DISA’s Defense Collaboration Services team to deploy Web Conference 2.2

by James A. Burwell
Defense Collaboration Services

The Defense Collaboration Services Program Management Office, within Defense Information Systems Agency’s Enterprise Services Development Division, will deploy Web Conference 2.2 to the non-secure internet protocol router network in August. The secret internet protocol router network instantiation will migrate the following month.

The new (or enhanced) web conferencing service will use the web programming language known as HTML5 to replace DCS Web Conference’s Adobe Flash-based client.

Derek Westray, DCS lead engineer, said that Adobe announced it will retire Flash at the end of 2020.

“Flash will be completely removed from all browsers by the end of next year, so DISA wanted to get ahead of the curve,” he said. “Adobe will cease updates and further distribution of Flash player because it is extremely inefficient and has security issues.”

WC 2.2 will feature a modern HTML5-based replacement to Adobe Flash for DCS Web Conference. It will provide a number of enhancements to improve real-time communication, which include higher quality video and screen sharing. WC 2.2 will also enable users to screen share without the need to download and run a separate Java application and will eliminate the need for users to download the Flash client to join a DCS Web Conference session.

Benefits of this migration include:

• The user interface will become more responsive, cleaner and more modern looking.
• It will be presented in a single layout and will also provide the option of presenting slides in full screen mode.

Westray notes that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are the preferred browsers for use with DCS capabilities. Microsoft Internet Explorer will not support DCS WC 2.2. However, users will be able to use Microsoft Edge in addition to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

For more information regarding the HTML migration, contact the DCS Program Management Office.

Posted July 29, 2020