Table of Contents

I. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1

II. Why Saba Centra? ...................................................................................................................... 2

III. Reliability, Availability & Scalability ...................................................................................... 5

IV. Bandwidth ................................................................................................................................. 12

V. Security........................................................................................................................................ 18

VI. Firewalls ..................................................................................................................................... 21

VII. System Architecture ................................................................................................................ 23

VIII. Enterprise Integration .......................................................................................................... 30

IX. Interoperability ......................................................................................................................... 31

I. Introduction

About the Saba CentraTechnical Overview CentraCentra

This document has been created in response to the many questions raised by IT professionals
who are in the process of evaluating Saba Centra, online learning solution for their organization.
It describes the technical architecture of Saba Centrawith an emphasis on providing answers to
common questions around security, reliability, scalability, bandwidth requirements, system
requirements and administration.
As the title of this white paper indicates, it is intended to provide readers with an overview of
Saba Centrafrom the perspective of an IT professional. Saba Centra’s Professional Services
organization can provide customers with much more detailed and comprehensive documentation
and training to make sure Saba Centra’s customers can successfully deploy and support the
application.

About Saba Centra

50,000 feet

Saba Centra helps global organizations lower costs, increase business performance rollout
strategic initiatives by providing enterprise-class online learning and collaboration solutions.
Already, more than 1,500 global corporations, government agencies and universities worldwide
have chosen Saba Centra as their preferred eLearning and collaboration platform.

5,000 feet

Saba Centra offers customers a live, online learning and collaboration platform designed to meet
the scalability, security, integration and globalization requirements of major corporations. Saba
Centra, which is available as a Hosted service running on Saba Centra’s Global Collaboration
Network or as an on-premises solution, supports all the critical business processes around
managing:
 Structured, live Virtual Classrooms
 Self-service Web meetings
 Large-scale Web Seminars
 Knowledge assets and organizational competency
 Content creation for subject matter experts (SMEs)

50 feet

Saba Centra enables anyone with a web browser to share PowerPoint presentations, demonstrate
software applications, collaborate on a shared whiteboard and communicate using integrated
voice and video conferencing with anyone, anywhere, without leaving their home, hotel or
office.
Figure 1 provides a high level illustration of the Saba Centraplatform.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 1

 Complete Learning Solution

3rd Party Authoring Tools

(supporting SCORM, AICC)

Formal Informal Contextual

Training Learning Learning

Assess, Monitor, Report, Manage

Learning Management Systems, Enterprise Applications

Figure 1 3

II. Why Saba Centra?

So far, everything you have read about Saba Centra may sound frustratingly similar to other web
conferencing solutions. What sets Saba Centra apart from everyone else? Why is Saba Centra a
better fit for your organization?

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 2

Solutions
What distinguishes Saba Centra’s solutions from other offerings?
1. Enterprise standardization & consolidation – For organizations looking to consolidate
web conferencing vendors to maximize purchasing power, consolidate contracts, and
reduce the costs of supporting multiple applications, Saba Centra stands out from any
other solution:
a. Broader collaboration platform – Saba Centraoffers the most comprehensive suite of
online collaboration and communication solutions on the market—solutions for self-
service emeetings, virtual classroom training, large-scale web seminars, learning
content management and delivery, subject matter expert (SME) and professional
content composition tools, all in a single, integrated platform.
b. No compromise in functionality – When an organization standardizes on a single
platform after using a variety of solutions in different departments, it is critical that
none of the business units are forced to adopt a new solution that compromises key
functionality which they relied heavily upon. Because effective online training
requires much more specialized functionality than is offered by traditional
―meetingware‖ services, Saba Centra’s superior eLearning solutions enable it to
meet the needs of all your business groups, including those looking for an effective
eLearning solution.
c. Maximize purchasing power – Avoid the high costs of individual departments
paying retail rates for an ASP service—by pooling the purchasing power of all your
departments. Only Saba Centra enables organizations to have a separate Domain for
each department with the option to either dynamically pool licenses across the
Domains/departments or allocate a specific amount of licenses to each
Domain/department separately.
2. Behind-the-firewall option – Saba Centra is the only ―top-tier‖ web conferencing service
that offers its hosted customers the option to bring the solution behind their firewall at
any time. While sporadic usage and constraints on IT resources may make a hosted
service more attractive initially, as usage expands to more business units and in overall
volume, Saba Centra’s on-premises solution makes the most business sense:
a. Support integration needs
b. Maintain tighter control over security
c. Take advantage of advanced configuration options to tune the system to your
specific network topology
d. Greater control over usage to keep costs within budget
e. Complete control over the timing of upgrades

3. Share knowledge & information across the enterprise – While it’s true that stand-alone
web meeting services can help achieve immediate cost savings in travel, the ability to
attain long-term competitive advantage lies in an organization’s ability to share its
ubiquitous knowledge assets more broadly and securely. Only Saba Centra provides
customers with a tightly integrated solution for capturing formal and informal content and
making that content available to anyone in your organization for on-demand access or for
use during a live Saba Centra event.
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 3
 4. Workflow & business process integration – If we break down the collaborative process
into ―Before ‖, ―During‖ and ―After‖ the live session (―BDA‖), the functionality in ―D‖,
―During the live session‖, is rapidly becoming not only a commodity, but is also being
integrated into the platforms offered by the major platform vendors like Microsoft and
IBM. Saba Centra reflects Saba Centra’s goal to provide customers higher business value
by focusing on the ―Before‖ and ―After‖ by:
a. Integrating online collaboration into the context of a typical business user’s daily
workflow, including common business tasks such as word processing, email,
calendaring and instant messaging.
b. Integrating online collaboration into the context of your organization’s
departmental business processes, including:
i. Automating online marketing processes such as tracking registration
sources, boosting turnout with automatic email reminders, sending follow-
up communications and exporting lead data into your CRM system.
ii. Automating employee competency and performance tracking by assigning
specific learning tracks to specific job roles and providing management
with comprehensive progress reports.
Technology
What distinguishes Saba Centra’s technology from other offerings?
1. Total Enterprise Scalability – Saba Centra is the only enterprise real-time collaboration
application that addresses the scalability requirements in all three key areas: (1)
Management scalability—(from a human resource standpoint)—by providing de-
centralized administration and hierarchical, multi-level Domains for efficiently supporting
a large number of departments and divisions; (2) Network scalability—providing the
critical bandwidth-saving technology to minimize the impact on your network as usage
expands; and (3) System scalability—maintaining high reliability and performance even as
usage expands to hundreds or thousands of concurrent users and meetings.
2. Ease-of-use – Customers have consistently told Saba Centra that ease-of-use is one of
their top requirements. Examples of how this priority is reflected in Saba Centra include:
a. Scheduling, inviting and attending online meetings using the desktop tools users are
already comfortable with, such as Outlook, MS Office and Instant Messenger.
b. Thin client technology means users can participate using a locked-down PC without
any IT intervention.
c. Saba Centrasessions are automatically recorded by the server. No need to install and
set up recording software on the client.
d. A single client for all users regardless of their role.
e. The entire user interface is displayed in each user’s individual language of choice.
f. The client interface can be mastered in seconds for both attendees and presenters.

