The Colibri digital service of the Foundation for Science and Technology(FCT), developed by the FCCNconsists of an online collaboration solution (webconference) and currently offers access to Zoom Pro licensing. This access makes it possible to hold videoconference sessions of more than 40 minutes, book webinars for larger events, integrate with terminals (H.323/SIP), record and make the sessions available in the cloud.
This service has been based on a floating user regime, however, this form of license management is no longer supported by Zoom, which led to the end of the current contract.
At the same time, a negotiation process began, which lasted about a year, and in which the FCCN team made every effort to find a solution with Zoom's European managers, who maintained an unyielding position, in line with the service's new usage policy.
In this new context, maintaining Colibri with the current functionalities would imply an increase in costs that cannot be accommodated in the budget of FCCN, FCT's digital services. Therefore, Colibri's Zoom Pro (webconference) licensing will be discontinued as of July 28, 2025.
The main changes to the service are the end of access to Pro licensing and fixed Pro licenses in the videoconferencing rooms of member institutions, as well as the end of access to integration with H.323 and SIP terminals.
Colibri will continue after this date with Zoom webconference sessions lasting up to 40 minutes and Zoom webinars for events with more than 300 participants, with no time limit.
Alternative solutions to Zoom were studied, but given the maturity of the web conferencing market, it was decided not to incorporate another solution into the Colibri service.
To make up for this change, there are alternative open-source solutions available that can be useful to institutions, such as BigBlueButton, eduMEET or Jitsi. In terms of commercial options, these are some of the options available on the market: Adobe Connect, Cisco Webex, Dialpad, Google Meet, GoTo Meeting, Microsoft Teams, Ringcentral, Zoho Meeting, Zoom, among others.
The team responsible for Colibri will carry out the changes to the service in a planned and structured way, in order to minimize the impact of the change on the academic community, guaranteeing adequate support during the transition. In this way, it is intended that institutions will have time to transition to other existing solutions, open-source or commercial, which better suit their needs.
The FCCN teams reiterate their willingness to assist in this transition phase, in case of any questions or constraints.
