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Some time back I was asked to pull together a video presentation for a “Virtual” Microsoft event – 24hrs in a Private Cloud. The event began this morning and runs for…you guessed it 24hrs 🙂

Most of the content is Microsoft System Center 2012 orientated, but I thought I’d deliver an introduction to the various types of Microsoft Cloud (also incorporating a Lync twist i.e. Lync Online and LHP).

The event is still open to registrations and you can also access my video presenetation below.

Almost a year ago I wrote a post on the differences between Lync On-Premises and Lync Online, since then Lync Online has gone through a series of updates and I have become more aware of Lync Online for dedicated customers.

Let me cover off some basics for those unaware:

• The Office 365 which can be purchased by individuals, small businesses and medium to large sized Enterprises via the Microsoft Office 365 website – this version of Office 365 is Shared or S and is a shared or multi-tenanted Microsoft Cloud platform aimed at the mass market.
• For large Enterprise businesses (typically 5000+ users), Microsoft offers a dedicated version (or D), which has more similarities between the On-Premises version of Lync Server 2010, the features and deployment characteristics are however not identical. In this dedicated model Microsoft hosts dedicated servers for a specific customer, there is also a more personalised service with enhanced SLA

So back to the matter at hand, I have updated the feature table, the original being sourced from the Office 365-S Lync Online service documentation, with the new features available within the Shared platform and now included the Dedicated version of Lync Online. I hope this helps! 🙂

Next Thursday 19th April Justin, Tom and I along with Geraint Evans from Acme Packet will be hosting the Spring MUCUGL, at this event we’ll be focusing on Lync Call Flow.

First up I’ll be speaking about Fixed-to-Mobile Convergence (FMC), a way in which businesses of any size can extend out an existing UC strategy into the mobile space whilst saving on communications spend. Next up Justin will dig into some Lync call traces and explain the ins-and-outs of Microsoft SIP. After the break Geraint Evans from Acme Packet will explain how Acme performs SIP session management for Microsoft Lync. Last but not least Tom has been performing his usual ducking and diving within the Lync scene, he’ll give us all an update on the latest going’s on.

So if you are in London on Thursday, come and join us – for more details and registration head here 

Whilst this information is not new,  I thought it would be good to cover XMPP and PIC-based capabilities available within Lync 2010, as more often than not the different modalities are misunderstood.

This was the case when I attended a customer meeting this week where I discussed the benefits of Federation within Lync, this stemmed from the need for their business to ustilise voice and video with 3rd parties.

We also touched on the capability to Federate with existing public social networks like MSN and Skype, the latter not being available. Today there are two methods of integration, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol or (XMPP) an Open technology used for real-time communications and/or Public IM Connectivity also known as (PIC) – dependent upon which networks you desire to communicate with (see list below).

N.B. Whilst voice and video is only offered via PIC, this is not due to the limitation of the XMPP protocol. XMPP is capable of handling instant messaging, presence, multi-party chat and voice/video calling.

To interface Lync with XMPP-based networks an additional component (and server, in addition to Edge) needs to be deployed, unlike PIC which can be configured directly within Lync once provisioning is completed. Back in December XMPP capability was announced for the MSN network via the Windows Live Blog, at this point this permits 3rd party clients to be developed – Federation is still achieved via PIC.

Below is a break down of protocols and networks used for connectivity with Lync Server today:

*Voice & Video is only available for Lync Server 2010 (and not Communicator/previous versions)

Taken from Justin Morris’ Blog:

UC Expo is back this year on the 6th and 7th of March at Olympia in London. It’s the premier UC event in the UK/EMEA for vendors and end-user customers to come together and see the latest developments in the industry along with lots of informative seminars. I’ve attended the last 2 years (including manning our Modality stand last year) and enjoy meeting new people, catching up with old ones and learning about the new and exciting tech coming out.

This year however, Tom, Adam and I have teamed up with UC Expo to present our own little MUCUGL seminar on Lync Mobility. We’ll be talking about the new client and how it can fit in with your existing or new Lync deployment, as well as getting in front of a few new faces and talking about how awesome our user group is.

When: 6th March, 3:50 PM – 4:20 PM

Where: Mobility Track

For more info and to add our seminar to your MYVISIT planner, check out the seminar page on the UC Expo site here.

Look forward to seeing you there!

TechNet forums, blogs and tech news sites are ablaze with plenty of Lync Mobility related tips and news. Even I’m a UC Blog has seen a daily increase in traffic (circa 150-250 visits) primarily targeting mobile related content. So I thought it would be useful to pull together some potential solutions on how to address common push notification issues.

First off lets cover some basics:

• Push notifications are only available for Windows Phone 7 and iOS-based devices (iPad/iPhone).
• Push notifications are sent via Microsoft’s Lync Push Notification Clearing House or PNCH. (see diagram below)
• To send push notifications via PNCH you will need a Lync Edge Server that has dynamic federation with Office 365 or push.lync.com. Setup instructions are available here

Now some common problems and solutions/workarounds:

• URL Filtering Policy – at this time URL filtering blocks push notifications, until further notice from Microsoft a workaround has been published here
• Missing SRV record – an SRV record must be configured for the Edge Server that initiates the outbound connection to push.lync.com. For more information check out this article from fellow MVP Randy Whintle.
• Sub-domains – for organisations that have a SIP domain and Federation record mismatch. For more information check out this article from fellow MVP Kevin Peters.
• Connectivity – ensure port 5061 is open (this will already be open if you have an already established Edge Server).
• Default SIP domain is incorrectly specified – To display existing domains type “get-csSIPDomain” within the Lync Management Shell, to correct this type “set-csSIPDomain <SIP.FQDN> -isDefault $true”
• Public Certificate – for any kind of federation to work certificates need to be provisioned via an external certificate authority. For more on approved certificate authorities, read this TechNet article.

If you can think of anything I have missed off, let me know and I’ll add it!