Avistar’s Video Conferencing Means Business

Businesses have been promised affordable, reliable and easy to use video conferencing for years, however most solutions on the market turn out to be more hassle than they are worth.

Avistar has been able to deliver on that promise with its Avistar C3 Communicator, a platform of products that brings high definition, multi-party video conferencing to most any business desktop.

Unlike cloud based or hosted solutions, Avistar C3 Communicator uses a client/server approach to build a video conferencing system. That approach gives a business full control over how, when and where to deploy video conferencing and also provides a means to do in-house conferencing (desk to desk, conference room to conference room) without passing any information out over a public internet connection. What’s more, that approach eliminates the “on-demand” and subscription fees associated with hosted video conferencing services, while giving administrators control over bandwidth, security and connectivity. Avistar offers several different products, including bundles designed to integrate with Microsoft OCS, HP RGS and Citrix ICA, as well as standalone bundles, such as Avistar C3 Communicator, Avistar C3 Conference and Avistar C3 Connect – each of which varies in the included components, number of sessions supported and overall feature sets.

I took an in-depth look at Avistar C3 Communicator Business Pro Edition, which is an integrated bundle of the company’s C3 Endpoint (desktop client), C3 Call Control (server), C3 Tunnel (encryption), C3 Conference (Interoperability Bridge) and C3 Command (Management and direction console). Getting started with Avistar C3 Communicator Business Pro Edition was surprisingly easy, a single installation wizard handles installation of all of the various components onto a Windows Server (Windows Server 2003 or later), needing little or no input from the person doing the installation. Of course, you can skip using all of the default settings if you want to change paths, ports or other elements. The only installation chores you must do is assign a domain and create an administrative level user – better integration with active directory would be a real plus here, keeping administrative (and user) accounts synced up with the product. The initial requirements are minimal, however for best performance and to support multiple concurrent sessions it is a good idea to use Multi-Core CPUs, plenty of RAM and a speedy TCP/IP connection to the corporate backbone.

I found that there is nothing stopping you from installing the product on a virtual server, which may be more appealing in the data center and allowing you to deploy Avistar C3 Communicator Business Pro Edition as if it was a virtual appliance. However, you will need to pay a little more attention to server abilities (virtual hardware and software) if going the virtual route. Once the main elements of Avistar is installed, the next steps include some basic configuration chores, such as installing a license, configuring SIP connectivity, creating a Tunnel for access and setting up some user accounts. None of those elements proved to be overly complicated or difficult to accomplish – somewhat of a rarity when it comes to self-hosted videoconferencing solutions. I found the product’s management consoles easy to understand and use, for example; the Call Control console is laid out using a heirarchial menu structure with simple to identify choices, such as “Monitoring”, “Configuration”, “Users” and so on. What I liked most about that is that I did not need to be a video conferencing or networking expert to manage the system.

While setup and management is a very important element of Avistar C3 Communicator Business Pro Edition, it really comes down to the end user experience to judge the product. Here, Avistar did not disappoint. The system works using a software client that is installed on each PC, each PC must be equipped with a quality web cam and sound card.

For my testing, I used a pair of Logitech WebCam Pro 9000s, as well as some integrated cameras on a few Toshiba and Fujitsu notebook computers. I also did a multi-user conference with five representatives of Avistar, but I do not know what the exact configuration of their PCs, other than they were running Windows. Nonetheless, video and audio proved to be exceptional, at least on a wired connection. I did encounter some problems when trying to conference using a busy WiFi network – video often froze or was dropped altogether to preserve the audio portion of the conference. However, WiFi problems and not the Avistar software most likely caused those problems. Even so, many users may want to connect via public WiFi networks and will have no control over the quality of the link, which may reduce the utility of Avistar in those situations.

While features, setup and performance are all important elements, it is safe to say that the most important element of a desktop video conferencing solution is the functional usability. Here, Avistar’s desktop client, known as C3 Communicator v2.0, is the star of the show. I tested the windows version of Avistar C3 Communicator Business Pro Edition on several different systems, under both Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. The application was very simple to install, thanks to an installation wizard. However, the product installs as a trial version (works for 60 days) until you install a license file, which does complicate things a little – a better way to handle licensing would be on the server side of the install and then eliminate the need for a local license, which would be simpler and also allow temporary users to participate in conferences. Several other settings must also be configured, including settings for SIP, Tunneling (Firewall Transversal), proxies and so on – here, an auto-configuration file that you could download from the server would be a nice touch.

Once setup is completed, C3 Communicator is ready to use and here is where ease of use enters the equation. C3 Communicator starts off with an address book, which is where you would put all of your contacts – those contacts can be looked up using the global directory option (if you integrated LDAP), where all registered users are listed. It becomes a simple matter of point and click to build your address book. Starting a video call is much like making a VoIP call, just select whom you want to call from the directory and click call – the rest happens automatically. The software will “ring” your contact’s desktop and connect the call if the contact answers. Adding additional members to a conference just entails calling them using the software.

Another interesting feature, which is brand new with this version of C3 Communicator, is the ability to share a desktop or application – here a participant can click on an icon, which allows them to share their desktop with other callers. That proves to be a great way to run slideshows, demonstrate procedures or train participants. However, bear in mind that desktop sharing only offers basic sharing capabilities and is not an effective tech support or remote troubleshooting tool. The actual experience of making a video call is very good – Avistar incorporates bandwith controls, advanced compression and other techniques to offer high quality video and fast frame rates, even over remote broadband connections. I found the experience of video chatting with multiple participants to be superior to other technologies I have used in the past. Video came across with high definition and audio was crisp and clear, even when I was chatting with five other users over a broadband connection. C3 Communicator also does a good job of keeping the focus on a given speaker – in other words, the software automatically moves who is currently speaking into a larger window, improving the conferencing experience.

All in all, Avistar’s take on desktop video conferencing is a leap forward and makes the technology much more palatable to business users. By changing some licensing elements and how the product is bundled, Avistar could truly have a market leader on their hands, that would become the first choice for desktop videoconferencing for business both large and small.