ServiceDelivery

Magor’s mission is, and has always been to inspire users to interact with video in new ways to create improved modes for productivity.

Bringing this goal to life called for a different architectural approach that removes the limitations of traditional single-workflow video conferencing systems – one with the flexibility to adapt to different workflows as users move from one task to another.

The development of a completely new user-centric platform has provided us the freedom to rethink traditional strategies for scalability, interoperability, security and information sharing– resulting in significant technical benefits for deployment and support.

Aerus is a natural evolution of our platform to the cloud in delivering video interactions to the enterprise as a service, with all the capabilities necessary to fulfill the promise of new modes for productivity at lower cost.

Distributed client-server architecture

The Aerus SDP uses a distributed client-server architecture that operates on non-proprietary hardware. There are two types of applications that enable Aerus service delivery:

The Aerus client SDK provides users with a range of multi-platform clients – for use with access appliances from mobile to dedicated purpose-built rooms – all with a common natural user interface for access to the onramp service layer.

The Aerus Service Delivery Platform (SDP) brings together the benefits of distributed networking and cloud computing to deliver services for high quality video interactions that support any workflow.

The Aerus SDP uses a two layered approach for service delivery:

• The on-ramp service layer provides user access to:
  • High-quality video interactions for any workflow
  • Robust interoperability with traditional video conferencing solutions
• The on-demand service layer extends the onramp service by providing access to additional services accessible via integration or via APIs to support specific workflow

The Aerus Service Delivery Platform uses an approach for transporting media streams called video stream switching, which is instrumental in supporting two key functions of the Aerus Media Engine found inside every Aerus client:

• High-efficiency scalable coding for all media processing
• Robust interoperability

Agile growth to large-scale deployments

As the number of users increases in a deployment, video stream switching enables Aerus to remove cost and performance limitations of centralized, hardware-based video conferencing approaches. Aerus clients send only one stream for each item of media, even if there are multiple recipients. Streams are multi-casted by Aerus onramp access servers, as needed, with Application Layer Multicasting (ALM). This approach not only protects network resources as the frequency of video interactions increases with more users – it also provides intelligent bandwidth management in multipoint sessions.

Scalable coding for video stream switching

The AMEs unique approach to scalable video coding leverages video stream switching to adapt to changing conditions throughout a session to ensure that users always have a sharp visual experience while minimizing bandwidth use.

The AME processes each media stream once and spans a wide spectrum of decoding profiles from high quality 1080p at 30 frames per second from 2Mb/s of bandwidth to 270p at 3 frames per second using less than 15Kb/s.

2. Quick access to new video encoding innovation

Each user has the ability to adapt the context of their on-screen session media streams without affecting anyone else’s view of the same session. As media streams are enlarged or minimized on-the-fly by users, the media format and corresponding bitrate is adapted to maximize bandwidth efficiency.