NHS Digital Announces Closure of N365 Centralised Tenant Cloud Video Interop (CVI) Service
August 15th, 2022
The adoption of Microsoft Teams within the NHS as part of the N365 agreement has brought a number of benefits to Trusts, such as the ability to work from anywhere, extend meetings to multiple locations and allow users to be contactable anywhere. However, within the MDT workspace it has also created several challenges.
Over the years, Trusts have made significant investment into best of breed standards-based video conferencing systems with complex video switching matrixes, multiple screens, and the ability to meet with a range of partnering Trusts. These systems have been able to conference with each other over services such as the BT N3 Video Conference service, and more recently a number of other platforms over the HSCN network. The Teams service is not natively compatible with these devices which means all of the benefits of the standards-based platform are not being fully utilised.
Replacing this equipment for Microsoft Teams Room systems would mean further investment is required when perfectly good equipment is still under support and working well within the MDT room environment. When Microsoft worked with a number of vendors to bring an interworking solution to market, this removed some challenges by bringing the possibility of an MDT room to be able to join a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Cloud Video Interop (CVI) not available within N365 service
When Trusts utilise their own Microsoft tenant, this Cloud Video Interop (CVI) service can be enabled, allowing standards-based MDT rooms access into these meetings. However, this is not available on a trust-by-trust basis within the shared N365 (nhs.net) service. Furthermore, notification has now been served, with the CVI service being turned off at the end of October 2022. This puts Trusts back to square one of having a centrally adopted meeting platform incompatible with their meeting room equipment.
AV collaboration solutions compatible with N365 & NHS tenant services
Cinos can offer several options to Trusts to continue to use their standards-based equipment with both the N365 (nhs.net) and individual Trust NHS tenant services:
For the Cisco Room Kit range of endpoints, it is possible to enable the joining of Teams meetings from the in-built browser capability of the endpoint. Users start the meeting by pressing a join button on the invited MDT room and can take part in the meeting utilising the high-quality audio and visual systems in the room. There are currently some constraints around sharing content via a cable with this method, however other options for sharing content are available.
For most Cisco endpoints, Cinos can enable a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) option. Therefore a meeting running on a PC or laptop can utilise the in-room camera, microphones and speakers as external devices, enabling the room to participate in any meeting regardless of platform. Users would join the meeting on the PC or laptop as they would any Teams meeting. This method would have issues when MDT rooms have multiple input sources running through a switcher such as PACs or a Microscope.
The third option utilises our cloud service to interwork the MS Teams call to be a dialable address from any standards-based endpoint, regardless of vendor (e.g. Cisco, Poly or Crestron). The end user experience for this option would be to forward the Teams invite to the room mailbox, a join button will be pushed to the endpoint control unit, and with one touch the MDT room will join the MS Teams meeting, with the ability to share and receive content using any existing infrastructure.
By employing any of these options, Trusts can continue to utilise the assets already purchased, with the added benefits of the Teams platform being made available to MDT meetings.
For further details on any of these options, or to arrange a demonstration with our experts, please get in touch. Our experience of delivering a ‘Better Together’ approach positions us perfectly to resolve any issues concerning the closure of the N365 Centralised Tenant CVI Service.
