November 27th, 2010 | Tags: , , ,

Whilst at Tech-Ed 2010 I had the opportunity to help the Microsoft Lync product folks on the Lync stand, it was a great chance to assist Microsoft’s new and existing UC customers with their Lync queries. Strangely one of the top questions I personally received was “What is Lync, is it Language Integrated Query (Linq) on steroids?” The answer of course was, “No, its Microsoft’s latest and greatest iteration of Office Communications Server!”

Whilst on the stand I had to chance to demo Lync along-side some of the latest devices that are specifically optimised to take advantage of the all-new Lync device APIs, with the exception of the Aastra 6725ip, I took some pictures (on the Polycom stand) see below…

First the CX500…

The CX600…

and finally (not demo’d on the Lync stand, but a personal favourite!) the CX3000 in all it’s glory!

If you’d like to learn more about these great Polycom devices the product pages can be found here

November 18th, 2010 | Tags: ,

Following yesterday’s Microsoft Lync virtual launch event (which can still be viewed here – or below), the Lync RTM is now available for download via MSDN and TechNet (subscription required).

Documentation for Microsoft Lync has also been made publically available here

Well what are you waiting for?!?

November 18th, 2010 | Tags: , ,

Yesterday Microsoft hosted the Lync virtual launch event, which shouldn’t be missed! (video embedded below)

Highlights include:

  • Video conferecing demonstration with Bill Gates
  • Business-to-Consumer video conferencing demonstration utilising XBOX Kinect
  • First-look at new Microsoft Lync certified devices

November 15th, 2010 | Tags: , ,

Don’t forget to catch the Microsoft Lync virtual launch event on Wednesday (in case you do the keynote stram will be made available for two weeks) there will be keynotes from:

  • Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft
  • Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President of the Office Communications Group at Microsoft

Both will be discussing how Microsoft Lync can help businesses enhance productivity by delivering a truly integrated communications experience. Sessions can also be attended where you will hear from customers and partners including participation in live Q&As, blogs, discussions, and more.

I also expect a number of embargoes to be lifted for exciting new Lync and Communications Server certified devices.

The event will take place here @ 11am Eastern time (US/Canada) or 4pm GMT (UK) – don’t miss it!

October 28th, 2010 | Tags: , ,

Microsoft late yesterday announced that their latest iteration of Communications Server (now dubbed Lync Server) has RTM’ed, for those that are unaware… this a term used to indicate that a software release has reached a point whereby it is ready to or has been delivered or provided to the customer.

General availability for Lync is expected on November 17th – however I’d suspect TechNet, MSDN and EA customers to get their hands on the bits sooner (watch this space!)

The following is taken from the Microsoft Unified Communications Group Team blog:

Today I have the pleasure of blogging about the final engineering milestone for Microsoft Lync 2010 – the next release of Office Communications Server and Communicator – also known as Release to Manufacturing, or RTM. We’re incredibly excited about this release as it’s really the culmination of a five-year journey to help customers transform the way they communicate. This platform has evolved over the past few years. Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007; released November 2007) introduced Communicator and a totally new experience for enterprise IM, presence and conferencing built into the Office applications people use every day. In February 2009, OCS 2007 R2, added on premise audio conferencing that was easy to manage, saved customers money, added core enterprise telephony features, and better supported collaboration through richer online meetings and ad hoc conversations via Communicator.

The Lync 2010 release takes collaboration and productivity to the next level by:

  • Providing a single platform that integrates the various modes of communication necessary for people and businesses to be productive. It does this for the end user via a single client experience, and on the back-end with a unified infrastructure and management experience. We knew that for customers to see real value, they would need to achieve cost savings that come from bringing this all together as well as a smart interface to encourage user adoption.
  • Enabling an extensible and open platformthat invites corporate and professional developers around the world to help us provide customers with greater flexibility. Many developers are already reshaping their business models based on the Lync platform. For example, Joe Schurman, a Microsoft partner at Evangelyze Communications, recently said that the Lync platform “has forever changed how our organization develops and produces software.” The success here will be driven by our open approach to interoperability which enables Lync to work with existing communications systems while implementing a single API set across all modes of communication, simplifying the developer experience.
  • Rounding out enterprise voice capabilities so that Lync can help the broadest set of customers reduce legacy infrastructure costsand enhance that infrastructure with an incredibly rich set of softphone capabilities. Employees are able to work more effectively from home, on the road, or in any number of evolving workplace scenarios.
  • Supporting our partner community by enabling them to provide an optimized experience with Lync. This is exemplified by the enormous range of devices available from partners around the world. We and our partners will have a ton more to say about the advances here at launch.

What’s next for Lync?  The final milestone is general availability (GA), which means making Lync 2010 available to customers and partners around the world. We’re on track for GA and planning a worldwide launch event on Wednesday, November 17, 2010. We hope you’ll tune in here: http://www.microsoft.com/lyncto watch live demos of the final product, see examples from the more than 100 new Lync certified devices and hear from customers who have deployed early releases of Lync 2010. The launch event, to be broadcast live, will feature a keynote from Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, who will talk about how Lync fits into Microsoft’s broader productivity platform, including SharePoint, Exchange and Office. Chris will be joined by a few special guests, including Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Office Communications Group and Lync R&D team.

