Cloud MCUs

An emerging trend in the video conferencing industry is the move from an on-premise hardware- or software-based MCU to a cloud-hosted MCU. Companies such as Blue Jeans and Polycom have already started to introduce services with these features. The advantage to this approach is that an organization can limit the on-premise investment in MCUs, which was sometimes very cost-prohibitive in the case of a hardware-based MCU. Software-based MCUs generally came at a lower price point, but a hosted subscription model in the cloud is becoming a very popular concept.

The shift to these cloud MCUs has also sparked new possibilities for interoperability that were previously not considered with traditional MCUs. For example, Blue Jeans supports nearly any type of endpoint all joining the same meeting through their service including Lync, Skype, Google, Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize, traditional H.323 systems, or even clients through a web browser. The frustrating days of trying to configure a meeting between two partners using different video vendors are addressed by using a cloud service that supports nearly any type of system.

Cloud MCUs might sound very attractive, and they certainly do have their advantages, but there is a level of control that is lost, as is the case with any cloud service. There are options to customize and control meetings, but a traditional on-premise MCU typically has many more options available to administrators.

The other consideration with a cloud MCU is that all video traffic is going out to the Internet and back, even for calls that only involve the organization, as shown in Figure 20.6. A call that might have typically traversed the WAN or stayed on the internal network now requires a significant amount of Internet bandwidth. The cloud MCU might or might not make sense depending on an organization’s network architecture and Internet service.

Figure 20.6. Cloud MCU interoperability.