Verizon Teams With Cisco, Microsoft For SIP Trunking And Immersive Video

Unified communications is more than just merging voice, video, chat and white-boarding into a platform. A Unified Communications (UC) system has to integrate with legacy telecommunications systems and provide real-time media support to clients that could include plain old telephone service (POTS), broad band, or high speed WAN links. High-definition video, the holy grail of video-conferencing, used to require room-sized systems with high-speed, dedicated WAN links, but new products from Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg are portable and easy to use. Verizon is providing the needed robust network to deliver UC service across town, country and worldwide.

Verizon is now certified by Microsoft to provide SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking to companies using Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 R2. Companies using OCS internally over the LAN or WAN also use Verizon's SIP trunking service, called IP Trunking in Verizon nomenclature, to connect VoIP calls to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Without certification, Microsoft OCS customers using Verizon's IP Trunking would not be able to get support from Microsoft for OCS SIP issues. It's more than just access to support. Certification also means that Microsoft engineers understand how Verizon's IP Trunking service works and can verify the proper configuration and troubleshoot problems.

Verizon is also announcing their Immersive Video Conferencing that combines Cisco video-conferencing equipment with Verizon's global network, served by their Private IP service. The service can run the  gamut of providing the a fully-designed and delivered Immersive Video service complete with network connectivity and equipment to interconnect existing Cisco video equipment via Verizon's Private IP service. The services can also be selected a la carte.

If Forrest Gump were an IT analyst, he'd probably say "the Internet is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." While Internet connectivity has generally improved and is fairly reliable once you get past the last-mile connection, it isn't reliable enough for real-time, business video-conferencing. Stuttering, delays and poor image quality may be acceptable for consumers or ad hoc meetings, but when you want to connect multiple remote offices in a high-definition video-conference, you really want to go the extra mile and acquire a private networking service to ensure that your video has the proper bandwidth, delay and jitter to run a conference successfully.The Immersive Video service comes in two versions, Standard and Premier, and both types contain the features and functionality for a company to provide video conferencing, scheduling and reporting. The Premier level adds the ability to use Verizon's attendants, manage conference scheduling and proactive video-conference monitoring, troubleshooting and fault isolation. Proactive monitoring means that if a problem develops during a call, Verizon's engineers will start working on it before the customer calls with a problem. The goal is to maintain the video-conference with no disruption to any connected parties.  

Verizon can manage video-conferencing both inside and among companies, provided both companies are Verizon Immersive Video customers. The company is working on providing service for other scenarios as well. That's fine for intra-company video conferencing, but inter-company is still a difficult problem to solve. The standards for call set-up, scheduling and other conferencing services aren't yet complete or widely deployed.

The managed Immersive Video service is maintained 24x7x365 via two video network operation centers, (VNOCS) located in Chicago and Hong Kong for follow-the-sun management. Verizon also maintains two video nodes in Houston Texas and North Royalton, Ohio, which include redundant 10Gb links, border session gateways and other equipment and services to ensure the proper management and monitoring of the Immersive Video service. Representatives from Verizon assured us they can deliver responsive video in the global markets they serve from these two locations.