Collaboration Support

Diminishing the Barrier of Distributed Collaborative Work

The institute for High Performance Computing at the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) provides means and technologies for effective collaborative work. This is achieved through a basis infrastructure consisting of four conferencing rooms which include different video conferencing systems, like the Tandberg and Aethra video conferencing system, as well as computer-based AccessGrid, or even browser-based VRVS. Because of the permanent operation of these conference rooms a solid knowledge and experience in the field of video conferences has been acquired.

The HLRS does not simply focus on basic video conferences, but aims for extending the yet existing barriers of traditional video conferencing through integration of scientific and engineering applications into this video conference environment, to provide a seamless user experience within a collaborative working session. With this intention applications such as COVISE were developed which provide a native collaborative behaviour and facilitates bringing people from conference rooms with powerwalls, desk- top workstations and even CAVE-environments together in the context of a system like the AccessGrid.

Beside this the HLRS aims at integrating further arbitrary applications into such a video conferencing environment to widen the field of application for such systems, as well as continuously improve the quality of such conferences in the fields of audio and video. Establishing these services in QoS enriched sois perfects the supply of services