Why should your company buy an Audio Conferencing Bridge?

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Audio conferencing service has become a routine part of day-to-day business life. Its use results in lower travel costs, improved business efficiencies and higher employee productivity. Historically, corporations have been outsourcing this service to the telephone companies. The telephone companies charge premium rates for this service, anywhere from 10 cents – 35 cents per minute per person usually based on volume. Due to the fact that these calls are billed on per minute per person basis, typically have 6-8 people and last for 30 minutes or more, the charges add up very quickly.

As feature rich and economical conference bridges come to the market, businesses now have an option of bringing the conferencing service in-house instead of continuing to buy expensive outsourced service each month. Several white papers are now available on the Internet that analyze the costs of outsourced service vs. the in-house solution. Most of them conclude that a typical corporation can save 70-80% of the costs associated with conferencing services by bringing these functions in-house.

Therefore, once the decision is made to bring the conferencing function in-house, then the question remains – what should be the selection criterion for choosing between different manufacturer’s equipment.

Audio Conference Bridge – Selection criterion

In our opinion, the following capabilities should be considered when selecting a conference bridge.

Feature Richness

Over the years, people have become accustomed to having fairly sophisticated outsourced conferencing service offered by the telephone companies. Conferees generally dial an 800# or a local number and then enter a PIN to join the conference call. Some of the service providers offer permanently assigned PINs so that the conferees don’t have to keep track of multiple PINs. These are called reservation less calls. While in a conference, a conferee can mute/unmute himself/herself, or sometimes a moderator may need to drop a conferee if his/her phone is interjecting objectionable noise into the conference. The conferees are also able to change the volume of their respective lines. Some of the phone companies offer digital recordings of the conference calls. It is important that all such features also be present in the in-house solution so that the end user experience stays at par with the outsourced service.

Internet Accessibility

In order for the in-house solution to succeed, the service should be easy to use. Most of the modern telecommunication equipment designed in last few years serve as Internet appliances. These products provide Internet based access to their user interface. From a conferencing perspective, such capability will allow a chairperson to schedule his/his own conferences over the Internet without requiring the help of an operator. Likewise, a system administrator should be able to remotely access and configure system parameters, add/delete users, monitor the usage and do other housekeeping tasks. With Internet accessible products, there is no need for another standalone computer that only serves as an administrator console.

Migration to VoIP

The telephone network is going through a historic transformation. The current circuit switched network is slowly transitioning to packet switched network. As packet switching takes root, its impact is being felt on the enterprise networks as well. Companies are embracing IP PBXs for new installs and more and more users are learning the use of voice telephony from their PCs. Therefore, it is important that the conferencing equipment that these companies purchase, provide support for the legacy circuit switched environment as well as the up coming packet based VoIP/SIP and VoIP/H.323 technologies. There are very few conferencing products available on the market today that can do conferencing across the TDM end points (i.e. legacy telephones) and the IP end points (i.e., IP phones, H.323 enabled PCs) even though more are headed in that direction.

Integrated Web Conferencing

In last 2-3 years web conferencing service has also become popular. Companies buy web conferencing service from specialized service bureaus, similar to the outsourced audio conferencing. This service allows multiple participants to share a moderator’s computer desktop thereby creating a collaborative environment, in which multiple people can work together on the same presentation or on the same document. Most often when a company uses web conference, it also uses a simultaneously running audio conference so that people can discuss the contents of the material they are working on. Invariably, the two conferences – web and audio, are supplied by two different service providers. This is not a desirable situation as the people involved have to manage two separate call set up processes, let alone pay two separate bills. Some of the modern audio conference bridges provide integrated web conferencing capability. The integrated product creates a more cohesive collaboration environment in which there is only one set of PINs to deal with, and same start and stop times apply to both services. If the audio conference is terminated, the web conference also gets terminated automatically and vice versa.

Emergency Conferencing

In our daily lives we hear about emergencies all the time – some are manmade and some are due to Mother Nature. In all such cases, usually a preset group of first responders needs to come together quickly to take control of the situation. The faster the people act – more lives they can save and/or reduce loss of property. Audio conferencing can be very effective in dealing with such emergency situations. Some of the newer bridges on the market offer ‘enhanced firebar’ capability. With this capability, when triggered, the bridge can dial out to a pre-set group of emergency responders or ‘firemen’ and bring them into a conference very quickly. One specific model actually also supports find-me capability along with the firebar functionality. In this case, the bridge dials out and looks for first responders at their multiple numbers (cell, office, home etc), and then puts them into a conference as it finds them. It also simultaneously sends SMS, pager and email messages that contain information about the emergency situation so that responders can take appropriate action quickly.

Robustness

There are two major camps in the world when it comes to operating systems that are used in building sophisticated telecommunications products. These are UNIX on one hand and Microsoft NT and its various flavors on the other. Majority of the complex telecommunications products such as Central Office Switches, AIN equipment, high-end transmission equipment – all are generally based on UNIX. Lately, an open source version of UNIX called LINUX is gaining prominence. It brings the robustness of UNIX albeit at a minimal cost being an open source product. Some of the vendors are now making telecommunications products based on LINUX, which besides bringing robustness of UNIX also allows use of several other open source components such as email server, web server and databases etc.

Scalability

Some of the conference bridges on the market serve port range from 8 ports to 96 ports. Bridges that are sub T1 (i.e., 8 – 23 ports) support analog loop start interfaces. The bridges that support 24 ports or higher are usually based on digital T1 interfaces. Sometimes, a company may start out with a smaller analog bridge but then scale to a larger digital bridge as its needs grow. Therefore, it is important that both analog and digital bridges provide same set of features so that future scalability is seamless from an end user’s perspective.

Network Deployment

Figure 1 shows a 16-port conference bridge with analog interfaces deployed behind a company’s PBX. In a typical case, the sixteen lines will be put in a hunt group and a lead number will be assigned to that group. The PBX will be programmed to route all calls destined to the lead number to the conference bridge. As multiple people call in, all calls are routed to the conference bridge. The bridge responds with a welcome prompt and requests the caller to enter a PIN. All parties presenting a common PIN are then placed in their respective conference. Concurrent to the audio conference, the participants can also conduct a web conference session in which the chairperson can share his/her desktop or a specific application running on his/her desktop with the fellow participants.

Figure 1: Small Enterprise Application

Figure 2 shows a 48-port conference bridge that supports both VoTDM and VoIP technologies. Calls originating on the VoTDM network get routed through the PBX to the conference bridge over the 2 T1 lines. The process of routing of these calls is analogous to that described above. Calls that originate on the VoIP network are routed to the conference bridge by the data network/Internet based on the Conference Bridge’s IP address. In each case callers hear the welcome prompt requesting them to enter a PIN. Participants with the same PIN then enter their respective conference. Concurrent to the audio conference, the participants can also conduct a web conference session in which the chairperson can share his/her desktop or a specific application running on his/her desktop with the fellow participants.

Figure 2: Large Enterprise Application

The use of Audio and Web conferencing is growing worldwide. Small, medium and large size companies spend a fair amount of their telecom budget on outsourcing these servicetoday. These companies can save 70-80% of the costs associated with these services by deploying their own in-house conference bridges that can support both of these services. This paper discussed some of the important aspects that one should consider when makina selection between different vendors conferencing equipment.