Goal
Secure and reliable video calls have become a critical aspect of any organization’s communication in recent The Swiss Federal Supreme Court started feeling this need overnight in Spring 2020, as the COVID-19 lockdown started. With a long-standing open source strategy, the ability to control one’s own digital data has been a prominent topic for the Swiss institution, meaning it is imperative that their data is operated by themselves. They needed to apply this same principle to their video conferencing solution.
Having already worked with Adfinis for many years to provide support and maintenance for their LibreOffice solution, it was a natural choice to collaborate on setting up Jitsi Meet. Over the course of one weekend, literally, the Linux Experts, together with Daniel Brunner, Head of IT at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, and his team, set up the video conferencing tool which could be used by all employees remotely.
Being able to provide video calling through an open source solution that is not hosted outside of Switzerland is extremely important. It means we can provide remote working capabilities to our employees, while ensuring 100% data protection. Adfinis has done a fantastic job in adapting Jitsi Meet to our needs, and providing maintenance and SLA services to keep the service up to date and available.
- Daniel Brunner, Head of IT, Swiss Federal Supreme Court
Solution
Jitsi Meet is an open source project that allows users to easily build and deploy secure video conferencing solutions on any platform (in the cloud or on-premise) and does not require any plugins to work with common browsers. This tool provides a high security standard for the Federal Court’s audio/visual communication and a user friendly webinterface. The entire service is hosted in Switzerland.
In addition to the basic features such as screen sharing that Jitsi Meet offers, it can also be extended using server components. The Federal Supreme Court needed to be able to connect their video conferencing tool in order to allow participants to use a regular phone to connect to a call. Adfinis, together with the Doganbros team, developed an extension to Jitsi Meet by using Jibri as a gateway. This then allowed participants to dial in to a Jitsi Meet conference, making the solution very flexible and accessible. The nature of open source solutions makes it possible to mix and match different technologies and to leverage existing technology and infrastructure.
As IT leader in the legal field, having full control of our data is a must. Jitsi lets us do that. And for our users, Jitsi is a very simple solution to work with.
– Daniel Brunner, Head of IT, Swiss Federal Supreme Court
Adfinis as a partner
For companies new to this solution, Adfinis first always delivers a fully working vertical prototype in order for organizations to assess if Jitsi covers the needed functionality. Once that is successfully proven, Adfinis, sets up, maintains, and operates the Jitsi Meet platform with the highest regard for security based on best practices and infrastructure as code methodologies. For the Federal Court, Jitsi Meet is now providing a secure, reliable, and versatile video conferencing platform that meets their demands for digital sovereignty.
