Masergy’s new ISC portal simplifies and unifies network and application management with real-time visibility, analytics and service control purpose-built for the multi-cloud enterprise.

The portal offers a holistic view of clients’ global SD-WAN and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) applications while enabling the ability to manage, secure, and optimize their network environments in real-time.

Related: Voice Control: The Next Big Thing in Wayfinding?

From private and public bandwidth to edge devices, public/private cloud instances, business applications, and voice/video communications, global enterprises now have the unified visibility and control they need to maximize their application performance. No more reconciling information across multiple dashboards.

Features of Masergy Intelligent Service Control portal include:

• A single pane of glass delivers unified views of analytics for the customer’s global networks, UCaaS, WAN edge devices, and application performance.
• Customizable dashboard views allow the customer to feature the information they need with views of top applications, security threats, network services, network usage, and open support tickets.
• Real-time bandwidth controls provide the ability to modify port bandwidth globally across both public and private connections.
• End-to-end visibility of application performance help customers make faster, more informed decisions about bandwidth allocation and service improvement.
• Comprehensive self-service features empower the customer to control the network with site and contact management capabilities, ticket tracking, alarm notifications, invoicing, device reports, change history, and escalations.

“When it comes to accelerating the pace of IT and building a multi-cloud environment, unified network visibility is everything–global enterprises need a single source of truth for information about their cloud application performance,” said Masergy’s Chief Digital Officer Terry Traina.

“Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN solution is leading the industry in providing customers with a unified framework for monitoring and managing their increasingly complex environments, so our customers can ensure cloud application reliability, streamline WAN management, and stay focused on their strategic initiatives.”

The post Masergy’s New Intelligent Service Control Portal Experience Packages Analytics and Control appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Features and Specifications

The SDVoE (Software Defined Video over Ethernet)-ready M4300-16X is a 16-port 10GBASE-T copper switch with an option for PoE+ across all ports in full provisioning mode. The M4300-16X is a half-width 1U switch that comes either with a non-PoE power supply or with a power supply capable of providing 480W of PoE power to the 16 ports.

The SDVoE-ready M4300-24FX is a 24-port 10GBASE-X SFP+ fiber switch with two shared 10GBASE-T copper ports. The M4300-24FX is a half-width 1U switch that dramatically lowers the cost of fiber-based project installations up to 24 nodes.

“NETGEAR’s focus on the professional AV marketplace is demonstrated by the addition of these two products designed from the ground up for SDVoE applications,” says Richard Jonker, senior vice president of product line management for the Small Business Group at NETGEAR. “The M4300 series is not only one of the most affordable solutions out there, but it also offers uncomplicated equipment with no need to program. It provides everything installers would need to support zero-frame latency, increased I/O flexibility and scalability, and true AV/IT convergence with standard IP switching with a very streamlined architecture.”

Pricing and Availability

Netgear M4300-16X and M4300-24FX will be available nationwide Q4. Pricing will range from $1,899 – $2,199.

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Benefits for Smaller Businesses

“Offering ICS security as a cloud-delivered service has the potential to improve the scalability and flexibility of deployments while extending security to smaller operators that lack the resources to manage complex installations,” says Patrick Daly, an analyst at 451 Research. Adds Mille Gandlesman, CTO of Indegy, “Indegy CIRRUS takes advantage of the cloud to disseminate and collaboratively share intelligence in real-time to stay ahead of threats, enable global security management from anywhere, and deliver comprehensive protection capabilities as a service.”

Harnessing the Cloud

To provide universal visibility, security and control, Indegy CIRRUS combines the following four interwoven applications that can be deployed in flexible hybrid cloud or pure cloud options:

Live Feed: Threat intelligence infrastructure delivers real-time updates on high-risk threats, including vulnerabilities, signatures and other indicators of compromise.

Enterprise Manager: Enables centralized management and visibility for distributed, multi-site environments from the cloud anytime, anywhere.

Cloud Collaboration: Collects and correlates anonymized data from Indegy deployments around the world for real-time sharing of threat intelligence and remediation recommendations.

