Megaconference

[Todd Austin <>]

We use Blue Jeans Network at Michigan for a number of reasons.

Interoperability w/ phones & H.323/SIP.

Recording.

Low-bandwidth-demand high-reliability open protocol - H.264SVC. We can punch stable Blue Jeans calls into challenging locations with poor infrastructure.

Great responsive service - live chat 24x7, regularly work with us to introduce new features and fix bugs (try getting that from MS!)

Additional services like Call Me (call telephones to include them in a BJN call), Relay (instant connect to BJN room for videoconferencing codecs), and Primetime (live broadcast environment for large (5000 locations) audiences with ability to promote watchers to the live meeting.

If you are with Internet 2, BJN is a Net+ service you can access at a terrific price.

All in all, we've found it to be a very high-quality service that 'just works', as someone once said. I can't imagine abandoning it for Skype for Business with all of its feature, bandwidth, proprietary protocol, responsiveness, etc. issues.

Best of luck to you!

Todd

Todd L. Austin

Videoconferencing Lead

LSA Instructional Support Services

University of Michigan

Office:  G333 Mason Hall

Mail:  G353 Mason Hall

419 South State Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1027

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/iss

office:  734-647-1534

Register now for a Blue Jeans workshop at:

http://ttc.iss.lsa.umich.edu/ttc/?s=blue+jeans&submit=Search

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Koorus Bookan <> wrote:

If one was starting from scratch and wanting to operate in a vacuum or homogeneous environment(which is not the case) for desktop VC , you could cringe  and use SfB. MS is heavily counting on past success of consumer skype which has been losing ground to competition which are plenty. As a paying customer of skype finally decided to leave Skype due to issues I have had in the past couple of years(very shoddy for overseas calls). The dream of MS that everyone would settle for skype is just that, a pipe dream. I wonder what the next name change will be.

The following are immediate concern in edu world:

Interoperability, QoS, the desktop nature of design, quite expensive (after all said and done) and yet not a full solution, subject to all the regular MS antics. (I.e Skype was good for most part, and now there are glitches with it).

These things are contrary to common wisdom of "telepresence" that says people should feel close to real physical presence in a VC session with minimal hiccups in order to break the physical distance barrier.

Certainly SfB as a teaching tool is like fitting a square box into a ball shape. Just because you connect person A to B doesn't mean you can call it a classroom. Anyone claiming so haven't seen how and what people do in a virtual classroom.

Cisco is pushing Webex as a teaching tool, MS is pushing skype as such, neither one are proper tools.

koorus

On 5/9/2016 6:52 PM, Jon Winterbottom wrote:

Hi all,  I'm finding myself posting a lot about skype for business recently.  Since I'm feeling the push to go with S4B as our primary solution for all things video conferencing, I would like to know why others haven't?  Or if you are using it what is the primary use.   Is there anyone out there that has successfully implemented S4B that is using it to conduct online courses?  Thanks to those who have already commented on some of my previous posts.

Regards,

Sent from my iPad