Web and Video Conferencing Software for
Online Meeting & Collaboration

Welcome to WiredRed UK Ltd

Video Conferencing Made Easy

The UK office of San Diego based WiredRed Software / Nefsis Corporation

WiredRed - Web and Video Conferencing Company

WiredRed Software was formed in 1998 in San Diego, California and is widely recognised as a technology leader in enterprise real-time communications software. WiredRed's software applications heritage include e/pop secure instant messaging (IM) and e/pop company-wide alert messaging as well as e/pop web and video conferencing. Nefsis® is the newest version and effectively replaces e/pop. Nefsis was launched commercially in 2009 and is a revolutionary improvement to all web and video conferencing products available today.

WiredRed opened the UK office in 2004 following increasing European demand for on-line meeting software and web-conferencing applications. We strongly believe that it is important to provide local support for the growing UK and European customer base. WiredRed UK is located in Chichester - a town famous for its picturesque position on the south coast in Sussex, yet only 75 miles from London, and of course only seconds away in an on-line meeting...

Nefsis - Web Conferencing Software, Video Conferencing and Telepresence

Videoconferencing on its own is often still seen as a "management tool" and harks back to the days when only managers had a phone on their desks. Most employees (i.e. disregarding those in manufacturing, production, "shop floor" type roles, etc) use a PC these days and even have the "luxury" (or misfortune?) of having a telephone on their desk and their own email address - isn't that just the norm? More and more companies are investing in converged IP voice & data networks, increasingly referred to as Unified Communications, in order to enhance their communications capabilities. Voice over IP (VoIP) is no longer the mystery it was and over the last few years teleconferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing, and webinars have become ubiquitous for multi-site / multi-party collaboration. Telepresence has also been widely advertised and implemented. Consequently, web and video conferencing applications and services (i.e. online meetings over the Internet) are increasingly part of the 'technology arsenal' employed by mid-market IT organizations to help them reap the benefits of globalisation, take advantage of outsourcing opportunities, and compete with companies many times their size. It's easy to see why - web conferencing is easily deployed across an organisation for use by people both inside and outside of the organisation with the added benefit of not having to have dedicated "real estate" to do so.

Nefsis web conferencing software includes PowerPoint, application and desktop sharing, as well as audio (VoIP) and multi-party video conferencing, remote control, and a complete set of intuitive controls over layouts, bandwidth and all aspects of the online meeting. Nefsis is fairly neutral / indifferent towards video peripherals. This makes it very simple - any device, video capture card or USB video capture peripheral with a MS Windows DirectDraw is suitable, although a webcam that uses the PC's standard driver without having to install one will also work OK. Also the benefit of mix and match, means that, for example, a user with a laptop and Microsoft LifeCam Cinema™ (a full featured webcam, with true 720p HD video) can join a meeting with another person using say a Logitech® Pro 9000 Webcam (providing true-to-life widescreen 720p video with it's 2-megapixel HD sensor) and also a participant in the boardroom using a Sony EVI-HD1 PTZ camera (High-Definition 1080P/1080i, all-in-one, Pan/Tilt/Zoom [PTZ] Colour Video Camera) for a stunning HD video conference.

The use of dynamic, on-line collaboration helps companies reduce travel costs and reduce their carbon footprint. At the same time this can improve employee's work-life balance by reducing the need to spend so much time travelling. What's more, the Nefsis web conferencing concurrent user license is extremely scalable, starting with small 1-to-1 meetings and scaling up to 500+ users for true mega meeting sized conferences, webinars and online meetings. With Nefsis on-demand video conferencing service, this can scale to unlimited concurrent meeting attendees.

Nefsis is also available as an on-premise web and video conferencing software application, complementing the hosted web conferencing service (i.e. Software as a Service). The installable on-premise application may often be the best choice for companies that are primarily interested in secure video conferencing rather than traditional point-to-point video conferencing hardware. For meetings and collaboration between internal and external users, Nefsis utilises SSL/TLS encryption, and also supports the use of a customer's own PKI (on-premise installation only) for the highest level of secure web conferencing available. However, Nefsis as a hosted video conferencing service provides complete peace of mind and ease-of-use for busy, security conscious IT teams.

