Huawei Videoconferencing Systems Interoperate with Microsoft Lync

URL: www.vcinsight.com

Source: Telepresence and VC Insight

Huawei says that video communication is becoming increasingly popular as an integral component of any collaboration system. However, enterprises are faced with an awkward situation where room-based videoconferencing systems cannot interoperate with unified communications (UC) systems that incorporate functions such as email, instant messaging, and web conferencing. This adversely affects the internal communication efficiency and increases operation costs. Enterprises require videoconferencing systems to be interoperable with UC systems.

Huawei videoconferencing systems are now interoperable with Microsoft Lync, allowing enterprise users to participate in meetings from anywhere through either video conferencing systems in conference rooms or from their mobile devices. This interoperability helps improve business collaboration.

Interoperability between videoconferencing and UC systems allows users to initiate, join, and manage conferences quickly and conveniently, have a more consistent experience across multiple endpoints, and enhance communication efficiency. Specifically, the interoperability between videoconferencing and UC systems is implemented as follows:

First, video endpoints, telepresence systems, and Service Management Center (SMC) 2.0 directly integrate Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Users of Huawei videoconferencing endpoints can search online AD users and save the results to the local address books, with presence enabled for contacts in the local address books. User can call local sites or online LDAP sites to schedule multipoint conferences on the SMC 2.0.

Second, Huawei's plug-in for Outlook makes it more convenient to organize and participate in video meetings. Users can schedule video meetings directly from Outlook, which they are already familiar with. Lync users and videoconferencing system users can easily join the same meeting.

Third, Huawei video endpoints and telepresence systems directly register and share presence information with Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Lync users can see the availability status of Huawei videoconferencing systems, and place video calls easily by clicking presence-enabled contacts. After a meeting is created using Huawei's plug-in for Outlook, a calendar invitation will be sent to Lync users and videoconferencing system.

Conferencing between Microsoft Lync and Huawei videoconferencing endpoints can be point-to-point or multipoint in mixed audiovisual format, giving users the flexibility to choose a convenient location to participate in a certain meeting.

When Microsoft Lync clients interoperate with Huawei videoconferencing systems, the same Lync look and feel is preserved to provide Lync users a seamless experience. Huawei videoconferencing system's interoperability allows Lync users to switch between audio-only and video conferencing at the click of a button to switch the video on or off. In addition, a user can hold and resume a Lync call both in point-to-point and multipoint conferences.

Huawei videoconferencing takes advantage of direct integration with Microsoft Lync through an easily-set-up IP network connection. There is no need to add a gateway or alter the original Microsoft UC system, resulting in no increase in hardware or network costs.

To guarantee communication security, Huawei devices including endpoints, telepresence and MCU support Transport Layer Security (TLS) for signal encryption and Secure Real Time Protocol (SRTP) for media encryption, providing customers with secure and reliable communication for commercial applications.