3. Deeper enterprise integration – Saba Centra’s solutions provide deeper ―out-of-the-box‖

and custom integration with more of your enterprise systems including LDAP directories,
Learning Management Systems, PeopleSoft, SAP, BlackBoard, IP multicasting,
Siteminder, NTLM and MS Outlook.
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 4
 4. Highest level of security – No other web collaboration solution offers the level of data
security that Saba Centradoes, from offering an on-premises solution to integration with
enterprise security applications like Siteminder to providing dozens of security
configuration options including data encryption over-the-wire and on the disk and not
allowing persistent storage of content and data on Saba Centra’s hosted servers.
5. Secure content management – Saba Centra offers a scalable and secure architecture for
organizing and managing content in a searchable repository so that it can be easily
incorporated into a web event, re-used across a series of online events or assembled into
personalized learning tracks.
6. Web Services interoperability – By adhering to industry-standard specifications, such as
XML, SOAP and WSDL, Web Services makes it much easier for different systems across
the Internet or intranet to interoperate with and leverage the unique services each system
provides. Saba Centrais the first real-time enterprise collaboration platform to offer a
fully Web Services-compliant interface for customers and partners looking to integrate
Saba Centra’s powerful, scalable and secure eLearning and web conferencing capabilities
with third-party applications.
7. Advanced communications – For online events where it makes sense, Saba Centra’s
integrated, no-cost voice-over-IP feature can save organizations hundreds of thousands of
dollars in teleconferencing charges. Combined with multi-point video conferencing, Saba
Centra offers customers a superior communications experience.
8. Maturity – Saba Centra reflects the maturity of a technology in its seventh-generation.

III. Reliability, Availability & Scalability

As web conferencing becomes more business critical to organizations, expectations around

reliability and quality-of-service are rapidly approaching those of teleconferencing.

Saba Centra offers the reliability and maturity of an application in its seventh generation
combined with complete fault tolerance and redundancy across the entire system. With an
architecture that eliminates single points of failure and offers virtually unlimited scalability, Saba
Centra supports everything from small departmental use to large-scale application service
providers (ASP) supporting thousands of customers.

Scalability
A common mistake made by many organizations evaluating web conferencing vendors is to only
consider one aspect of ―scalability‖: server or system scalability, or how many concurrent users
the system will support. While important, this is only one aspect of scalability that needs to be
considered. Equally important are network scalability and management scalability.

It doesn’t matter if the application or service can scale to one thousand concurrent users, for
example, if your network can’t reliably handle that amount of additional traffic. Similarly,
many organizations neglect to estimate the human resources that will be required to manage the
system and support end users when other departments and business units start to demand access
to the web conferencing application or service the IT organization just rolled out. Saba Centra is

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 5

the only real-time enterprise collaboration application designed for total enterprise scalability in
each of these three key areas (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Network scalability

Within most organizations, the network infrastructure is always trying to keep up with the
demands of new business applications such as web conferencing and web casting. And a large
percentage of these organizations are already running at near peak or peak capacity on significant
portions of their network. Even organizations that have built a business case for upgrading their
network infrastructure usually cannot afford to pay for all the upgrades it needs in all the
locations it has to reach. Your organization knows that it needs a web conferencing solution to
remain competitive, but how can you make it work with the network you have in place?

Saba Centra is the only solution that provides:

1) Technology that will allow you to leverage your network infrastructure as much as
possible

2) A high degree of configurability and control so you can tune the solution to your
particular network topology and restrictions

3) Core technologies that are designed for maximum bandwidth efficiency

4) Training and consulting services to encourage best practices by your end users

See chapter IV. Bandwidth for a more comprehensive discussion of the unique technology and
features built into Saba Centra to minimize the impact on your network.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 6

Management scalability

With the rapid adoption of eLearning and web conferencing across a wide variety of departments
and business units in many organizations, it is becoming increasingly difficult for one central
group of people to manage the system for all groups and users, particularly if the system is being
used for formal training events and web seminars. This small group quickly finds itself trying to
manage license usage, events, users, etc. for all the business groups…and they have other job
responsibilities!

One possible solution to this problem is to simply have each business group independently sign
up for their own separate web conferencing service. But this solution puts you on the opposite
extreme because it now becomes very difficult for a central group of administrators to oversee
and monitor the use of web conferencing across your entire organization. What was the peak
number of concurrent users on your network last month? How many online meetings per day is
your organization averaging? Are all the business groups adhering to your security policies?

Saba Centra is the only solution that lets you scale from a human resource standpoint by
providing de-centralized administration AND hierarchical, multi-level administration so a group
of super administrators can monitor web conferencing across all your business groups.

Saba Centra provides:

 Multiple Domains – Users, meetings, events, content, branding, security settings and
licenses can all be partitioned into separate Domains, with each business group
managing its own Domain or Domains. All Domains run on the same common Saba
Centra infrastructure. See Figure 3 below.

 Hierarchical Domains – Each Domain can have its own set of sub-domains. This
provides the business groups (or even your entire organization) the option to pool, or
share licenses across all the sub-domains, or to allocate specific license limits and
products to each domain separately. For example, the Consumer Products business
unit Domain can contain sub-domains for Health Care, Beauty Care and Home Care.
Or you can choose to create a separate Saba Centra Domain for each department such
as Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Services and HR. There is no limit to the number of
Domain levels.

 Multi-level administration – Within a given Domain, different user groups can be

created with different levels of administrator rights on that Domain. For example,
Group A may be set up with rights to manage the Domain licenses and security
settings, Group B set up with rights to only manage user accounts and Domain
branding while Group C can only manage meetings and events. (Note: A user can be a
member of more than one user group.)

 Access Control Lists – Saba Centra supports Access Control Lists (ACLs) for
managing which users can access which Domains and what privileges they have in
that Domain. Note: With Access Control Lists, users who need access to multiple
Domains do not need a separate user account in each Domain. This allows you to
maintain central control of all the user accounts for your entire organization across all
Domains in a single, root-level Domain, while de-centralizing event and content
management, for example.
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 7
  Scalable user management – The reality is that most users have multiple accounts
and passwords to keep track of across multiple applications, which is why one of the
most common Help Desk requests from web conferencing users is for help with their
account login. Multiply that times thousands of users and you’ll find your existing
resources may not scale to handle this demand.

Below is a list of features in Saba Centra designed to greatly reduce the management
and Help Desk burden of supporting more and more end users as usage expands across
your organization.

o LDAP integration – The Saba Centra Directory Synchronization Service (CDSS)

enables an organization to integrate Saba Centra with their corporate directory
server for dynamic user authentication and account synchronization. Once in
place, end users log into their Saba Centra portal using their normal network
username and password.
o Single sign-on – Saba Centra provides multiple single sign-on solutions so users
are automatically logged into their personal Saba Centra homepage:
 Microsoft NTLM single sign-on support
 Netegrity Siteminder single sign-on support
 Remote Login API which allows customers to build their own single
sign-on interface.
o Self-registration password – You can set a Domain password which a user will
need to create their own account, allowing you to completely de-centralize
account creation if desired, yet giving you a level of control over who can self-
register on the system.
o Remember Me – Users logging in for the first time can use the ―Remember Me‖
feature, which will automatically log them in the next time the browse to the Saba
Centra portal. (This feature can be disabled)
o Password reminder – Provides a secure solution for users who forget their login
information.
o Guest Attend – If permitted, users can attend live sessions and view recordings
as ―guests‖, i.e. without having to be a registered user on the system.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 8

 Figure 3

System scalability

Note: The following section on system scalability is only applicable to customers considering an
on-premises deployment.