Device Integrity: Patented active detection technology provides organizations with complete security coverage – now in pure cloud configuration made possible with a simple VPN setup and zero hardware.

Availability of CIRRUS

The new version of the Indegy Industrial Cybersecurity Suite and Indegy CIRRUS ICSaaS are available immediately with additional features to be generally available later this summer.

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The Tech Decision

Level 3 AV had been an AV integration partner for the University of Arizona on multiple new construction, and renovation projects.

The University of Arizona sent out an RFP to a select group of AV Integrators for this Design-Assist-Build project. Level 3 Audiovisual was selected as the AV Partner for the state-of-the-art HSIB.

The tower is newly constructed and consists of a performing arts and multi-purpose space called “The Forum,” seventeen classrooms, a thirty-room standard patient examination training floor, a medical simulation “black box” venue, administrative work spaces and conference rooms, seventy meeting rooms, a filming studio, simulation control room, and more.

Level 3 AV collaborating with the University Office of Planning Design and Construction. Various stakeholders from a number of colleges, the Biomedical Production team, and the General Contractor were part of the decision-making team.

The major challenge was to create an audiovisual system that operated as a single system. Every audio and video signal needed to be accessible from the broadcast control room for lecture capture, VTC, recording, streaming and centralized control.

The Solution

The major highlights of the HSIB are the dual single-mode fiber optic backbones to support the building-wide integrated systems. The building acts as a single system, with all signals available anywhere.

The network system is fully redundant with dual fiber trunk ports per edge and stacked switch. Netgear M4300 10G LAN with eight switches comprising a stacked 10G core, with roughly twenty edge 10G fiber trunked 1G S3300 switches. VLAN management is in place supporting control, QLAN and Dante network segments. This network runs on a Crestron control network with six 3-series processors.

Audio in the building relies on QSC Core 5200 processors with various QLAN amps and IO distributed throughout. An auxiliary 8-channel wireless microphone cart can patch into any teaching podium via Dante to instantly add more channels of microphones for events requiring them.

The video system is built on an Evertz MMA 10G AV-over-IP network, with a core 128-port switch fabric and dual 64-port switch fabrics. The hybrid nature of the MMA 10G system supports HDMI and HDSDI seamlessly, making it perfect for the large number of signals and varying formats needed in classrooms and studios. The system supports hundreds of inputs and outputs with imperceptible latency, and features support for 4K throughout the system. The matrix is also fully non-blocking, so any video input can be routed to any destination through the broadcast system.

In The Forum, a dual-sided Absen LED video wall retracts from the ceiling, flanked by Renkus Heinz steerable column arrays supports a central presentation stage.

The classrooms combine and divide using automated partition sensors. The classroom systems were standardized to create a seamless transition between spaces. Each classroom consists of various displays, from eight-projector rooms to single-projector rooms. Teaching stations with access to a PC or laptop connection feature Mersive Solstice wireless sharing, with soft codec conferencing from the device. Full integration into the audio systems are available as well, with Sony PTZ cameras and Shure wireless mic systems provide lecture capture and conferencing. Creston graphics engines provide room control and preview monitoring at the stations, and active learning classrooms feature combinable screen systems with full routing ability of the sources to any and all displays.

As for the CAE Learning Space medical simulation system, hundreds of PoE endpoints including microphones, speakers, cameras and video encoders comprise the system. There are a dozen debriefing rooms for playback of recorded content, and a curved video wall in the Simdeck control room capable of monitoring and controlling any simulation of mannequin vitals.

The centralized broadcast booth consists of ten computer workstations with custom Shuttle PCs and Datapath SDE capture cards that can stream and record any signal in the building. Dial Tricasters with NC1 expanders share all inputs over NDI protocol.

The Impact

The multidisciplinary facility provides classroom systems supporting Zoom conferencing and Panopto recording. What makes this system so unique is the fact that the entire building functions as a single system, allowing any signal to be distributed and routed to anywhere in the building. The building systems rely on a robust and dedicated infrastructure of fiber optic cabling and leverages 10-gigabit networks to connect and manage everything.

