VNOC, VNOC! Who’s there?
Oh, no, another acronym. But this one is important if you participate in video conferences. A VNOC works behind the scenes to help ensure you don’t hear something like “Houston, we have a problem.” So, what’s a VNOC?
A VNOC is a network operations center (NOC) that manages video conferencing. If your company maintains its own video collaboration network, there may be a VNOC in your building. Many companies outsource this capability as a managed service and may do so in particular when public video rental rooms are involved.
A typical video conference involves endpoints, bridges, networks, gatekeepers and gateways. Think of endpoints as a video conference room or an executive desktop equipped with all the technical bits that enable video conferencing. A bridge, which doesn’t look anything like a bridge, is a box that can support ISDN, IP or both in order to connect two or more endpoints. A good analogy is a telephone call between people in different cities. A gatekeeper focuses on making sure that corporate policies pertaining to video conferencing are enforced. A gateway translates one protocol to another (ISDN to IP, for example) when necessary.
So if you read between the lines or skipped the paragraph above after reading the first sentence, I’ll just say that, given the complexities of managing video conferences, you want a VNOC team that has a lot of experience with video equipment, networks, etc. And you want a VNOC that is equipped with current technology. ‘Trailing edge’ is not a recipe for success in video conferencing.
VNOCs vary in the services they provide but these are fairly standard:
• Accepting reservations
• Setting up and testing network connections
• Initiating video conferences – ideally using your workflow tool, such as Outlook
• Monitoring the network
• Troubleshooting and resolving issues with the parties involved
Want to know more about evaluating a VNOC? We will discuss the questions you may want to ask in an upcoming post. After all, at the end of the conference, it is the user experience that matters. And the right VNOC has a lot to do with the quality of the experience.