Saba Centra is architected to scale as usage of web conferencing within your organization grows,
from small departmental usage to a global enterprise solution. In fact, Saba Centra’s entire
Hosting services business, serving hundreds of customers simultaneously, is run on the same
exact architecture as its customers who choose Saba Centra’s on-premises solution.

How does Saba Centra achieve this level of scalability? With an architecture that employs a
combination of both vertical (―scale up‖) and horizontal (―scale out‖) scalability.

Vertical scalability
Vertical scalability is the optimization of system performance on a single server by the
efficient usage of resources such as memory, CPU, thread management, etc.

Saba Centra publishes recommended server specifications (For system requirements, please
see the Hardware and Software Requirements document) for customers looking to maximize
vertical scalability. Adhering to these specs, a single Saba Centra Collaboration Server
(CCS), which processes the live audio, video and data conferencing within the system, will
support up to 1000 concurrent users in single Conference event 1, or up to 500 concurrent users
in a single Saba Centra Classroom or Saba Centra Meeting session.2

1
Although Centra –Saba Centra Webinar uses the exact same technology as –Saba Centra Classroom and eMeeting Saba Centra
Meeting, Webinar is intentionally designed to limit the amount of interactivity during the live session, which in turn reduces the

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 9

 Often overlooked in discussions of system scalability is the user interface design for portal
management. How well is it designed for managing thousands of users and meetings? Saba
Centra’s management interface provides:

 Advanced searching and filtering features

 Ability to configure the number of search results listed per page
 Ability to organize events into hierarchical folders with a ―breadcrumb‖ navigation
design for maximum performance

Horizontal scalability
Horizontal scalability is the ability to increase the capacity and availability of the system by
adding more servers using load balancing and clustering.

Most major system components in Saba Centra — the web server, Collaboration Server,
Recording Server, Satellite Server and database — can be configured as a load-balanced
cluster, for maximum scalability and availability. This highly scalable architecture will
support hundreds of thousands of user accounts and thousands of concurrent users.
Just as important, Saba Centra provides consulting services to help customers successfully
size and configure a high availability system.

Reliability and Availability

24/7 operations
Saba Centra is designed so that 99% of all system administration and configuration tasks can be
done without requiring a restart of any of the services, providing customers with minimal down-
time. There are over one hundred Domain configuration options that can be modified,
independently for each Domain, via an easy-to-use web interface, with zero system down-time.
The same is true for running online reports and distributing licenses.This capability contributes
considerably to the 99.99% up-time of Saba Centra’s hosted services.

Fault tolerance
Saba Centra is designed to provide customers with a high degree of fault tolerance:
1) Automatic and transparent reconnection if the Saba Centra client loses its connection to
the server during a live event.
2) Automatic failover to another Saba Centra Satellite Server in the network if the Saba
Centra client is unable to establish a connection to a Satellite Server during login or loses
its connection during a live web conference. Users do not need to manually re-login in
the case of a failover.

load on the Collaboration Server, allowing Saba Centra to certify a higher overall concurrent user limit than Classroom and
eMeeting Meeting.
2
Saba recommends that customers run the Collaboration Server (CCS) on a separate box from the rest of the system if they
anticipate usage to exceed 500 concurrent users of any event type. Saba Centra can scale to much higher volumes. You can
discuss the infrastructure requirements with your account team.
In addition, if the 500+ concurrent users are scattered across many different meetings and events (versus one or two large
Webinar-only events), Centra recommends setting up a second or even third Collaboration Server in a load-balanced cluster to
ensure maximum performance and availability.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 10

 3) Automatic and transparent failover to another Collaboration Server in the cluster if a
Collaboration Server becomes unresponsive for whatever reason. Users do not need to
manually re-login in the case of a failover.
4) Automatic failover from multicast to unicast if a client is unable to join a multicast
session for whatever reason.
5) Automatic recovery of a session recording if the Recording Server loses its connection to
the system during a live web conference.

Monitoring
Monitoring and system usage metrics are critical pieces of maintaining a high quality-of-service
(QOS) for two reasons:
1) No matter how much redundancy you build into the system, outages can still occur, and
you need to be able to respond to any outage as quickly as possible.
2) You need to know what the actual usage levels are relative to what you designed the
system to handle.
Saba Centra provides solutions for both of these needs:
 A Server Monitor tool which will detect if any of the Saba Centra servers in the system
are not responding and will automatically send an email alert in the case of an outage.
Because the Server Monitor uses Saba Centra application-level APIs to monitor the
services, it will detect a problem at any layer in the stack, all the way up to the Saba
Centra application level.
 Saba Centra contains integrated System Usage Reports which provide metrics such as
peak number of events and users (live and playback) for a particular server or for a
particular Domain, with the option to drill down and view detailed usage metrics such as
which were the largest events run and who was the organizer for those events, etc.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 11

IV. Bandwidth

While many applications on the market are building assumptions into their technology that end
users will be on a broadband connection, Saba Centra continues to add bandwidth-saving
innovations into its products to support full functionality over connections as low as 28.8 kbps,
and to scale across your organization without bringing your network to its knees.
The first part of this section summarizes the many bandwidth-saving features in Saba Centra,
followed by a more in-depth description of two key features, multicasting and Satellite servers,
followed by a table which provides bandwidth consumption estimates for a ―typical‖ Saba
Centra session.

Understanding how the impact of Saba Centra on your network can be minimized can be
grouped into four main categories: 1) Leveraging your infrastructure, 2) Saba Centra system
configuration, 3) Saba Centra core technology and, 4) End user best practices.

1) Leveraging your infrastructure

 Full IP multicast support – Saba Centra is the only data conferencing product on the
market that supports IP multicasting of application sharing data, slides and whiteboarding,
in addition to IP audio and video. See IP Multicasting below.
 Saba Centra Satellite Servers – Are you looking for a solution that will scale across your
Wide Area Network but don’t yet have a fully multicast-enabled network? Saba Centra’s
Satellite Server technology provides a software-based solution right out-of-the-box. Only a
single data stream is transmitted across your WAN to each Satellite server, which then
handles the job of directing the data streams to the appropriate clients in its local region or
office. See Satellite Servers below.
 Third party content distribution networks – Saba Centra is designed so you can leverage
content distribution networks such as Cisco’s CDN technology. These third party solutions
can be used to push out to the edges of your network rich media content so that during the
live web conference, the Saba Centra client will pull the content from the user’s local
content engine. Saba Centra recordings saved in an industry standard media format can
also be distributed via the content delivery network.

