were only 3 NRENs being more positive about the Vidyo/CERN/GÉANT deal specifying their needs:
- RENAM: 15 institutions - 2,500 users
- LITNET: 20 institutions - 10,000 users
- HEAnet: 30 institutions - 10,000 users
These numbers clearly show that the current deal is not scalable without tendering procurement!
Counting with 10:1 ratio (CERN info) this demand represents 2250 Vidyo licenses per year, counting with 50:1 ratio (Internet2 info) this is 450 licenses per year.
Remember we can only buy about 500 licenses without procurement and SWITCH already blocks 50 and potentially an extra 50 soon.
3) I also got some informal feedback on pricing. Most of the people who I talked to told me that 1000 EUR/license/year is expensive!
A realistic price that some of them could imagine would be about 500-600 EUR/license/year in case of a hosted solution. This is understandable as most of them would only use it for back-up/extension purposes.
Conclusions
1) The specific Vidyo/CERN/GÉANT service is not favourable by most of the NRENs, as is.
2) It is not scalable without tendering procurement so it cannot be offered to other NRENs, as is.
3) I would not recommend to make it available via the GÉANT Cloud Catalogue as we could easily run into scalability and other national legal issues.
Further work
What I'm hearing from the community is that we have to separate the two things:
a) vc software license offers (provided by commercials)
b) tenancy/hosting offers (provided by NRENs)
There is a need for a joint EU tendering procurement for vc software licenses that is general enough to allow multiple vendors to answer and to be selected. This would give a choice to our community that is legally safe.
(BTW, CERN has to re-procure in two years. If we'll be faster with our joint tendering-procurement than that, they would be interested in buying from us.)
Hosting options can be clarified separately later.