Indiana University (IU), a major public research institution with students across eight campuses in the state, announced it will partner with Norwegian company Pexip Inc., a provider of professional video collaboration and conferencing, to deliver expanded video conference services for each of its campuses; this will benefit students, faculty and staff.
The arrangement has Pexip providing its scalable software platform for any number of users on video, voice and mobile to engage in meetings; it will happen in Spring 2014. Simen Teigre, co-founder and CEO of Pexip, declares himself proud to “be part of the evolution of IU’s distance education program together with SKC Communications.”
SKC Communications, a solution provider that has been consulted to guide and help bring all facets of the communication technology into one cohesive unit, has been called in to help make sure everything runs smoothly in the transition. The goal is to enable the most scalable infrastructure in higher education while offering the next generation of technology for collaboration using video, voice and Audio/Visual (AV) technologies.
Distance education and collaboration are on the rise and IU has one of the largest video conferencing school installations in the United States, connecting with people all over the world. The new solution will allow IU to expand its capacity – while still using existing systems – and provide a “robust enough and flexible enough [system] to adapt to the future,” said Anastasia Morrone, IU associate vice president for learning technologies, in a statement.
Pexip will introduce a WebRTC (Web real-time communication) solution to enable two-way video conferencing for even more students to take videoconferencing-delivered distance education courses and to allow collaboration and meeting spaces online amongst faculty, staff and students. The technology will allow everyone with a simple browser like Chrome or Firefox to join in a meeting online.
Morrone explained that “[b]y adding Pexip Infinity [to use a Web browser, like Chrome, Firefox or Opera, to talk, text, chat or do video conferencing through WebRTC] to IU’s current suite of collaborative technologies, the university gains the edge it needs of global, high-tech communication.”
Steve Egyhazi, principal analyst-multimedia, IU Collaboration Technologies added that with Pexip Infinity’s native support of Microsoft Lync, IU has really created a truly unified communications environment. By making it easy for staff and students to access this technology promptly and from any devices, accessing HD multipoint video conferencing and video collaboration become as normal as using other apps, like email or chat. This apt telepresence solution enables students and educators to easily and quickly connect from wherever they are, whenever they want.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