2) Saba Centra system configuration

 Automatic content pre-download – If desired, events can be configured so that all or
some of the event content will be automatically pre-downloaded on the participant's PC
before the session begins, which will minimize spikes on your network when changing
slides simultaneously for a large group of participants.
 Dynamic slide pre-caching – For content that is ―streamed‖ from the server, the Saba
Centra client will dynamically pre-cache the next slide in the agenda while the presenter is
talking to the current slide, avoiding network spikes during slide transitions and smoothing
out the latency of slide transitions for all participants.
 Maximum session size – The Saba Centra administrator can set a limit on the number of
concurrent users allowed in any one session.
 Maximum concurrent users – The Saba Centra administrator can set a limit on the total
number of concurrent users across the entire system. A Seat Availability calendar is
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 12
 available to end users to help them schedule meetings during times when the system has
enough seats available.
 Configurable video settings – The Saba Centra administrator can configure the maximum
bandwidth used by Saba Centra’s integrated video conferencing feature, separately for both
broadband users and dial-up users, as well as the maximum size of the video image.
 Configurable application sharing settings – The Saba Centra administrator can configure
the default color depth and speed of the application sharing feature, which can result in
significant bandwidth savings.

3) Saba Centra core technology

 Centralized content repository – With Saba Centra’s option for a centralized, searchable
content repository, event content only needs to be uploaded to the server once, rather than
every time an event is run, eliminating unnecessary bandwidth usage.
 Bandwidth-efficient application sharing – Saba Centra's application sharing technology
transmits only highly compressed screen "diffs" across the wire and will even dynamically
discard intermediate updates if it detects that the viewer is falling behind due to bandwidth
restrictions. In addition, the Appshare Pause feature allows users to drill-down, scroll or
resize shared windows without flooding the network with unwanted data. Saba Centra’s
unrivaled performance over dialup connections is a testament to this bandwidth efficient
design.
 Bandwidth-efficient IP video – The high compression video stream dynamically adapts to
the bandwidth of each user’s connection, sending a low bit rate stream to low bandwidth
users and a higher frame rate stream to higher bandwidth users so that the video is always
in sync for all users. Users can choose to freeze the live video and display only a
―snapshot‖ throughout the duration of the session, which uses zero bandwidth. In addition,
by default the live video automatically shuts off when application sharing is started to
avoid running the two most bandwidth intensive features simultaneously.
 Small recording file size – Recordings generated with Saba Centra are very small,
averaging around 3 MB per hour of recording, which greatly reduces the impact of playing
back recordings on your network. Competing web conferencing solutions can average as
much as 24 MB per hour of recording.
 High compression voice over IP – Saba Centra defaults to a super high compression audio
codec for transmitting high quality IP audio at no more than 7 kbps total per audio stream,
one half to one quarter the bandwidth of other IP audio conferencing services.
 Efficient communication protocol – By transmitting all client-server traffic over a single
network port, Saba Centra uses network resources more efficiently than competing
products which use up to a half a dozen ports to accomplish the same task.

4) End user best practices

There are a variety of best practices that can help reduce the impact on your network. Some
examples include:
 Option to use teleconferencing for the audio instead of Voice-Over-IP.
 Avoid graphically rich content slides. Embedded photos can increase slide size 3 -fold.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 13

  Schedule large web conferences to run at off-peak hours.
 When broadcasting a shared application, pause the appshare broadcast when doing a lot
of navigation or scrolling that the other participants do not need to see.

IP Multicasting
IP multicasting is a network protocol designed to support the broadcasting of data to many users
in a very scalable, bandwidth efficient manner.
Saba Centra uses PGM to add reliability to multicasting, allowing us to send all session data,
including content slides, breakout rooms, and application sharing, in addition to IP audio and
video, via multicast with dramatic network savings. Saba Centra is the only web conference
provider that offers this solution.
The multicast protocols are used by CSS and the desktop client. At this time, Saba Centra Web
Access (browser client), iPhone, and iPad clients do not support multicast
Proper set up of the IP Multicast infrastructure is vital to the success of the deployment of Saba
Centra on an IP Multicast network. In order for you to run multicast Saba Centra events, your
network infrastructure (i.e. routers) must be multicast-enabled and be properly configured to
handle multicast traffic. Please make sure to check with your internal IT team to determine if
you have multicast capabilities enabled.
Saba Centra’s IP multicast solution provides the following features:
 The same web conference can support both multicast users and unicast users at the same
time. If the Saba Centra client fails to connect to the multicast ―channel,‖ (e.g. because it
is on a non multicast-enabled subnet) it will automatically failover to a unicast connection.
In addition, the Saba Centra server can be configured to force users in specific IP address
ranges to always connect via a unicast connection, thus avoiding the failover step every
time they attend a session.
This feature is useful, for example, if only portions of your network are multicast-enabled
or if your entire network is multicast-enabled except your RAS (dialup) servers or if you
would like to reach users inside your firewall as well as outside in the same event (the
public Internet does not support the multicast protocol).
 When scheduling a new event, the event manager can let the Saba Centra server
automatically assign a multicast IP address to use for that event (the auto-assignment
range is configurable on the server) or the event manager can specify one manually.
 Connection to a multicast-enabled event is completely transparent to the users.

Satellite Servers

Not to be confused with the satellite networks deployed in space, a Saba Centra Satellite Server
(CSS) is a specialized piece of software that is installed on a standard Windows server and is
designed to more efficiently route Saba Centra traffic across your Wide Area Network (WAN).
Instead of the Saba Centra server transmitting a separate unicast data stream across your WAN
for each client (participant) in the session, placing a higher load on the server and using
significantly more WAN bandwidth, only a single unicast stream is sent across the WAN to each
Satellite server, which then handles the job of fanning out separate unicast streams over the local
subnet to each client in session.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 14

In the example below (Figure 4), with Saba Centra’s Satellite server architecture, regardless of
the number of clients participating in a Saba Centra session in the Atlanta office, the bandwidth
consumed over the WAN link to that office is only 7 kbps (IP audio) per broadcast event:

Data center
Network
CentraOne traffic
Centra Server Bandwidth usage

7 kbps 14 kbps
Paris office

Presenter speaks
WAN
(7 kbps - VOIP)

Atlanta office 7 kbps 7 kbps London office

Satellite Server1 Satellite Server2

LAN 28 kbps 14 kbps

LAN

clients clients

Figure 4

A couple of additional points worth mentioning:

 A single Satellite server can handle many different events running at the same time.
 A Satellite server can run on the same box as the other Saba Centra Server components,
such as the CMS and CCS. (see chapter VII. System Architecture)
At this point, you may be asking yourself how Saba Centra’s Satellite server technology differs
from IP multicasting. They are very similar in that they are both solutions to the problem of
needing an efficient and scalable way to broadcast data across your Wide Area Network.
Multicasting is the most efficient solution because it works down to the LAN level, not just for
the WAN. However, to be able to take advantage of IP multicasting, your network infrastructure
must be multicast-enabled (see IP Multicasting above). That’s where Saba Centra’s Satellite
server technology comes in—it allows you to achieve much of the same network efficiency and
scalability via software, without requiring a multicast-enabled network.

