The experience from implementation of National telepresence infrastructure in Slovakia to support research, development and technology transfer

Almost two hundred sites located mostly at Universities were equipped in 2015 with latest videoconferencing devices and connected to one national network. This was covered by national project named National telepresence infrastructure to support research, development and technology transfer (NTI). This paper presents technological challenges behind, integration of hardware and software solutions in multi-vendor environment, problems faced and results after one year of usage. All technical and organizational work was covered by Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava. This project had to fight with more problems, not only of technological nature, but mostly with providing help to end users allowing them to see advantages in new way of collaboration and changing the way they think and work. Implementation has brought fully new custom web based services designed and created based on experience with academic institutions and feedback gathered after project launch.