I'm a UC Blog

One of the many benefits of UC is the location independence gained by enhanced accessibility of end-user communications technology, and with this comes the ability to work from home. Many organisations are jumping on the opportunity to re-deploy staff into their home offices, such benefits include:

• Rationalisation upon existing office space (and the take-on of hot desking)
• Better business continuity (denial of access to head office becomes a thing of the past)
• Reduced commute times = happier staff and the capability to work smarter (and sometimes longer!)

However, what can be done for Mums and Dads when their kids knock down our doors and insist upon effortlessly locating the laptop’s power-off button!?!

I’m not sure I have the answer, but read you can always pickup some useful tips from Associated Content’s, “How to work from home with noise and distractions“.

Today at VoiceCon Gurdeep Singh Pall shared much anticipated news on Microsoft Communications Server 14 (this will mark the second Microsoft “MCS” acronym, the first was Microsoft Consultancy Services!), whilst I would love to be in a position to dissect his speech, unfortunately…I can’t. This is because during my stay in Dublin, Ireland my hotel has decided it would be clever (and easier for them) to provide Wi-Fi without any form of authentication, the result? An Internet pipe rinsed dry!

So until I am back on my lovely fibre connected Virgin cable Internet I will share with you the following:

• Communicator 14 with automatically choose locations based on “known” networks
• Communicator 14 will bring a “sleek, simplified Communicator client that works with Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange”
• Communicator contact searches can be performed by “expertise”  (quite a useful feature if you work at a large IT company, ehum)
• MCS 14 will support enhanced 911 (E911) – this is where US emergency services perform a static lookup to identify the callers location
• MSC 14 will be available in both on and off premise flavours

Singh Pall also said that “Office Communications Server is one of the fastest growing servers at Microsoft, with double-digit growth over the past three years”

The video of this keynote is available on VoiceCon’s website here (free registration required) and the Microsoft press release is available on PressPass here

A number of partners have announced solutions aimed at the forthcoming version of Office Communications Server “14”, watch this space for more announcements being made at VoiceCon.

Taken from The Microsoft Unified Communications Blog:

Many of our partners announced new solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” at VoiceCon Orlando this week, demonstrating both the maturity of our partner ecosystem and industry support for our Unified Communications vision.

Customers benefit from the investments and innovation of multiple partners in our open, horizontal ecosystem, and have the flexibility to select the partner products that best meet their specific communications solution needs. This includes industry standard servers, telephony gateways, and both IP Phone and USB endpoints.

Here are some highlights of the new partner solutions that support Microsoft Communications Server “14”:

Survivable branch appliances

AudioCodes, Dialogic, Ferrari electronic AG, HP, and NET announced survivable branch appliance products that provide local telephony services for remote offices in the event of a wide area network failure. These products include integrated PSTN gateway functionality with a variety of densities and interface types, and, like other third party gateways, will be qualified via the Microsoft Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program. The Open Interoperability Program is intended to help ensure that customers have seamless experiences with the setup, support, and use of a variety of third party products and services with Communications Server.

IP phones

Aastra and Polycom introduced IP phones optimized for Microsoft Communicator “14.” Customers can now choose common area and information worker phones from both vendors, and conference room phones from Polycom. Several of the products integrate with Communicator “14” via a simple USB connection to provide streamlined setup, multimedia calling, and desktop control of the phone. Customers can also take advantage of existing IP, USB, and PC products offered by Polycom, ClearOne, Plantronics, Jabra, Logitech, Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, and others. These “optimized” endpoints offer a high quality user experience and “just works” installation in a wide variety of form factors and price points.

Enhanced 9-1-1 call routing services

911 Enable and Intrado announced their plans to provide North American customers with routing services for emergency calls. These services, together with Communications Server “14,” will provide customers with an innovative, flexible, and cost effective Enhanced 9-1-1 solution.

New contact center and call accounting and recording solutions

Aspect Unified IP and Aspect eWorkforce Management enhance first call resolution, provide additional contact channels, and easily schedule experts to manage customer inquiries. Quest MessageStats, a message reporting and analysis tool, provides detailed usage information and internal reporting for billing and chargeback purposes through a single interface. In addition, Nice Systems SmartCenter allows Microsoft Communications Server “14” customers to benefit from real-time, cross-channel interaction analytics to impact customer interactions as they occur and use insights gained to improve their organization’s business performance.

Many of these partners are attending VoiceCon Orlando. Visit their booths to learn more.

Kristin Murray

Partner Team, Unified Communications

Source: here

The CX300 is a fantastic device which enhances upon the functionality delivered by the USB “Catalina” device, specifically by extending the hard buttons available (numerical keys, call transfer, on-hold etc.) However I have many a time broached the question “Will this work with OCS R1?”, without a consistent answer.

Jason Tuck, Program Manager, Microsoft – “This device requires OCS 2007 R2 QFE2 or later to function.”

Polycom – “Yes, it should…”

So I decided to take the matter into my own hands…

Scenario 1. OCS 2007 R1 with Office Communicator 2007 R1 – result, Communicator crashes post install (it is not looking good!)

Scenario 2. OCS 2007 R2 with Office Communicator 2007 R2 (unsupported configuration) – result, Communicator does not crash, however the CX300 reports “Please upgrade Office Communicator”

Therefore the answer…!

Adam Jacobs, I’m a UC Blog – “It does not work, please see Jason’s advice above!”

In a recent blog post made by Tom Laciano, he hints that as with other Microsoft products, OCS 2010 is likely to follow suit by adopting PowerShell for command line based administratration.

Taken from the LCSKid Blog:

“No I don’t have a lab running with W14 but I am supposed to have one and really should have it by end of week but I seem to continue getting distracted and the one thing I will share as a heavy hint – get those PowerShell skills started if you haven’t already.”

Source: here

Unified Communications Expo, is the UK’s largest event dedicated to Messaging, Conferencing and Collaboration for the Enterprise. It is an annual event, hosted out of Olympia in Earl’s Court, London. Today was day one of two days (10-11th March) – I won’t be there tomorrow, got to get back to the day job!

There was an excellent array of UC related products and seminars to be seen, so without further of do I will cover off those that impressed me the most by way of three separate posts entitled:

• Battle of the Video Conferencing Vendors aka Polycom vs Tandberg
• Microsoft Unified Communications Platform Futures (a seminar presented by Brett Johnson)
• StartReady OCS Appliance & Round-up