The end users are positioned to tackle any request thrown at them from an event perspective and can record and stream content from basic lecture capture to a professionally produced event on broadcast switchers and production equipment.

While the building has not yet been moved into, there have already been events hosted in the Forum space. The customer is very pleased with the results and flexibility of the system.

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tvOne 1T-SX-654 HDMI 2.0 Auto-Switcher

The tvONE 1T-SX-654 HDMI 2.0 auto-switcher features four HDMI video inputs and one HDMI output and supports video resolution up to 4Kx2K@60Hz 4:4:4 HDR and provide 18 Gbps of high bandwidth. This 4×1 switcher with audio functionality includes multi-channel support, de-embedded digital stereo audio to provide an analog output, or an audio return channel (ARC) for transmitting audio back to the HDMI input from the connected display.

Read more about HDMI 2.0

tvOne Magenta Research Active Optical Cables

tvONE also showcases its new line of Magenta Research active optical cables, featuring DisplayPort 1.4 active optical cables (MG-AOC-88x) and HDMI 2.0 active optical cables (MGAOC-66x). The cables provide a solution for extending ultra-high resolution over long distances with no compression or latency up to 328 feet.

Why are Active Optical Cables Such a Big Deal

tvOne Magenta Research Series of HDMI 2.0 Distribution Amplifiers

The MG-DA-61x series provides a high-performance solution for distributing HDMI signals with video output up to 4K2K@60Hz (YUV444) resolutions and HDR (High Dynamic Range Imaging) support. The amps, available in 1×2, 1×4 and 1×8 configurations, support up to 32 audio channels with sampling rates up to 192kHz and passthrough of 7.1 channels of digital audio including high resolution digital audio formats such as LPCM 7.1CH, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby Atmos.

tvOne MX-65xx Matrix Switcher Series

Available in 4×4 and 8×8 configurations, the MX-65xx Matrix Switchers send HDMI 2.0 (with HDCP) to multiple devices, both independently and simultaneously. The matrix switcher series complies with HDCP 2.2, and supports 3D, and 4K2K@60 4:4:4 8 bit and 10-bit processing. Audio support includes 7.1 audio, including DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD.

The post tvONE Presents New family of HDMI 2.0 Products at InfoComm 2019 appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“Our latest OmniStream and Velocity innovations amplify the value proposition of transitioning to an All-over-IP strategy with Atlona thanks to a robust, reliable and feature-rich toolset that supports complete room configurations,” says Gregory Mirsky, product manager, Networked AV, Atlona. “We continue to solve problems and simplify design and functionality for our global network of partners, systems integrators and end users as the industry continues its aggressive transition to IP networks and topologies.”

Video Wall Over IP

InfoComm marks the North American debut of OmniStream’s integrated processing functionality to enhance video wall performance. The embedded scaling, video processing and advanced video synchronization mechanisms in OmniStream decoders ensure precise synchronization of content between each decoder and corresponding display tile. The result is a single, cohesive image magnified across all displays.

New for InfoComm, OmniStream’s integrated video processing now supports 90/270 degrees image rotation which enables vertically-stacked video walls and portrait-mode which is common in digital signage applications. The enhanced functionality provides users with an easier and affordable solution to feed and manage content in retail, hospitality and campus environments where portrait-mode visuals captivate mobile audiences.

Zero UI Meeting Space

Zero UI Meeting Space will show how presentations can be conducted without the need for manual switching via a user interface or control screen. The Zero UI Meeting Space utilizes Atlona’s OmniStream encoder grouping strategy to automatically switch between sources in the meeting space or classroom. Upon sensing the presence of a new signal, the system will seamlessly transition to the corresponding encoder, and switch off routing from the previous encoder.

The Zero UI Meeting Space will exhibit how several contributors can collaborate on a single presentation, leveraging BYOD capability or peripherals installed in the space.

A new wallplate version of Atlona’s OmniStream 111 (AT-OMNI-111)encoder, the AT-OMNI-111-WP, will debut at InfoComm and be featured in the demonstration. The compact, two-gang wallplate supports 4K/UHD @ 60Hz, full HDR, and standard IEEE 802.3af PoE powering.