How Satellite servers work

There are two methods (system configurable) the Saba Centra client can use to determine which
Satellite server to connect to when a user joins a live Saba Centra event:
1. Automatic server selection – The Saba Centra client will measure the network latency to each
Satellite server in the network and automatically connect to the server with the lowest latency.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 15

2. Manual server selection – When the user logs into a live session, they are prompted to choose
the Satellite server to connect to from the list of servers in the network. The Saba Centra
administrator can give user-friendly names to the servers, such as ―Atlanta‖ or ―Japan‖ so the
user knows which server to choose.

Automatic failover
For both selection methods, if a Satellite server becomes unresponsive or the network link to that
server goes down during a live session, users connected to that Satellite server will automatically
re-connect to the next best server in the network.

Finally, the system tracks and reports, for each event, which Satellite server each participant
connected to, including any failover connections.

Centra Satellite Servers – WAN Scalability, Failover

Field Office (Centra Satellite Server)

Data Center (Centra Collaboration Server -

Satellite Server combination)

Figure 5

Example of globally distributed Satellite servers

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 16

Bandwidth values
The following table provides bandwidth values (average and maximum) for a ―typical‖ web
conference.

Bandwidth usage (kbps) for a “typical” session 3

Unicast Multicast
Session Activity per user4 or Satellite Server per session5
event
Session average 6 Max7 Session average Max

Combined bandwidth of all features in a typical session

Typical session with VOIP audio, appshare and:

―streamed‖ PPT slides 13 67 26 134
8
pre-downloaded PPT slides 12 67 24 134
Typical session with telephone audio, appshare and:
―streamed‖ PPT slides 6 60 12 120
pre-downloaded PPT slides 5 60 10 120

Breakdown of individual features

IP audio9 7 7 14 14
PPT slides (―streamed‖) 2 4 4 8
PPT slides (pre-downloaded) 0 0 0 0
app sharing
Low resolution 18 60 36 120
High resolution 22 90 44 180
live video10
Broadband users
5011 120

3
A ―typical‖ session consisting of 25% application sharing, 75% PowerPoint slides and 100% audio (either VOIP or telephone).
4
You have the choice to place a Centra Satellite Server in key areas of your Wide Area Network. Only a single unicast data
stream is transmitted to a Satellite Server per event, regardless of the number of end users connected to that Satellite Server. See
Figure 5.
5
Whereas the Unicast values are per user, the multicast values are per session, regardless of the number of participants in the
session. The reason the multicast values are double those for unicasting is that for the multicast session in total, there are always
two multicast data streams – one from the presenter up to the Centra server and one broadcast stream from the server out to all
the other participants.
6
Averages were calculated using the ―typical‖ session formula of 25% application sharing, 75% PowerPoint slides and 100%
audio (either VOIP or telephone).
7
Maximum bandwidth utilization is usually during the application sharing portion of a ―typical‖ session (no video). The
maximum appshare values were measured while sharing a colorful web site with a lot of navigation and scrolling activity.
8
For training events and presentations, content can be configured by the event organizer to be automatically pre-downloaded to
the end user’s PC before the session begins, eliminating the need to push out content to each user throughout the session. While
this feature may not affect the average bandwidth very much because of long intervals between slide changes, it does eliminate
spikes on your network during the slide changes.
9
Assumes the default Centra SC3 codec.
10
The live video stream automatically shuts off during application sharing to preserve bandwidth (configurable).

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 17

 176x144 220 230 100 240
640x480 12
440 460
8 8
Dialup users N/A13 N/A

Additional notes
 Assumes burstable bandwidth – If bandwidth is severely constrained (e.g. dial-up
connections), then the peak bandwidth utilization is typically the maximum connection
speed. If the session bit rate is higher than the connection speed, the result will be slower
data updates on the end user’s client. However, because in Saba Centra the IP audio
packets are sent at higher priority than the content, users can still experience good quality
voice-over-IP conferencing even when their dialup connections are saturated.
 User’s tolerance of latency – If using the IP audio feature, for broadcast-style sessions, a
user can tolerate latencies up to about eight seconds, but only if the variance, or jitter, is
reasonably low. For highly interactive sessions, the latency observed from the end user’s
point of view should be less than two seconds for an acceptable IP audio experience.
 Bandwidth spikes of much higher magnitude than the average and ―maximum‖ values
published here could be encountered during a live web conference, although it’s
impossible to quantify their magnitudes since they depend on many different factors.
Saba Centra’s advanced technology minimizes spikes through a variety of methods,
including administrator-configurable maximum bandwidth settings, content pre-push
options and dynamic slide pre-caching.

V. Security

Because over 1000 customers across all industries, including Fortune 500 financial institutions,
pharmaceuticals and Federal government agencies conduct their online meetings and events
using Saba Centra, all of Saba Centra’s products and services have to be built to comply with the
rigorous security standards of these organizations. To achieve such high standards, security
requirements are built into everything Saba Centra does, from product design and testing to the
architecture and operations of Saba Centra’s hosting services.

Saba Centra offers six layers of data security, as shown below, each of which is broken down
further into additional layers of security.

11
Because of the difficulty in agreeing on what a ―typical‖ video session is, this value represents the minimum bandwidth
required to broadcast a small video image of adequate quality (frame rate). This bandwidth limit can be configured by the Centra
administrator.
12
To ensure that dialup users don’t fall behind during the video broadcast, the Centra server will automatically reduce the frame
rate for dialup users and cap the maximum video bit rate at 8 kbps. Users on high bandwidth connections continue to receive a
higher frame rate video stream.
13
Most RAS servers are not configured or able to handle multicast packets. However, Centra allows you to have a mixed
audience of multicast and unicast users in the same session. See IP Multicasting above.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 18

Note: Unless otherwise specified, all the security features listed below are available to both hosted and on-premises
deployments.

1. Physical security (Hosted service only)

The Saba Centra servers are locked in a physically secure facility, which includes state-of-the-
art smoke detection and fire suppression systems, motion sensors, and 24x7 secured access, as
well as video camera surveillance and security breach alarms.
Access is closely controlled by access lists pre-approved by Saba Centra.
All of Saba Centra’s data centers are ISO 9000 compliant and have SAS70 type II audit
reports.
2. Network security
(Hosted service only) All hosted servers are protected by an ICSA certified Cisco Secure PIX firewall, the highest
security, highest-performance firewall product line within the Cisco firewall family. The
firewall is configured with strict policies including network address translation and is
monitored 24x7.
(Hosted service only) Saba Centra's hosting infrastructure uses a managed security service from Sprint. There are
reporting and escalation procedures in place to detect and deal with potential security breaches.
Saba Centra is built on a three-tier system architecture (see Figure 6 below) which provides the
highest level of network security for your organization’s data.
Saba Centra is fully compatible with all types of firewalls and proxy servers using a variety of
authentication mechanisms, so firewalls do not need to be reconfigured to support the
application.
Saba Centra is fully compatible with firewalls running Network Address Translation (NAT) for
added security.
Saba Centra is fully compatible with encrypted Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
Saba Centra does not use ―stateless‖ network connections (e.g. UDP).
3. Platform security
(Hosted service only) Anti-virus software is run on all of Saba Centra’s hosted servers.
(Hosted service only) Saba Centra tests and applies security patches to all of its hosted servers as soon as they
become available.
Saba Centra supports enterprise-grade database servers such as Oracle and SQL Server running
on a Unix operating system.
4. Application security
All system access is controlled via Access Control Lists (ACLs) for customizable control of
user authentication and authorization (privileges), assigned at the group level, providing
customers with multi-level administration.
Saba Centra offers dynamic user authentication against your organization’s LDAP or Active
Directory server, allowing you to leverage your organization’s internal user security policies.
When this feature is enabled, user passwords are not stored in the Saba Centra database.
Saba Centra provides ―out-of-the-box‖ support for third party authentication products such as
NTLM and Netegrity Siteminder.
Saba Centra offers complete 128-bit SSL encryption of all communication between the clients
and the server, including user ID and password, as well as during server-to-server
communication.

