Previously, video technology didn’t have the rap that it does now. It was considered magic of sorts – helping to connect those that weren’t in the same room with us to magically appear. Thankfully, we’ve evolved and now, most people over the age of five understand how cameras and screens work. Now, instead of video magic being hard to comprehend, the thing that very few people understand is what is happening in between a video call. To break it down simply, the diagram below highlights important aspects to help understand the inner workings of a video call. There’s a lot to digest on how a video call works, so let’s focus on the bridge.
The Story of The Bridge
Taking all the different endpoints and sources for calls, the bridge joins endpoints together into meetings and then processes to help decrease the total load on the network and transform the data into the appropriate format. For most of the history of video, these bridges have been purpose-built, dedicated pieces of hardware. However, it can be difficult to scale these pieces of hardware, most commonly known as Multipoint Control Units (MCU) and make them flexible enough to deal with the increasing variety of sources for video communication (think browser-based video and mobile devices). So, a new technology is needed.
Introducing Pexip Infinity: A Modern Bridge
We stated earlier that technology is usually made with purpose, to fill a void. Seeing the gap in video communication, Pexip introduces Pexip Infinity to simplify things. Pexip Infinity has the platform to replace the traditional hardware bridge (aka MCU), connecting video endpoints and theoretically expanding infinitely to include as many devices as possible on either end, which is aptly named Pexip Infinity. The platform is able to virtualize the bridge functionality on a conventional server and as server performance increases, so does bridging capability, which means video collaboration doesn’t have to be a frustrating, blotchy experience.
Pexip goes even further by including video sources that were previously difficult to combine in meetings, like Skype, Lync, WebRTC and more giving users flexibility to adopt using this technology. We get it, technology can be difficult to understand and unless you’re engrained into it, using a technology that automatically integrates is a game changer. This really brings video to new places in the world while simultaneously making it easy to manage and setup up, all at a lower cost than the traditional infrastructure.
Prepare for the Future by Knowing the Past and Present
With teams becoming increasingly more global and workplaces forging the frontier of remote workplaces, collaboration can’t falter. If you can’t have adequate video tools and software, collaboration suffers. Working closely with Pexip, Vyopta has ensured that we align our products to continue to push the technical frontier of video as well as make it easier for more people to use video communication.
Using a bridge system like Pexip Infinity with a solution like Vyopta’s CPM software helps alleviate the frustrations video participants can often face. Our historical and real-time data that our CPM Analytics™ module provides enables organizations to not only truly understand their video environments, but effectively and intelligently plan for the future as it helps understand trends and user adoption. It takes the whole conundrum of there’s a frustrating problem every time we call and we don’t know why, to letting the IT team pinpoint and resolve issues and improve experience based on the analytics of that call. Perhaps the biggest future changer is CPM’s monitoring module, that gives the opportunity for IT engineers to dial back the clock and pinpoint root causes due to UC infrastructure, user error or network problems. In turn, it proactively allows teams to avert disruptions in the future.
Pexip Infinity has proven that its helping to fill a gap in technology, a shining example of a modern bridge, a champion to collaboration geeks everywhere. Like many of its’ competitors and predecessors, it offers endless connections, ease of use and flexible deployment. And, in a world where technology can become confusing and hard to understand, it’s a great example of when partnered with solutions like Vyopta, collaboration technology isn’t all that hard to embrace and use to your organizational advantage.