Any-to-Any Routing

Atlona will also demonstrate quick “any-to-any” routing of multimedia sources in the All-IP Meeting Space. This includes low-latency routing and distribution of video, audio and USB traffic between many sources and distributions, and with seamless interoperability.

Atlona’s new fast switching feature plays an important role in Atlona’s “any-to-any routing” strategy by substantially accelerates switching time for sources. With switching time reduced to less than 10 milliseconds, Atlona’s fast switching innovation outperforms competitive products for switching speed across packet-based AV systems.

In addition to OmniStream encoders and decoders, the demonstration will include Atlona’s complete range of network-switchable OmniStream USB over IP device adapters (AT-OMNI-311, AT-OMNI-324), and AT-HDVS-CAM USB PTZ camera.

The post Atlona Demonstrates Multiple IP AV Distribution Applications at InfoComm appeared first on My TechDecisions.

With the recent addition of a 10,000-square-foot Eastern regional facility in Scranton, Penn., Canon Business Process Services continues to expand the capabilities and reach of its Business Processing Centers. The facilities are designed to help clients with their digital transformation initiatives.

Together with Canon’s Western U.S. and Philippines-based operations, the Pennsylvania location extends the company’s national and global capabilities to better support client business objectives.

“Organizations increasingly are launching digital transformation projects because these initiatives enable them to better concentrate on their core business while containing costs and improving operational efficiency,” notes Joe Marciano, president and CEO, Canon Business Process Services. “With our extended business processing capabilities, Canon can help clients meet these important goals.”

Canon’s processing centers support business functions ranging from invoice and claims processing to document imaging and electronic discovery services for corporations and law firms. Highlights include: workflow and forms design; digitization of hard-copy documents; search-enabled images; historical or vital records preservation; indexing/coding and transactional processing.

Another feature of Canon’s Business Process Centers is security. The facilities underscore Canon’s commitment to ensuring that client data is reinforced by the highest levels of confidentiality, integrity and ease of access. To support this goal the Business Processing Centers utilize technology and processes—such as dual physical authentication and third-party application penetration testing—to meet relevant industry standards. The processing centers currently have accreditations that include: AICPA SOC 1 and SOC 2; HITRUST/CSF certified; PCI compliant; HIPAA compliant and GDPR Ready.

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The BullSequana Edge computing server from Atos has been designed to be used securely for the Internet of Things (IoT), in environments in which fast response times are critical – such as manufacturing 4.0, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and retail/airport security – where data needs to be processed and analyzed at the edge in real-time.

The embedded BullSequana Edge server securely manages and processes IoT data, close to the source where it is generated, so that it is treated immediately. It analyzes and runs Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in real-time for instant insight, so that actions and decisions can be made swiftly to optimize operations.

“The exponential growth of IoT devices and how to best manage the consequent explosion of data is a challenge faced by many businesses today. To manage and harness this mass of data to our advantage, in a post-cloud era, we need to embrace edge computing.,” says Pierre Barnabé, senior executive vice president, Head of Big Data & CyberSecurity Division at Atos. “Atos brings together its expertise and experience as a leader in cloud orchestration, high-performance computing, cybersecurity and AI, to develop a unique edge computing product – the BullSequana Edge – which empowers businesses to take full advantage of the data deluge.”

Key benefits:

• Optimum security and privacy: both the data and the physical server are protected by an advanced chain of security measures.
• Immediate responsiveness: data analysis in real-time.
• Autonomy: reduced dependence on cloud and datacenter availability and connectivity, ensures that apps are not disrupted in case of limited or intermittent network connectivity. The BullSequana Edge can communicate via radio, GSM or Wi-Fi.
• Interactivity: both multi-source and multi-format data can be analyzed in real-time.
• Cost–effective: reduced datacenter infrastructure and networking costs.

The BullSequana Edge can be purchased as a standalone infrastructure or together with a software platform, such as Atos Edge Computer Vision, Edge Data Analytics, or in a container system such as Atos Edge Data Container. The BullSequana Edge is Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT.