User passwords are encrypted in the database.

Saba Centra provides a comprehensive set of audit reports including system-level, user-level
and event/meeting-level activity reports detailing everything from last login time stamps to
duration spent viewing a particular recording for each user.
When a user logs into their web-based, personal homepage on Saba Centra, their user session is
tracked using an encrypted cookie on their client, reducing the risk of another user spoofing
their identity or acquiring their login credentials from the web browser’s cache or history files.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 19

 Strong password rules can be set, such as minimum password length and minimum number of
non-alphabetic characters (if not using the dynamic LDAP authentication feature).
Saba Centra’s security is extended to the input field level, conducting input validation to
prevent cross-site scripting attacks, for example. The web browser’s auto-complete feature is
also disabled for sensitive fields such as user ID and password.
Saba Centra allows an administrator to reset everyone’s account password via a batch edit
utility (if not using the dynamic LDAP authentication feature).
Saba Centra offers a configurable inactivity timeout. The default is 2 hours.
The ―Remember Me‖ automatic login feature can be disabled in Saba Centra.
Saba Centra allows an administrator to easily deactivate user accounts that have not been active
for a certain period of time.
All downloadable plugins are signed with a third-party digital signature registered to Saba
Centra.
5. Meeting security
Unlike other web conferencing products that put the burden of adhering to security policies on
the meeting leaders every time they run a meeting, Saba Centra lets the Saba Centra
Administrator centrally configure and enforce the security policies for all meetings and web
events.
Events and meetings can be password-protected and designated as "private/unlisted".
Access to events can be restricted just to participants who have been explicitly pre-enrolled or
invited by the event manager or meeting host.
A detailed attendance report is generated so event organizers know exactly who was logged
into the event.
Visual identity – Meeting/event leaders can see the names of who is attending the event and
can ask unknown attendees to identify themselves.
Meeting leaders have the ability to eject unwanted users from an event, which will also block
them from logging back into the event for the duration of that event.
6. Data security
Is your use of online meetings and training restricted primarily to internal users, or do you
think you will one day want the peace-of-mind, greater control or tighter integration with your
security schemes that comes with an on-premises solution? Saba Centra is offered both as a
behind-the-firewall enterprise solution as well as a hosted solution.
Saba Centra is the only web conferencing application in the market which allows customers to
partition all their data, users and meetings into separate, hierarchical domains. Users in one
domain, for example, will not be able to access content or meetings which reside in other
domains, unless explicitly given access. This powerful feature allows organizations to partition
data between business groups or between internal users and external users.
Unlike other web conferencing services, only Saba Centra offers the security option to not
allow persistent meeting content to be stored on Saba Centra’s hosted servers, for customers
with strict security policies that prohibit the storage of proprietary content outside their
network. This feature is also available for customers with on-premises deployments.
Saba Centra offers a security option to automatically delete all cached or pre-downloaded
content from the end user’s PC, including viewed recordings.
Saba Centra offers 128-bit SSL encryption of all session data and content.
Presentation content can be marked viewable "in-session only" so participants cannot view
content unless the meeting leader is also logged into the session.
Presentation content which has been configured to be pre-downloaded to participants’ systems
can be encrypted while the content is stored on the server and client in addition to when it is
downloaded over the network.
Saba Centra provides the ability to disable the Print feature during a live web conference.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 20

Saba Centra’s four-tier system architecture provides the highest level of network security for
your organization’s data.

Figure 6

VI. Firewalls

Saba Centra Smart Connect

At this point, your deployment falls into one of the following categories:
1. You are hosting and managing your own Saba Centra server and you are only concerned about
users who are internal to your organization.
2. You are hosting and managing your own Saba Centra server but you are concerned about
users who are both internal AND external to your organization.
3. You are using Saba Centra’s ASP or hosting services and you are concerned about end users
who are only internal to your organization.
4. You are using Saba Centra’s ASP or hosting services and you are concerned about end users
who are both internal AND external to your organization.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 21

 Server location End user location

Internal External

1
Internal/DMZ
2

3
Saba Centra ASP/hosted
4

Why divide users into internal versus external? Because you (your organization) have control
over the quality of the connection your internal users will make with the Saba Centra server, but
not for external users. You have identified a strong business case (and expect a high return on
investment) for leveraging Saba Centra’s online collaboration technology, and thus will want to
maximize that investment by configuring your firewall/proxy servers to provide your internal
users the best system performance possible, without compromising security.
For your external users however, you have very little control over how their firewalls and proxy
servers are configured. Fortunately, Saba Centra's Smart Connect feature will automatically
select the optimal client-server communication method for each user, providing the best possible
user experience for each user’s specific firewall configuration.

Internal users
Let’s first take a look at what you do have control over – configuring your firewall/proxies to
provide your internal users the best possible experience.
Specifically, you should configure your firewall/proxy servers to permit:
 Direct TCP connection from all clients to the Saba Centra server (Satellite server to be
precise) on port 1709 outbound. (Note: 1709 is registered to Saba Centra with the IANA
and should not be used by any other application - http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-
numbers)
 HTTP (Web) traffic on port 80 outbound from all clients to the Saba Centra server
(Management server (CMS) to be precise)
Options:
 If you will be using the SSL encryption capabilities of Saba Centra, you will also need to
make sure port 443 outbound is also open between all clients and the server(s).
 If you plan to split the Saba Centra server components up into separate servers for higher
system scalability and failover, you will need to allow direct TCP communication
between the servers over ports 1709, 1710 and 1711 bi-directionally.

External users
Now let’s take a look at how Saba Centra’s Smart Connect feature allows you to reach external
users (e.g. for customer training, marketing seminars, prospect demos, etc.) who may be behind
any number of restrictive firewall configurations.
The first feature of Saba Centra that makes it so firewall-friendly is its use of only a single TCP
port for all session traffic…audio, video, data and content. Other live data collaboration
products require multiple ports to be open (or multiple phone lines) to accommodate audio, video

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 22

and data, while some products require FTP support (ports 20, 21) on the firewall for content
management. In addition, unlike some other products, Saba Centra users can still attend sessions
even if their firewall is blocking ActiveX.
When one of your external users attends a live event, their Saba Centra client will automatically
attempt to connect to the Saba Centra server using the fastest possible connection, which is a
direct TCP connection on port 1709. If 1709 is blocked by the user’s firewall, then the Saba
Centra client will automatically attempt to tunnel to the Saba Centra server using HTTP over
port 80. Because most web proxy servers today have HTTP Keep-alives enabled, performance
through a proxy tunneling connection is usually acceptable, although not as good as a direct
connection over 1709.
If the web conference is encrypted, then the Saba Centra client will automatically connect to the
server on the standard SSL port of 443, which is usually open on most firewalls.

