Hello From Omaha, NE

[Stovar]

What's up,

I have been lurking around these forums for awhile and I thought it was about time to introduce myself. I have been in the videoconferencing field for around 2 years but it wasn't until late last year that I actually started getting really involved. I am not CVE certified but it is something I am definitely looking into. Currently the company I work for has a Cisco 3540 MCU, Cisco 3640 MCM Gatekeeper, about 15 Polycom i680 endpoints and we are using VC Wizard by Magicsoft for our scheduling. Right now we are not satisfied with our current setup as it has several limitations. We are not looking into replacing our entire system all at once but we eventually would like to get to that point.

I have ready many of your posts and it has helped answer many questions I have had. From what I can see from other posts this seems to be a rather friendly community and I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Aaron

[mazzarak]

Hi Aaron

welcome to the community! We look forward to hearing your experiences, and helping you figure out what might work best for you in the long run!

[Rick McAllister]

Aaron, we are currently testing the Cisco Equipment that you mentioned. I am curious as to the limitations that you have experienced. Is it with the scheduling software or the gatekeeper and the mcu.

[Stovar]

Sorry about getting back to you so late. There is really nothing wrong with the Cisco and it has been fairly reliable (It has needed a couple reboots in as many years) but one of the most annoying limitations I have with our specific setup is you can only have a maximum of 5 ports for a Continuous presence VC. Basically 4 people on screen. I have no problem with only allowing 4 people on screen but if you have 6 endpoints and 4 people that call in for an audio feed you just can't do it. You can only go to voice switching. You can upgrade to 11 layouts in Continuous presence but that feature card costs around 30 grand. For that price we are looking into the Codian 4210 MCU. I had a demo unit on my desk for about a month and it worked great. Our Cisco router has about a $13,000 a year maintenance charge where as the Codian has a 3 year Maintenance charge of just over $7,000. Figure that the codian also has all the scheduling built in we can ditch our Magicsoft scheduling software and it's $7000 maintenance. I figure the Codian 4210 with a price of 29,000 will pay for itself in just around 2 years with the money we save in maintenance alone. As an added bonus Codian has been offering a free $9,500 option of either h.264 at rates higher than 384 or the High res package for 4CIF support through the end of the year. I am crossing my fingers that the purchase request I put in goes through!!