Sherlock Holmes and the VNOC Investigation
You don’t need to hire a private detective to conduct your VNOC (video network operations center) due diligence, but it is a fun way to think about gathering the necessary information.
As I said in a previous post, the complexities of managing a video conference and supporting end users can be daunting, so you want to cover as many bases as possible before you engage a provider. Video conferencing requirements vary from meeting to meeting and company to company, but the goal is to find the best match between your requirements and the capabilities of the VNOC.
A few of the more important topics are industry experience (lots), customization capabilities (yes), service level agreements (mutually agreed upon) and operational strengths such as redundancy and database choices (enterprise level).
Here are a few other ‘clues’:
1. For meetings that involve multiple locations nationally or internationally, is there 24x7 global support that covers multiple time zones?
2. Network and equipment manufacturers – can any industry-standard networks and devices be supported?
3. Device and network issues – what is the troubleshooting and resolution process?
4. In the event of a network failure, what is the backup or redundancy plan?
5. Which services are standard or optional – help desk, conference scheduling, meet and greet participants, conference monitoring and management, problem/ticket management, streaming and archival capabilities, reports, flexible billing?
At the end of the process, when you compare the prospective providers to your list of requirements, you may be able to say, “Elementary, Watson!”