Nefsis - Multi-point Video Conferencing Software

Nefsis Internet video conferencing uses a browser-based client, enabling collaboration and on-line meetings with other participants anywhere with intranet or Internet connectivity. It is far more cost-effective than expensive hardware based video conferencing hardware installations such as Polycom or Tandberg. Nefsis uses MPEG4 for video encoding/decoding and many customers use Nefsis for its superior video conferencing features alone. We also provide information and guidance on a wide range of video conferencing equipment to use with our software application. As mentioned above, this can range from inexpensive webcams right through to broadcast quality cameras and almost any audio equipment. Many of our customers use Nefsis as a modern-day alternative to room based video conferencing hardware in order to help reduce their company's carbon footprint. Nevertheless there are plenty of companies that benefit from boardroom video conferencing as well as desktop video conferencing.

Installation, Training and Support Services
Nefsis customers have access to email and telephone hotline support services for all of the company’s products together with an on-line electronic forum. Nefsis web conferencing includes complimentary pre and post sale support and training, assistance with Nefsis evaluation plus software installation and deployment. Our on-line Video Conferencing Guide also helps provide best-in-class web and video conferencing support for complete self-service use. For critical requirements, we can provide custom, on-site pre-sales systems analysis, implementation and training.

Because Nefsis can reach virtually any business desktop, it is arguably among the best green communications technologies, providing immediate repeat travel and commute-time reductions and a practical method for organisations to reduce their carbon footprint. For a commentary about "Nefsis Cloud Computing Meets Parallel Processing Technology" see our How it Works article.

Cloud Based Video Conferencing

You might wonder what all the fuss is about cloud computing. The bandwagon is rolling and companies everywhere are jumping on and proclaiming their cloud computing credentials. However, cloud computing is not about the application itself; it is about how the application is deployed and how it is delivered. Cloud computing is a deployment model used to reduce infrastructure costs and addresses capacity and scalability concerns. So in deploying the application(s) an IT provider or Independent Software Vendor (ISV) utilises a cloud computing model to abstract the processing engine, data storage, network, and application network resources in order to provide uniform, on-demand scalability plus reliability of the application delivery to the application’s users.

Many products claiming to be a 'cloud' are really just a server (or sometimes a cluster) installed in a large centralised data centre supplying a service, without any of the benefits of cloud-based service distribution. In order to deliver multipoint video conferencing, hardware based video conferencing companies require multichannel units (MCUs). The Nefsis cloud is substantially different than any other multipoint video conference product available today. Because most other conference providers use a centralised data centre or on-premise MCU, they cannot adjust to changing network conditions or geographic availability. These providers back-haul the conferencing traffic to their centralised data centres, thereby increasing overall latency and causing major reductions in the quality of video (lower frames, lower resolution) and an increase in VoIP delay and jitter. Obviously, it’s OK if all parties are within near proximity of the datacentre, but how often is that the case? The Nefsis massively-distributed cloud solves all these issues, utilising the industry's first true cloud-based delivery platform for multipoint video conferencing applications.

Nefsis delivers superior multipoint video conferencing without multichannel units and offloads and distributes the experience across the Web – in other words true cloud based video conferencing. Nefsis does this by using a massive network of globally distributed computers to ensure the highest quality video conferencing experience; minimising latency while delivering all the benefits of load-balancing, failover, and the scalability that true cloud architecture provides.

So, don’t be confused by purely hosted video conferencing services which are really 'cloudware', but not necessarily cloud computing, because they are merely accessed through the cloud and don't actually provide a platform on which applications can be deployed.

Web Conferencing Research & Competition
The following resources may be helpful in researching web conferencing software, services and alternative solutions.

Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.co.uk/) was the developer of NetMeeting - amongst other things! NetMeeting was designed for direct PC to PC connections, it does not work well between firewalls, and Microsoft support was discontinued in 2005. Nefsis complies with proxy and firewall security standards, providing excellent connectivity for inter-office and business-to-business online meetings, is secure, and it has far more features such as multi-party video conferencing at up to 30 frames per second (FPS).

Microsoft introduced Live Meeting following its purchase of Placeware in 2003. Microsoft's pricing model includes: named user, per room, monthly minutes or shared seats. With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft includes Office Live Meeting which provides hosted web conferencing and application sharing. With the addition of Windows Meeting Space it will enable file, desktop and application sharing across networks for up to 10 people in the same virtual room.

