March 19, 2004

Dear CalVIP Community,

We are writing to update you on the progress in the migration to H.323 video teleconferencing.  As some of you are aware, this project has not gone as quickly and smoothly as we would have hoped.  There are many reasons this is the case but rather than reciting these, our objective is to let you know of our plans to make adjustments so the rest of the rollout goes smoothly.

First and foremost, to those who have been in the first wave of migration and have spent countless hours testing and troubleshooting with us, thank you for your efforts.  We will do our best to provide you excellent support while we migrate other sites.

Second, we are making a fundamental change in the original migration plan. Originally the CalVIP project committee planned for the video (H.320 to H.323) migration to occur with a site's data migration from 4CNet to CalREN.  After discussion and agreement, CENIC has proposed, and the representatives from the CSU and CCC central offices have agreed, to uncouple the CalVIP migration from the data migration. One result will be to allow time to examine why the migrations have been so difficult to date and to use the data from a "lessons learned" review to see if there are ways of streamlining future migrations.  A second result will be to allow each site to be able to propose, within reason, a migration timeframe most amenable to the site.

While the review of lessons learned occurs (perhaps over the next 60 to 90 days), we will support the migration of any site that wishes to do so. Please contact Kelly Stack, at kstack@cenic.org or 714-220-3454, if you are interested in migrating to H.323 in the next 90 days.

We are putting together some new advisory groups to give us input on how we can improve this project on an ongoing basis. The exact structure of these groups is not yet final. However, if you are interested and able to participate, please contact Kelly. Segmental offices may supplement these CENIC-sponsored groups with others, as the Community Colleges are planning to do.  As we develop the final group structure, we'll contact you about your interest in participation in one of the groups and also try to find more effective means of communicating for the purposes of soliciting input, communicating plans and letting you know of project status.

CENIC