General Aviation Gets an ‘Office in the Sky’ with help of Vidyo

Eclipse provisions some of the worlds most advanced aircraft with modern, in-flight video conferencing. For more than a decade, Eclipse has offered its expertise in highly demanding communications scenarios, supporting heads of state, military commanders and Fortune

100 corporate executives. Eclipses customers cite their use of Vidyo technology as an important factor in improving their productivity while airborne.

Challenge To provision commercial and government-owned aircraft with video conferencing to meet tough certification requirements while solving performance and cost issues associated with satellite communications.

Solution VidyoRouter

VidyoPortal

VidyoGateway

VidyoMobile

VidyoDesktop

Key Results

Case Study

Modernizing Communications in the Sky According to Eclipse CEO Marc Pinault, We decided early on to differentiate ourselves by delivering high-quality and scalable video conferencing services on the ground and in the air. We looked at a number of alternatives, and Vidyo stood out as the innovator with the best technology aligned with our goals.

We wanted to deliver an airborne video conferencing experience with the same performance, flexibility and features that customers experience on the ground, said Pinaut, while keeping costs under control.

Eclipse integrated Vidyo solutions with its Aero+ server infrastructure on the ground, and with laptop and smartphone devices in the air. Vidyo provided a flexible server-side platform on the ground, integrated with client-side software well-suited for the aircraft cabin. Eclipse implemented Vidyo infrastructure solutions including VidyoRouter, VidyoPortal and VidyoGateway. Onboard the aircraft, they deployed VidyoMobileand VidyoDesktop software clients.

Delivering High Quality Multipoint Video Conferencing At the infrastructure level, VidyoRouter makes use of H.264 Scalable Video Coding and introduces Adaptive Video Layering into the aeronautical environment. Through this software-based architecture, video streams are dynamically optimized to each endpoint and to network conditions. With Vidyo, we can deliver a dynamic, multipoint video conferencing platform with the ability to make adjustments in real-time to variations in endpoint processing, display settings and network performance. Its ideal for the connectivity typical of airborne SatCom systems, said Pinault.

Onboard the aircraft, passengers connect to meetings via mobile and laptop devices using VidyoMobile and VidyoDesktop, and a wireless internet connection. Eclipse uses Vidyo APIs to develop custom interfaces for data acceleration, Voice over IP (VoIP), and on-aircraft control of satellite communications which are then built into the Eclipse services package.

General Aviation Gets an Office in the Sky: Video Conferencing at 40,000 Feet

Optimized ground-to-air video communications

High quality video conferencing for airborne travelers

Eliminated time & cost of onboard hardware certifications

Eclipses services are easily provisioned to customers via public Internet or leased lines. Vidyo integration with its distributed infrastructure allows Eclipse to manage video communications on the aircraft, over the satellite network and on the ground. This increases quality and reduces latency to meet strict customer requirements.

Traditional video conferencing solutions that rely on transcoding architecture are impractical for high latency environments such as airborne SatCom, said Pinault. It has to do with the closed loop system of control over signaling. Achieving Measurable Benefits There is a tremendous benefit every time we eliminate the need to add hardware to the aircraft, said Pinault. Organizations such as the European Aviation Safety Association and the Federal Aviation Administration are responsible for the airworthiness and environmental certification of all aeronautical products, regulating aircraft operations and communications. The costs associated with these hardware certifications can increase the cost of ground office based functionality from tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars when provisioned via hardware in the aircraft environment.

According to Shaun Flanagan, Aeronautical Sales Director at Eclipse, Since our initial deployment early in 2012, Vidyo solutions have been used across general aviation markets nationally and internationally, including the corporate and private sectors, and government agencies including military operators. Our IT team prefers Vidyo for the ease with which it deploys and scales in the ground-to-air aviation environment.

While Eclipse customers include the largest Boeing and Airbus manufactured platforms, the software-based nature of the Vidyo platform has opened the door to small to mid-sized business aircraft as well.

We are creating an office in the sky for our customers, said Flanagan. Vidyo is fully integrated with Eclipse applications including router functionality, SatCom channel bonding, data acceleration, and VoIP services. Vidyo interoperability with our infrastructure is a big plus. Using Vidyo APIs we can quickly integrate Vidyo Software Clients with aeronautical SatCom systems as well as virtually any new on-board personal communications device that comes along. Vidyo offers the built-in security features we need, and with VidyoGateway, we have interoperability with legacy systems used by others in our supply chain.

In our work with leading aircraft manufacturers and modification centers, agility and cost control are top of mind concerns, said Flanagan. This environment is more IT-driven than ever before, and the design-build-deploy cycles are long. Certification alone might take years from design to deployment. Working with Vidyo, we are eliminating the hardware acquisition and certification piece, and delivering customized services with top-flight performance, reliability and security.

Vidyos software-based architecture, compatibility with off-the-shelf hardware, and the ease of deployment and management that VidyoPortals web-based environment provides, gives us the flexibility to streamline development cycles and accelerate time to market with new custom services. With Vidyo, we have eliminated the time and expense to certify, install and support yet another box on an aircraft, a business advantage that is increasingly significant as we scale our services.

Improving the Passenger Experience Our customers are busy executives who expect a seamless workflow during business travel, said Pinault. Now they can enjoy the same productivity power in the air that they have on the ground. VidyoMobile and VidyoDesktop software apps provide one-click simplicity for passengers to host or connect to any video conference and enjoy telepresence-quality interactions and content sharing. We are providing a lot of capability transparently to the customer, so they can focus on their meetings and not on technology.

We continue to receive new requests from the broader general aviation market to customize apps and services, said Pinault, and well continue to work with Vidyo to push the envelope on what is possible today and tomorrow for our video conferencing customers.

2012 Vidyo, Inc. All rights reserved. Vidyo and other trademarks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vidyo, Inc. or their respective owners. Vidyo products are covered by one or more issued and/or pending US or foreign patents or patent applications. Visit www.vidyo.com/patent-notices for more information. CS_ECLIPSE_082012

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