To enable voice conferencing, video conferencing and/or web conferencing, users and organisations will require Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS Server) and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client (Microsoft's unified communications client). At the moment, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is included in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 and Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise 2007only (see 2007 Microsoft Office system suites). The Office Communications Server 2007 reference architecture shows a web conferencing edge server, A/V edge server(s), HTTP reverse proxy server, Communicator Web Access app server, Mediation server, Front End server for registration and presence and a backend SQL server, plus conferencing servers for A/V, data and IM.

WebEx (http://www.webex.co.uk/) is the largest online web conferencing service provider - generally charging on a per user model (per minute). Webex was purchased by Cisco during 2007. Nefsis is already a well proven, on-premise, software alternative to WebEx and Nefsis will provide enhanced capabilities for small, medium and large organisations - WebEx does not provide the option for on-premise configurations. On-premise software has fundamental advantages for some companies. It runs on your server(s) in your network, it is exclusively available for your use and you have far more access, bandwidth, and feature controls. As a result Nefsis is usually more secure (use your own PKI or system generated certificate) and less expensive than usage-based services. For those companies that require a hassle-free WebEx alternative online meeting application or service, Nefsis is the ideal on-line collaboration solution.

TANDBERG® (http://www.tandberg.net/) is again mostly a boardroom videoconferencing company. Tandberg has offered web conferencing support to its customers via a partnership with WebEx and this has been significantly strengthened by Cisco's acquisition of TANDBERG which will expand its collaboration portfolio. Tandberg also has a PC-based solution, called Movi, that "enables busy professionals to enjoy PC-based, visual communication from anywhere at anytime without making an appointment with the IT department", but whether this survives the inevitable WebEx and Tandberg product consolidation is anyone's guess.

Polycom (http://www.polycom.com) concentrates mostly on boardroom video conferencing and generally requires application specific routers and other infrastructure hardware for desktop video conferencing. To experience the difference between web conferencing software vs Video Conferencing hardware, ask for a live demonstration from their office to your desktop (without opening additional ports on your firewall). Interestingly enough, Polycom licensed the right to distribute the Microsoft RoundTable, as of April 13 2009. Microsoft then ceased selling the RoundTable themselves, instead it is now officially known as the Polycom CX5000 Unified Conference Station. So, with Cisco buying Tandberg, will the Microsoft / Polycom collaboration become even stronger or will IBM, Dell, HP or even Apple make a play for Polycom?

The Polycom CX5000 is a plug-and-play device that connects to a PC via USB, so no extra provisioning or configuration is needed and it works extremely well with Nefsis as described in this Polycom CX5000 review.

Genesys Conferencing (http://www.genesys.com/), not to be confused with Genesys the contact centre company (http://www.genesyslab.com/) - providers of the Genesys Real-Time Customer Interaction Suite, and Genesys Meeting Center - offering on-line pay as you go virtual communications and collaboration services. Genesys Conferencing has been a leading provider of converged collaboration and communication services for over 20 years. Genesys also offers a free 15-day evaluation of their Genesys Meeting Centre.

Useful sources of information & IT news
http://www.computerweekly.co.uk/ – one of the top computer weeklies for UK based IT news and information, regularly including convergence and collaboration, security & easy administration of corporate IT networks
http://www.computing.co.uk/ – one of the UK's leading publications serving the business and information needs of IT professionals
http://www.itweek.co.uk/ – aimed at providing up to date information to senior managers within the UK's IT industry. Regular features on VoIP, Webcast software, convergence, web conferencing and collaboration as well as a whole host of IT news and analysis.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/ – news and analysis regarding communications, networking, collaboration software and appliances together with other essential convergence information.

Useful sources of general news
http://www.yahoo.com/ – a good general research tool.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ – UK and world news from the world's favourite broadcaster.
http://www.sky.com/ – another great news site.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ – UK and world news from the world's favourite broadcaster.
http://news.independent.co.uk/ – UK and world news from the world's favourite broadcaster.
http://www.ft.com – The latest UK and international business, finance, economic and political news, comment and analysis from the Financial Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ – A global view on world, UK and business news and comment from The Times
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ – The on-line version of the award winning Guardian and Observer newspapers, having a keen following in the education and public sector marketplace.

Green Buying – Sustainable Purchasing Support for businesses, councils and charities.
Green Mega-Meeting – McDonalds decides to green its meetings with huge recycling effort!