Other common firewall/proxy server configurations that Saba Centra supports includes:

 Network Address Translation – Saba Centra fully supports Network Address Translation
(NAT) by allowing the Saba Centra administrator to configure the server(s) to follow
specific address mapping rules that have been set on the firewall.
 Automatic proxy configurations – The Saba Centra client will automatically detect the
user’s browser’s proxy settings, including automatic proxy configuration (PAC) files for
both Netscape and Internet Explorer users.
 Basic and NTLM authentication
 Transparent proxy servers

By automatically establishing the optimal connection method to the server, your external users
can successfully participate in online sessions without any assistance from their IT group or
intervention by the end user.

Saba Centra is certified to work with the industry-leading firewalls/proxy servers

VII. System Architecture

Note: The following section is only applicable to customers considering on-premises

deployments, or customers who plan to start out with Saba Centra’s hosting services before
moving to an on-premises solution.

Server Architecture
Saba Centra consists of six major server components, the Saba Centra Management Server
(CMS), the Saba Centra Collaboration Server (CCS), the Saba Centra Satellite Server (CSS), the
Saba Centra Recording Server (CRS), a relational database and two optional components, the
Saba Centra Directory Synchronization Service (CDSS) for LDAP authentication and the Saba
Centra Telephony Gateway (CTG) for automatically recording conference call audio. All the

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 23

server components can run on the same physical server or they can be distributed across multiple
servers for greater scalability and redundancy.

The Saba Centra Management Server (CMS) is the central hub which manages all the
different distributed system components (see Figures 8 and 9) and all the non real-time
management services, such as:

 User login and user management

 Event/meeting management, scheduling, registration and invitations
 Tracking and reporting
 Capacity & license management
 Content and recording management

For disk space planning purposes for the CMS component alone (i.e. assuming the database and
recording server (CRS) are on different servers), assume approximately 5 MB of disk space per
meeting or event for storage of content and recordings.

Figure 7

The Saba Centra Collaboration Server (CCS) is the engine behind Saba Centra’s real-time
multi-point audio, video and data conferencing technology. The CCS is only active when a live
session is running. Specifically, the Collaboration Server handles all:

 Multi-point IP audio and video conferencing

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 24
  Application sharing/showing
 Group whiteboarding and text chat
 Electronic hand raising, polling and emoticons
 Dynamic Breakout Rooms
The CCS runs as a standard Windows Service and is uninstalled via the standard Windows
Add/Remove Programs.

The Saba Centra Satellite Server (CSS) is essentially a component of the Collaboration Server
which can be broken out and separately installed closer to the edges of your network to localize
network traffic and increase the bandwidth efficiency of Saba Centra.

Note: There is an ―n to m‖ relationship between Collaboration Servers and Satellite Servers.

I.e., any Satellite server can be used by any Collaboration server and visa versa.

The Satellite server runs as an NT Service. Satellite Servers are covered in more detail in
chapter IV. Bandwidth.

The Saba Centra Recording Server (CRS) automatically records events/meetings and
publishes the recordings to the Saba Centra Management Server (CMS) for immediate playback
when the live session is over.

Note: Recordings are stored on and played back from the Management Server, not the
Recording Server. The CRS is the service that does the actual recording and is not involved
in the playback process.

The CRS runs as a standard Windows Service and is uninstalled via the standard Windows
Add/Remove Programs.

The Saba Centra Telephony Gateway (CTG) provides a link between a teleconference audio
channel and a Saba Centra Collaboration Server, and allows a special client to listen to the
teleconference audio channel and add it to the visual channel choreographed by the CCS so both
can be recorded together into an event recording for playback. A Telephony Gateway is
necessary only to record an event using a teleconference audio channel.
The Saba Centra Directory Synchronization Service (CDSS) is designed to reduce the
ongoing costs of user management within Saba Centra by providing dynamic user authentication
and user account synchronization against an organization’s LDAP database or Microsoft Active
Directory server (see chapter VIII. Enterprise Integration for more details).

The CDSS runs as a standard Windows Service and is uninstalled via Windows’ standard
Add/Remove Programs.

Database
Saba Centra ships with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as its pre-configured,
embedded database. If you are standardized on a particular database, need greater scalability or
require enterprise-class database administration tools for clustering, replication, restore, etc., the
embedded database can be easily swapped out for a SQL Server or Oracle database, which can
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 25
run on the same box as the Saba Centra Management Server or on a physically separate
Windows or Unix server.
For disk space planning purposes, assume approximately 40 KBytes per user or 200 KBytes per
meeting/event for the database storage.
Note: Content and recordings are stored outside of the database and disk space for it should be
accounted for separately (see Saba Centra Management Server above).
Saba Centra-specific database tools such as automatic and manual database dump and restore
and batch import utilities are provided for system administration.
The database must be dedicated to Saba Centra to ensure optimum performance.

Note: Saba Centra strongly recommends against adding custom tables to the Saba Centra
database and cannot guarantee the reliability of a Saba Centra Server upgrade if such a change is
made (in particular, never use the ―CENTRA_‖ prefix for any new tables!!).
In addition, Saba Centra offers a very comprehensive API Toolkit which, in order to maintain
database integrity, is the only supported method for updating data records by a third-party
application.

Web Server
The Saba Centra Management Server (CMS) runs on top of a web server to support the web-
based management interface and for managing content and recordings. Saba Centra supports
Microsoft IIS.
The Web server must be dedicated to Saba Centra to ensure optimum performance.

Communication flow
Figure 8 below indicates how the various system components interact with each other, including
the default communication port(s) that each component listens on and whether each connection
is persistent or not. All communication is via TCP/IP.
If the SSL encryption option is enabled, then all the system components communicate with each
other over the default SSL port 443.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 26

 Communication Flow

Web browser Centra client

80 Listening port (default)

Centra 7 components
Third-party components
Persistent connection
Non-persistent connection CSS
1709, 80

Desktop add-ins
Management
Server
CCS
Centra APIs 80 (CMS)
1710
80
Mail server 25

CRS
1711

CDSS
80 SQL 1099
389
Oracle 1521

LDAP Directory Centra 7 Database

Figure 8

Client Architecture

Unified client for Web conferencingAll a user needs, participants as well as presenters, to
attend or lead a live Saba Centra web conference is aweb browser and a network connection.
The browser will automatically download the Saba Centra client when the user logs into the live
event.
Browser-based client
As an alternative to the traditional Saba Centra Dekstop clientSaba offers a light-weight browser-
based cliwnt for attending and leading sessions.Mobile client
For on-the-road participants, Saba offers mobile client for attending sessions via iPhone or iPad.

