I'm a UC Blog

No I am not going completely cuckoo, those who live in the UK and are showing signs of grey hair (or going bald in my case) will remember the slogan “Follow the bear”, which was paired with the iconic Hofmeister bear advert. Whilst I am no bear, I strongly encourage those who are interested in more up-to-date UC related information to get on the Twitter bandwagon (if you haven’t already of course).

I’d be lying if I said I “got” this minimalistic text based messaging platform when I first signed up a couple of years back, but now it seems to have become the norm for near real-time feeds for all sorts of information. Personally speaking I’m not one to tell you how “Adam burnt his toast this morning”, but I regularly Tweet-out things of UC interest, along with others that utilise the #UCOMS hash tag.

So what are you waiting for? Follow me here!

I just came across this Sesame Street-esque UC parody video, created by @shawkeith from Network World – check it out, highly amusing!

Seeing as Exchange 2010 SP1 has hit the streets I thought it would be a good time to remind folks of shiny new/improved service pack UC functionality, including CS ’14’ support!

Taken from Microsoft TechNet:

The Unified Messaging server role has been improved and has added new features in Exchange 2010 SP1. To use some of these features, you must correctly deploy Microsoft Office Communications Server “14” in your environment. The following is an overview of all the new features in Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging:

• UM reporting   The reports for Call Statistics and User Call Logs found in the Exchange Management Console are displayed in the Exchange Control Panel.
• UM management in the Exchange Control Panel   You can use the ECP to manage UM components in a cross-premises environment.
• Cross-Forest UM-enabled mailbox migration   In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can use the New-MoveRequestcmdlet with the Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) to move a UM-enabled mailbox within a local forest and multiple forests in an enterprise. 
• Outlook Voice Access improvements   Outlook Voice Access users can log on to their Exchange 2010 mailbox and choose the order to listen to unread voice mail messages, from the oldest message first or the newest message first.
• Caller Name Display support   Exchange 2010 SP1 includes support for enhanced caller ID resolution for displaying names for voice mails from unresolved numbers using Caller Name Display (CND).
• Test-ExchangeUMCallFlow cmdlet   With this Exchange 2010 SP1 cmdlet, you can test UM connectivity and call flow.
• New UM Dial Plan wizard   An additional page has been added to the New UM Dial Plan wizard that allows you to add a UM server to the dial plan.
• Office Communications Server “14” Support   Migrating SIP URI dial plans and Message Waiting Indicator (MWI) notifications in a cross-premises environment has been added.
• Secondary UM dial plan support   You can add a secondary UM dial plan for a UM-enabled user.
• UM language packs added   New UM language packs are now available in Exchange 2010 SP1. In addition, the Spanish (Spain) (es-ES) UM language pack available for Exchange 2010 SP1 now includes Voice Mail Preview, a feature that wasn’t available in the Exchange 2010 RTM release of that language pack.
• Call answering rules improvements   There are three updates to Call Answering Rules for UM-enabled users in SP1.
• Unified Communications Managed API/speech platform improvements   Beginning with Exchange 2010 SP1, the UM server relies on Unified Communications Managed API v. 2.0 (UCMA) for its underlying SIP signaling and speech processing.
• UM auto attendant update   In Exchange 2010 SP1, a UM auto attendant will play only the holiday greeting on a holiday.

For more information and details about each of these features, see New Unified Messaging Functionality and Voice Mail Features in Exchange 2010 SP1.

In the off chance it has passed you by the MS Exchange Team has released to web the final SP1 bits, here. This major update delivers a host of new functionality, specifically around archiving, Outlook Web App, mobility and the management UI – more on this here.

For the full announcement head over to the Microsoft Exchange Team blog here.

I know this is a little off topic, but chances are that if you read this blog you wouldn’t be against a cross-blog Windows 8 poll that *may* get picked up by the man at Microsoft who say’s yes! (or no as the case may be).

The man behind this poll is Michael Pietroforte at 4sysops (a fellow Microsoft MVP) and the list of sites participating is growing by the day/hour/minute!

Sites participating to date include: (via a little cloud magic all polls are integrated, so ensure you only vote once)

Demonic Talking Skull – I’M A UC BLOG – markwilson.it – msigeek – Standalone Sysadmin – Techinch – Teching It Easy: with Windows – The Experience Blog – The things that are better left unspoken – The Windows Club – WindowsObserver – WindowsPro – Within Windows – 7tutorials – 4sysops

For a full description of all vote options, refer to Michael’s post here

Whilst this report has already done the rounds, seen on many telephony vendor sites and blogs, I thought I would also make reference to the report published late last month (July 28th) and include a little narrative too!

So what is Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant”? Gartner’s description:

“depict markets in the middle phases of their life cycle by using a two-dimensional matrix that evaluates vendors based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. The Magic Quadrant has 15 weighted criteria that plot vendors based on their relative strengths in the market. This model is well suited for high-growth and consolidating markets where market and vendor differentiations are distinct.”

In English they provide an illustration of how the top vendors have performed against their weights, a market overview and a review of vendor strengths and weaknesses. This illustration may not come as a surprise to those who are UC-savvy, however it does act as a good independent view and something to back up your business case/include within your slide decks.

So what can be made from the newly created matrix of UC suppliers, no surprises really Microsoft, Cisco and Avaya come out top on their ability to execute and completeness of vision (see below)

When digging deeper into detailed analysis a common theme of strengths/weaknesses can be indentified:

• Integration with standard set of enterprise technology
• Functionality, including voice, IM and conferencing
• Price

I highly recomend a look into the full report, including high level pros/cons for suppliers referenced above, available on Gartner’s site here.