Cases NCI INNOVA

FCJ Venture Builder Group

The largest group of venture builders in Latin America, with over 130 startups.

The group approached NCI Innova with an unusual demand: the development of a video conferencing platform.

Some startups within the group were using an international vendor to provide customizations for their virtual meeting rooms. As the number of meetings grew during the pandemic, the costs associated with these solutions became too high.

NCI INNOVA - icone azul (1)
FCJ Venture Builder (1)

Challenge

Creating a Video Conferencing Platform
with the following attributes

Benchmark

Quality comparable to Google Meet.

Economy

Operating costs below those provided by international vendors.

Capacity

Scalability to run more than 300 concurrent meetings.

Control

Store recordings of the meetings on servers.

Platforms

Mobile-friendly operation, without needing to download apps.

Access

99.9% availability.

NCI INNOVA - icone roxo (1)
NCI INNOVA - icone roxo (1)

Results

The impact of NCI INNOVA's innovations

0 %
cost reduction in streaming for Psicologia Viva.
0 %
cost reduction for the Connsult platform.
0
Increase in User Experience rating from 7.5 to 8 with our room on Psicologia Viva.
NCI INNOVA - Cases - Trabalho em equipe

Solution

Process Steps

As the project was ambitious, we needed a plan to validate the hypotheses with the least possible investment. We divided the work into 3 main stages:

Step 1: Assess Technical Feasibility

Can we create a product with the quality of Google Meet, and that records meetings on the server?

Step 2: Economic Viability

Is the infrastructure cost for this project appropriate? Could we achieve a lower cost compared to other market vendors?

Step 3: Scalability

Can we meet the demand of 300 parallel meetings while maintaining quality and operational costs?

Solution

Process Evolution

Follow the step-by-step of our work on the project.

We used WebRTC technology for audio and video communication in a very simple project, where it was possible to create a room at a specific URL, and two people could access the same URL and see and hear each other.

WebRTC technology is relatively recent, and its specification was only recommended by the W3C in 2021. It establishes a protocol for exchanging data, audio, and video over the web.

This technology can be used in a few different ways, with the most commonly used ones being:

    • Peer to peer (P2P) – People in a meeting room communicate directly, without the need to transmit audio and video data through a server.
    • Using a media server – All participants in the room send their audio and video to a server, which then distributes it to the other participants.

In our proof of concept, we initially started with P2P connections, but we couldn’t progress using this method. Despite having a lower operating cost (as it doesn’t require media servers), this solution doesn’t allow recording on servers since the media transmission doesn’t pass through any server.

So, we needed to move on to the approach of using an open-source media server. We found some alternatives: Kurento, Jitsi, and Janus. We implemented the first version of our room using Kurento.

In 2 months of the project, we achieved a satisfactory result with a fully functional room, and meetings were being recorded.

Technical feasibility? Check!

result

With this project, we were able to achieve our clients' objectives

As an ambitious project with a strong market demand, it eventually took on a life of its own. Today, Anymeet (www.anymeet.io) is a spin-off of NCI Innova.

Armando Júnior

CEO of Connsult
Having the quality of Anymeet is one of Connsult´s great differentials. Its excellent infrastructure and technical team are essential for us to conduct video conferences within our platform securely and with high performance.

Technologies involved in the project

Typescript / nodejs

Shellscript

Webrtc

Coturn

Janus Webrtc server

React

Selenium

Kubernetes

Prometheus

Cloud computing

AWS Cloud

Oracle Cloud

websockets

Ffmpeg