One client for all users

Only a single version of the client exists for all users: Leaders, co-presenters, attendees,
Symposium, Conference and eMeeting users all use the same client software, eliminating the
need to manage which users should get which version of the client or who needs to install which
plug-ins. Competing products either require presenters to download and install additional
Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 27
plugins, which may not be feasible if their PC is locked-down, or they have multiple versions of
their base client installer depending on the user role.

Thin client technology

Do you ever plan to engage users who are outside your organization and therefore outside of
your control, such as prospects, partners and customers? Or do you have strict lock -down
policies on your PCs? Saba Centra’s unique thin client technology ensures that even users who
are operating in a strict lock-down environment which prohibits users from installing software on
their system or which blocks ActiveX, for example, can still participate in a Saba Centra session
without any IT intervention.

Deployment options
There are several options for deploying the Saba Centra client to end users:
 Automatic download – The easiest method is to let the user simply attend or lead a
session and the browser will automatically download the client.
 Saba Centra System Check – Users can also run the integrated, self-service Saba Centra
System Check at any time before an event which will also automatically download the
client software.
 Installer – Saba Centra also provides a standalone Setup.exe installer for IT departments
that want to centrally manage the installation of the Saba Centra client for the end users
via a push script.

Upgrades and patches – Automatic update

Once the Saba Centra client has been downloaded, it will automatically update itself whenever
the Saba Centra server is upgraded or patched, dramatically reducing the amount of IT resources
required to support the application.
Because the Smart Client feature automatically handles client software versioning, users can
connect to different Saba Centra servers running different versions of Saba Centra without
having to re-download the client each time they change servers. This permits an IT organization
to do a phased roll-out of a new version of Saba Centra without having to worry about version
compatibility.

Firewall-friendly
Saba Centra's unique Adaptive Connection technology automatically configures the Saba Centra
client to connect to the Saba Centra server through corporate firewalls and proxy servers using
the optimal method, without requiring the end user to manually configure their Saba Centra
client. Saba Centra reads proxy server information from the user's browser settings and uses it to
connect to the server. See chapter VI. Firewalls for more details.

Dynamic server selection

When a user attends a live session, the Saba Centra client will dynamically select the optimal
Satellite Server to connect to. See chapter IV. Bandwidth for more details.

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 28

Client footprint
The amount of disk space used after the client has downloaded depends primarily on the size of
the content being pushed out for the live web event, and the size and number of recordings
viewed by that user.
To help with disk space management on the client (as well as security), Saba Centra can be
configured to automatically delete all downloaded content and recordings when the user exits the
web conference or closes their Saba Centra client.

Saba Centra System Check

To reduce the cost of providing end user support, Saba Centra System Check provides a URL
users can be directed to which will ensure their system is adequately prepared for participating or
leading a Saba Centra meeting or event. It will automatically:
 make sure the user’s system meets the minimum system requirements
 make sure the client can establish a network connection to the server
 make sure the client can establish a secure connection to the server if the system is
configured for SSL encryption
 make sure the user’s microphone and speakers are working properly if choosing the IP
audio option
Desktop plugins (Outlook, Instant Messaging, Office, CentraNow)
Saba Centra includes desktop plugins that enable users to easily launch into collaborative online
meetings without ever leaving the context of their familiar desktop environment, such as
calendaring, instant messaging and Microsoft Office.

Outlook Calendar plugin

The Saba Centra Scheduler for Microsoft Outlook and is a separately installed calendar plug-ins
which allows users to schedule online Saba Centra meetings and events directly from their
calendar program and invite participants using their regular email address book(s).

 The Saba Centra Scheduler plugin only communicates with the calendar/mail client and
the Saba Centra Server, but not with the mail server directly.
 Saba Centra Scheduler users must have valid user accounts on the Saba Centra server.
 Saba Centra Scheduler for Microsoft Outlook:
o Users with local admin rights on their PC can easily install the Outlook plugin
right from their Saba Centra personal homepage (with appropriate privileges) and
be up and running within a couple of minutes.
o For organizations with locked-down PCs, an ―administrator‖ version of the
Outlook plugin is also provided which allows the plugin to be centrally pushed

Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 29

 out to the users via a script. For this method, users will be prompted once for their
Saba Centra user ID and password the first time they use the feature.

Instant Messaging, Office and Saba CentraNow plugins

These plugins allow users to launch on-demand online meetings during an instant messaging
chat, while working on a Microsoft Office document or directly from their Windows Desktop
(CentraNow).
For all the Desktop plugins:

 The rights to use these features can be restricted by the Saba Centra administrator to a
sub-group of users or made available to all users.
 Communication between the plugins and the Saba Centra Server is one-way (outbound
only from the client) via Saba Centra’s own Web-friendly (HTTP) APIs. The Saba
Centra server never initiates connections back to the plugins. See Figure 8 above.
 If the SSL encryption feature is enabled on the Saba Centra system, all communication
between the plugins and the Saba Centra server will be encrypted.
 Local admin rights on the client PC are required to install any of the plugins.

VIII. Enterprise Integration

Saba Centra provides seamless integration with your enterprise systems, to reduce system
administration costs, further leverage your IT investments and deliver a higher return-on-
investment. Some key enterprise integration features include:
 LDAP directory integration – The Saba Centra Directory Synchronization Service
(CDSS) leverages your organization’s LDAP or Active Directory server for single sign-on
and account synchronization. CDSS features include:
o dynamic user authentication
o dynamic account synchronization
o synchronization includes Add/Edit/Delete user accounts
o can configure polling interval of synchronization
o can configure which user fields should be synchronized (except the password, which
is never synchronized)
o supports both LDAP and non-LDAP users
o one-time batch user account creation in the Saba Centra database followed by
lightweight ―change notifications‖ from that point on

 Learning Management Systems – Saba Centra integrates with the leading Learning
Management Systems.
 Desktop integration – Saba Centra integrates with Windows Messenger as well as
Microsoft Outlook to enable users to schedule online Saba Centra meetings and invite
participants directly from Outlook address books.

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  Web Services API Toolkit – In use by dozens of partners and customers, the Saba Centra
API Toolkit provides seamless integration with third-party registration systems, CRM/ERP
systems, Web portals, intranets and eCommerce applications and other enterprise systems.
The Toolkit consists of fully XML-based APIs, invoked via standard HTTP calls, for
creating and launching meetings and events, user account management, enrollments,
reporting and much more.
 NTLM – Organizations that have standardized on Internet Explorer can configure the Saba
Centra server to work with the Logon Manager to bypass the Saba Centra user login and
automatically direct them to their personal Saba Centra homepage.
 AICC support – Saba Centra supports the AICC specification to allow any third-party
AICC-compliant system launch Saba Centra events and track assessment results and
attendance records.

IX. Interoperability

Saba Centra is built on industry standards for easy integration and interoperability with your
enterprise infrastructure and applications.
 Web Services standards: XML, SOAP, WSDL
 Infrastructure standards: LDAP, ODBC, SQL, IP multicasting (IGMP)
 Internet standards: XML, TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, SSL, SMTP
 Content and data standards: AICC, SCORM, LRN/IMS, Windows Media, Real Media

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Saba Centra.7 Technical Overview 32