Patent ID: 7975073

Claim:
An apparatus for interfacing one or more multipoint control units (MCUs) and one or more conferencing devices, comprising: a middleware server comprising: a network interface for communicating with the one or more MCUs and conferencing devices; a computer readable medium comprising one or more device drivers for the one or more conferencing devices and one or more MCU controllers for the one or more MCUs; a processor programmed to: receive a request to initiate a conference between various of the one or more conferencing devices; determine resources necessary to conduct the conference; create a conference context associated with the conference, the conference context including the device drivers for only the one or more conferencing devices and the MCU controllers for only the one or more MCUs that will conduct the conference; initiate the conference context device drivers and MCU controllers; and instruct one or more of the conferencing devices to dial in to one or more of the MCUs or instruct one or more of the MCUs to dial out to one or more of the conferencing devices to conduct the conference.