If you caught our Office 365disclosure last week, you saw that the next version of cloud productivity from Microsoft will also deliver the 2010 suite of products, including Office, Sharepoint, Exchange and Lync, to customers of all sizes. Additionally, Lync Online will federate with consumer communication applications like Windows Live Messenger (now supporting high definition audio and video), and with IM and presence with AOL, Yahoo!, Google and Jabber. Getting connected with others is a beautiful thing!

On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank our customers and partners who have helped us reach this milestone. Kudos to the incredible Lync product team who have been marching hard with three major releases in as many years to deliver the platform our customers and partners have been waiting for. We look forward to hearing your feedback on Microsoft Lync.

Kirk Gregersen, Senior Director

Source: here

October 23rd, 2010 | Tags:

For those who don’t already know, Asterisk is widely regarded as THE open source IP PBX, it is extremely cost effective within smaller organisations (although perfectly capable within larger environments) and labs – I have previously written integration guides for both Microsoft Exchange and Lync (Asterisk is great as a low cost gateway for labs etc.)

Late last week Asterisk released the final or stable 1.8.0 version, the last major release being 1.6 which was released two years ago! For a high level overview of functionality see the list of new features below and expect some updated guides in the future…(likely to be based upon AsteriskNOW which is still being updated to 1.8.0)

Taken from Tom Keating’s blog:

  • Secure real-time transport protocol (RTP) support—New end-to-end VoIP encryption of signaling and media to compliment the existing encrypted signaling support.
    Steve explained SRTP support will be huge since it will allow for government and financial deployments of the Asterisk platform.
  • Security event framework—Modular capability for collecting and distributing security events within Asterisk.
  • Extensive additions to ISDN-BRI functionality—Call completion services, connected party identification, ETSI advice of charge (AOC), message waiting indicator (MWI), call rerouting and call deflection.
  • Session initiation protocol (SIP) changes—Substantial increase in the speed of registrations, transport layer security (TLS) improvements and more flexible network address translation (NAT) handling.
  • IPv6 support—Although IPv6 has a slow uptake in the enterprise, at the carrier core, IPv6 is progressing very quickly. Steve mentioned that could be the initial place where IPv6 can be leveraged on the Asterisk platform. He said, “I suspect initially you’ll see it in the carrier and cable deployments. In fact, we have support now for PacketCable NCSbuilt into Asterisk as well, so those two goes nicely hand-in-hand. There are a lot of cable providers that are rolling out IPV6 for all the set top boxes and other devices that are attached to their network.” He added, “The other area IPv6 is big is Asia. There is a lot of IP underruns in Asia where there is billions of people with billions of devices. So it’s really caught on there. In a lot of ways that has been a gating factor for Asterisk deployments in Asia. But now that IPv6 is there, we’re expecting an even larger percentage of adoption.”
  • Calendar integration—Support for Microsoft Exchange, CalDav and iCalendar. This is a pretty cool feature. If for instance your Calendar has you listed as in a meeting, Asterisk can automatically send the caller to your voicemail. Or if you are marked as ‘or Out of Office’ Asterisk can automatically forward to your cell phone.
  • Channel event logging (CEL)—Enhanced call tracking and logging for better audit trail and billing purposes.
  • XMPP distributed messaging—Better scalability for message waiting and device state.
  • Improved internationalization and localization—Asterisk offers improved handling of concatenated audio playback (dates, numbers).
  • Google Talk and Google Voice support—Inbound and outbound support for Google Talk and Google Voice calling. Google is serious about voice. Google is offering a free DID and free calling until the end of 2010 via Google Talk. So with the Google Talk integration, you essentially have a FREE trunk to make free calling on your Asterisk PBX. Take that Skype Connect! Laughing
  • High-resolution timestamps for call data records (CDR)—Carrier and enterprise users can track call times to the microsecond.
  • Better support for voice codecs—16 kHz signed linear media streams are now supported. Additional HD voice codecs supported. Siren 7 and Siren 14 codecs from Polycom are also now supported
  • PacketCable NCS 1.0 support—Allows cable companies to use Asterisk as an option to create business services.
  • Default de-noise for conference bridge calls—Conference calls will sound clearer.
  • ConfBridge application enhancements—DAHDI hardware is no longer required to use this software feature. New call conferencing application that does not require the DAHDI kernel interface to operate.
  • Pitch shift functions—The pitch of audio, including of callers’ voices, can be manipulated.
  • Multicast RTP paging—Extremely efficient and scalable method for handset paging. Instead of sending an INVITE to 50 IP phones, you can leverage multicast to send a broadcast to the IP phones. Steve said Polycom, snom, and he said he thought Aastra phones supported this multicast feature. Multicast means a little more work for your switches and routers, but much less stress on the Asterisk server than the traditional way.
  • Faster development and more robust unit testing—Digium has implemented Agile development and a new automated testing framework. The Agile process streamlines development and gives Asterisk users a better view into development plans.

To download the latest version head here.