[Videoconferencing] FYI - Future of EVO

[Andrew Daviel]

FYI

Despite successfully hosting far more video conferences than ESnet or 
Vidy, it seems that EVO is being de-funded sometime soon (December 2012 ?

Philippe Galvez gave a presentation at CHEP2012 where he outlined plans 
to transition EVO to Seevogh.

There will be two flavours - a commercial product, and a "research 
network" service using the existing Panda servers (which will become 
cloud-enabled, able to be provisioned on cloud servers as demand 
requires.)

"All current EVO research communities will be entitled to subscribe to 
the SeeVogh Research Network"

"cost is minimal if the community comes together "

"Pricing to access the SeeVogh Research Network will be highly affordable 
for every research experiments and projects."

Free evaluation is available for testing:
http://seevogh.com/welcome/

Slides available:
https://indico.cern.ch/contributionDisplay.py?sessionId=7&contribId=67&confId=149557

I have a slightly different set as PDF direct from Philippe if anyone 
would like a copy.

Internet2 (in the US) partners with Evogh:
http://seevogh.com/about-us/press-releases/internet2-announcement/

I just did a test call with Evogh -

Right now, the Seevogh client is in production with some features in 
beta. It's supposed to be friendlier than EVO, which means some
features have been dropped and controls rearranged to be easier for 
occasional users.
It seems to require Firefox 10 (or says it does).
Support for unaccelerated graphics has been dropped - only the OpenGL 
based video client (vievo) is available.
The recorder is in beta.
Support for camera control is dropped (tuning colour, brightness). 
Support for the auxiliary camera is I think dropped; I'm not quite sure. 
They mentioned the ability to run multiple cameras somehow.
The PAL/NTSC selector is missing, which is an issue for our room systems, 
but fixable (we have the driver source code).
Echo cancellation is built-in and better than EVO (apparently 5% of PCs 
have problematic soundcards for good E/C but often different speakers 
help).
There is an online booking system which sends out meeting URLs and 
calendar invites (ICS). The research network version will support ongoing 
meetings like EVO but is not yet up.
There will be an Android version and probably an iOS version. Talk of 
running on Android tablets.
There is an integrated SIP/H323 gateway.
They say the phone bridges willl continue to be available (I presume in 
the research network version).
You need a paid account to start a meeting, but not to join one (unlike 
Vidyo, which needs a CERN account)

No word on pricing, licencing etc. at this point. I'm not sure whether it 
would be a TRIUMF service or require each user group to fund it 
separately.

One note of interest: EVO has run with over 100 participants, Seevogh 
with 50. Skype group video is limited to 10 participants and costs 
$10/month/user for lower-quality video.



In other news, Argonne has pulled the plug on AccessGrid, which will 
transition to open source via Google Code or some such. That shared some 
code with VRVS (and the non-GL video client in EVO). It does not need a 
central server, so can continue without Argonne.



-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager