David Black, the Director of IT  will provide the background to West College Scotland’s decision to move to Skype for Business as the Colleges unified communications solution. The talk will reflect on the position at merger, the strategic drivers the College identified, the work done so far and what is planned for the future.

CDN conducts hundreds of meetings, events and training sessions, which are frequently attended remotely by college staff. We need to ensure that whatever platform we use, that it’s not only effective and reliable from the users' point of view, but also doesn't incur a detrimental overhead for your IT services.

Going forward, what should we do: choose a solution that everyone must use, or do we try to accommodate the variety of platforms used by the sector? Or, do we consider a third option and come together to select a standard platform that we all agree to use?

Lorona will present on the procurement routes to market for a new VC service.

Vscene is a cost-effective video collaboration platform specifically designed and developed for education & research, supporting thousands of classes, events and training sessions weekly, providing a highly reliable service for teachers, students and advisors to participate in teaching and learning activities through virtual classrooms, e-learning and lecture capture as well as providing a tool for collaboration with other schools and colleges worldwide.

Vscene is actively used by 4,000 schools, colleges and universities in the UK supporting more than 100,000 students, teachers, researchers and technical managers over desktop, mobile and many different kinds of existing room systems.

Cisco pioneered unified communications to carry voice and video over data networks, reducing costs and simplifying operations. We developed a global conferencing cloud that synchronizes voice, video, and data.

Cisco's culture of innovation now brings you Cisco Spark, one service for all your communications, from always-on messaging to video calling, phones, and video conferencing rooms. Everything you need to work together, from your pocket to the boardroom.

Lifesize delivers award-winning conferencing technology that gives your organization the power to connect and collaborate effectively. Our history of video conferencing innovation has evolved to include all the modern ways enterprises meet—video, audio and web. Through a unique integration of plug-and-play HD camera systems and HD phones with easy-to-use cloud-based conferencing software, we deliver a meeting experience like no other.

BlueJeans is the world's leading provider of interoperable video communication, bringing video to you wherever you are. Thousands of global companies use BlueJeans every day for meetings, events, and on social networks across any location or device including mobile, desktop, and room systems. BlueJeans replaces traditional web conferencing technologies for a modern workforce, delivering face-to-face video communication for any organization who wants to bring their employees, leaders, and partners closer together. For more information, please visit: www.bluejeans.com.

PGi is the world’s largest dedicated provider of collaboration software and services. For 25 years, our broad portfolio of products has served the end-to-end collaboration needs of enterprises. Accessible anywhere, anytime and on any device, PGi’s award-winning collaboration solutions drive productivity and teamwork for approximately 50,000 customers around the world. Over the last five years, PGi has hosted over 1.2 billion people from 155 countries in nearly 300 million virtual meetings.

We provide a collaborative advantage to nearly 50,000 enterprise customers, including 75% of the Fortune 100™.

Our award-winning Unified Collaboration & Communications (UC&C) software and services are globally available and scalable for every business need.