What's New in Conferencing with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Posted By: Adam Bomb | Oct 17th, 2008 @ 10:24 AM | 34,356 Views | 16 Comments

Formats:

Part 2 of 6 on new OCS features!

Renee Lo is definitely the gadget girl of the OCS Product Managers that I met with - a quick look around her office showed the latest slick HTC Smartphone, a Roundtable and big video conferencing TV. Why does she need all that stuff? She's looks after the conferencing features in OCS, and in this interview she gave me a tour of some of the new features. Like the ability to start a conference on your cell phone, then seamlessly move it to your office phone when you get in. She showed the new video conferencing performance, and the ability to change resolutions on the fly during a video conference.

She also spent some time at the whiteboard drawing out the OCS architecture, showing how your connection, via corp LAN, pots, internet/etc., works, and the workflow of a con call initiated in OCS. Cool stuff!
To learn more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

Tags: OCS, office communications server, Office Communications Server 2007, office communicator

Rating:

Walsh

There's no video?

neil

In reply to Walsh

#Oct 17th, 2008 @ 6:47 AM

Its seems to be showing for me (pretty damm cool by the way). Do you want to try again.

neil

This is a great discussion and demo. I guess my big question is how easy is it to install and configure this system. In these tough times I can see UC/VC being far more popular, but it needs to be really simpe for the ops guys to be able to install, certainly in the smaller companies.

What is the story there.

AdamBomb

In reply to neil

#Oct 18th, 2008 @ 7:12 AM

Hey Neil - stay tuned. There's another video coming where we talk specifically about IT Pro related features, including a planning/architecture wizard and some other really cool stuff for admins.
you won't be disappointed.

This is amazing effort and progress on OCS. OCS has been missing all these features to become a real competitive product and I can't wait to deploy the R2. I wish R2 would come out soon because Cisco is steeling customers with their technology and seeing this I can say that this beats Cisco Meeting Place in the bang for the buck as well as in the ease of use and TCO.

Saftbrain

In reply to HT

#Oct 21st, 2008 @ 11:15 PM

Renee Lo - guess what? I am still waiting for my promised gift after our discussion about conferencing during the TechEd EMEA in Barcelona November 2007!!!

First the five (?) of us are put into this small room, questioned a lot, and then? nothing... I did not receive anything. Well, thank you!!! *GRR*

GUYS! not a nice picture that MS is drawing here...

EDIT:
Thank you soo much for the gift! It's so great! Smiley

)

Renee Lo

Saftbrain, I checked up on this since it really sucks that you didn't receive anything. The gifts were sent out, but 2 email addresses bounced, so we couldn't confirm the mailing addresses. I'm guessing yours is one of them. Let me know if you're coming to TechEd Barcelona this year and I can personally give it to you. If not, contact me directly and we'll make sure this is taken care of.