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In preparation for streaming to multiple CDNs, the department ramped up its production workflow over a year ago — adding more cameras, graphics and audio equipment and other tools to its arsenal, including the AJA HELO, U-TAP and Ki Pro Ultra. “Streaming to ESPN+ has taken college athletics production to a new level, with standards that are higher than ever before. To keep pace, we needed equipment that’s reliable, affordable and easy to learn and use,” says Imry Halevi, assistant director of athletics, multimedia and production, Harvard. “If you do the math, we’re churning out more than 300 broadcast-quality streams a year. Having tools like HELO, Ki Pro Ultra and U-TAP that tick all these boxes gives me confidence that we’ll be able to consistently meet the production standards expected of us without ever missing a beat.”

While workflows slightly vary depending upon the sport, the tennis and squash workflows are quite similar. Each squash or tennis court features mounted POV cameras with HD-SDI outputs and a mic output. The audio and video signals go into a rack holding a switcher, video unit and six AJA HELO H.264 recording, streaming and encoding devices. The switcher, with an Intel compute stick that captures scoreboard data, outputs the camera and mic feeds for each court via HDMI to a video unit for Harvard’s international stream while the SDI outputs are fed to each of the six HELOs, one per court, and streamed to ESPN+ in H.264 via RTMP, as well as recorded for archival.

Halevi and team also deploy two HELO units across their basketball and hockey/football control rooms for streaming needs outside traditional live production. Connected to DirecTV receivers, the devices come into play when the team needs to capture footage from away games in H.264. “We love having HELOs in our control room,” he adds. “It’s great to be able to schedule recordings with HELO’s built in calendar support, stream and record at the same time, preview videos and be able to see the video signal coming in.”

To meet requests for uncompressed ProRes and/or DNx footage, the team also keeps a Ki Pro Ultra 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD recorder/player in its hockey control room. Additionally, Halevi recently added AJA U-TAP SDI USB 3.0-powered SDI capture devices to his collection of gear to double the number of feeds that his team could capture when live streaming with Wirecast on MacBook Pros. “Most capture solutions available today come with Thunderbolt ports, which is partially what made U-TAP so appealing. It allows you to take advantage of the MacBook Pro’s USB 3.0 ports to double the amount of inputs and outputs you can tap into,” he explains. “The units were super easy to get up and running on, and we didn’t need to adjust or install anything; they just worked out of the box.”

The post Harvard University Streams More than 300 Athletic Events a Year; Adds Power to its Streaming System appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Both Red Hat and Microsoft recognize the importance of hybrid cloud computing to modern IT, as organizations look to expand resources with public cloud infrastructure while maintaining existing on-premises investments. Kubernetes provides a common bridge between the datacenter and public cloud environments, making it a key technology in enabling true hybrid cloud computing.

“Microsoft and Red Hat share a common goal of empowering enterprises to create a hybrid cloud environment that meets their current and future business needs,” says Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and AI Group, Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift combines the enterprise leadership of Azure with the power of Red Hat OpenShift to simplify container management on Kubernetes and help customers innovate on their cloud journeys.”

A fully-managed, jointly-operated service, Azure Red Hat OpenShift is backed by both the open source expertise of Red Hat and the public cloud might of Microsoft. Customers receive an integrated experience, including unified sign-up, on-boarding, service management and technical support.

Additionally, Azure Red Hat OpenShift offers enterprise developers and operations teams:

• Fully managed clusters with master, infrastructure and application nodes managed by Microsoft and Red Hat; plus, no VMs to operate and no patching required.
• Regulatory compliance will be provided through compliance certifications similar to other Azure services.
• Enhanced flexibility to more freely move applications from on-premise environments to the Azure public cloud via the consistent foundation of OpenShift.
• Greater speed to connect to Azure services from on-premises OpenShift deployments.
• Extended productivity with easier access to Azure public cloud services such as Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Machine Learning and Azure SQL DB for building the next-generation of cloud-native enterprise applications.

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