Cloud-based Multimedia Conferencing: Business Model, Research Agenda, State-of-the-Art

Multimedia conferencing enables the conversational exchange of media data. It is a critical application in enterprises´ settings. Cloud computing is an emerging multi-faceted paradigm (Infrastructure as a Service -- IaaS, Platform as a Service -- PaaS, and Software as a Service -- SaaS). This position paper proposes a business model for cloud-based multimedia conferencing and uses it as a basis to derive a research agenda. We also present the state-of-the-art. The model is introduced, the research agenda articulated, and the state-of-the-art is contrasted to that agenda. A key role in the proposed model is played by the conference substrate provider. Conference substrate providers offer re-usable and sharable virtualized substrates (e.g. audio /video mixers, floor control algorithms) that can be assembled on the fly to build conferencing applications. The research challenges are numerous (e.g. identification, description and control (including composition) of multimedia conferencing substrates, mechanisms for enabling mobile devices to access the conferencing applications built with substrates) and the state-of-the-art still germinal.