Entries tagged with ocs - TechNet Edge

Interview with John McCabe - Hyper-V R2, Live Migration and OCS

Dave Northey — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:01:00 GMT

John McCabe (Technical Consultant with CD Soft) talks about his production deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 running on the beta of Windows Server 2008 R2. He explains how he convinced the business to deploy a beta product in production and what he thinks of Hyper-V R2 (he likes it)! He also explains why he didn't go with VMware.

CD Soft now run their entire business from a two-node Hyper-V cluster as well as providing a hosted OCS offering to their customers.

You can download the Release Candidate of Windows Server 2008 R2 from here and start build your own Live Migration failover cluster.

And if you live in Ireland and want to join the IT Pro Momentum program please email me mailto:daven@microsoft.com

Enjoy..

Dave

What's New in Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Erin Briney — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:12:00 GMT

This session from TechEd EMEA provides a 360 on OCS 2007 R2: discussing Voice, Telephony, Conferencing, Group Chat, and other areas.

Voice and Video Interoperability and third-party device programs

Erin Briney — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:45:00 GMT

In this TechEd EMEA session, Francois Doremieux and Jingyu Qui review the latest updates on the UC Open Interoperability Program - including ongoing interoperability efforts with the major Gateway, IP-PBX, Sip Trunking and Video Conference vendors.

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

Erin Briney — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:20:00 GMT

In this TechEd EMEA session, Renee Lo presents improvements in audio, video and web conferencing with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. See how the new on-premise audio conferencing functionality will help your organization save money.

Interview with Dwight Jesseman (University of Florida) on OCS 2007R2

Harold Wong — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:42:00 GMT

Harold chats with Dwight Jesseman, University of Florida, on what they are trying to do with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - especially around video conferencing and integration with their existing Polycom system.

Chat with Rui Maximo at Tech Ed 2009 on OCS 2007R2 and Virtualization

Harold Wong — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:42:00 GMT

Harold chats with Rui Maximo (Technical Writer for OCS) on OCS 2007 R2 and what he does as a Technical Writer. Rui also discusses Virtualization support for OCS.

MVP Interview with Russ Kirk at Tech Ed 2009

Harold Wong — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:12:00 GMT

Short interview with Russ Kirk, MVP and Consultant with Grey Convergence out of the UK. Russ shares some of his thoughts on OCS - especially around Voice. He also shares a few suggestions that he believes would make OCS even better.

MVP Interview with Robert Ross at Tech Ed 2009

Harold Wong — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:12:00 GMT

Short interview with Robert Ross, MVP and Solution Architect with EMC out of San Francisco, California. Robert shares some of his thoughts on OCS and what features customers are deploying. He also shares a few suggestions that he believes would make OCS even better.

Unified Communications Under the Hood for Developers

Erin Briney — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:46:00 GMT

Using Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 and Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft is providing the infrastructure for enterprise communications including email, voice, video, IM, conferencing and unified messaging. Building on this infrastructure, the UC Platform APIs provide a platform you can leverage to build communications into your solutions - providing incredible value for your users. In this video session from TechEd EMEA, you will be provided with everything you need to know to be successful with this new platform. A quick overview of the server infrastructure of OCS 2007 R2 and Exchange 2007 is provided followed by information on how you can integrate those servers into your overall developer platform. Take an under the hood look at UC and get everything you need to start creating killer applications with communication!

What is New in Administration and Management with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Episode 6 in a series

I wrapped up my interviews with the OCS team with Anand Lakshminarayanan, who showed me some of the IT Admin specific features in OCS R2.

Color me impressed.

Need to plan an OCS architecture? How about a wizard that you provide with your locations, users, and feature requirements and it spits out a detailed Visio style architecture for you, including recommendations for number of servers and locations. Bandwidth requirements too!

Need to expose your OCS environment to the internet? No problem. Here's a wizard that will list out all the ports, IPs, etc. that you need to open. Just print it out and hand it off to your firewall guy.

Reports? Lots of reports added in R2. breakdowns of voice and video activity. Performance reports, including types of devices and how they're performing.

He also talks about virtualizing, scaling and managing OCS R2.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Mobility and Anywhere Access with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Avi Sagiv is a Product Manager in OCS, and I met with him to talk about the new OCS features coming for mobile phone users. When OCS talks about mobility, they aren't just talking about Windows Mobile devices - they have a java client for phones that Avi showed me as well.

There have been some significant enhancements to performance and functionality of OCS on mobile devices, and OCS has some great features that make mobile computing really viable - like the ability to start a conference call with one press - the OCS server actually calls you back, as well as your other conference attendees, so you don't pay any outgoing minutes.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Group Chat with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Part 4 in a series

Who? Ashima Singhal and Bob Serr.

What? Group Chat - new functionality coming in OCS 2007 R2. Once I saw it, I got it. Group Chat gives you the ability to set up multiple chat rooms, and subscribe to those rooms. You can set up key word notifiers to let you know when certain topics come up. All chat transcripts are archived and indexed, so you can go back and search for previous discussions. All this, plus a lot more. Bob and Ashima give a great demo of all the things you can do with Group Chat.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Office Communicator, Communicator Web Access, and Devices with OCS 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Part 3 in a Series

This time, my visit to the OCS team lead me to Huat Chye Lim and Ashima Singhal. Huat shows us some device integration with an IP phone, showing how presence and OCS contact details can be leveraged on devices other than a PC. Ashima shows off some of the functionality available in Communicator Web Access - the browser based Office Communicator client - the look and functionality is almost identical to that of the desktop client.

They also show us some of the new features in the client, like one click desktop sharing and video conferencing - more cool stuff coming in R2!

If you haven't already, go ahead and sign up for the FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

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

Adam Bomb — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:24:00 GMT

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

OCS and the new Attendant

Adam Bomb — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

I've recently been spending a lot of time with the Office Communications Server (OCS) team, and they've shown off some of the new features coming in their next release, OCS R2.
In this interview, I met Jamie Stark, a Technical Product Manager that looks after VoIP in OCS. In this interview, we talked a little about integrating OCS into existing telecoms, and Jamie walked me through the new Attendant Console in OCS R2. If you've got a busy receptionist that spends a lot of time taking and routing calls, the Attendant Console was built with that job in mind.
*This is the first in a series of visits I made to the OCS team, so keep checking back as we unveil more cool new features*
Check it out!
The OCS team also wanted me to remind you that 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

Office Communications Server and Unified Communications at Ultragestion

Adam Bomb — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:52:00 GMT

Christian Aguilera is an IT consultant for Ultragestion in Santiago Chile. In this video, he talks about how their Unified Communications deployment, including OCS 2007, was so successful in their division of the company, it's being rolled out to the entire company across multiple countries.

He talks a little about the infrastructure, the challenges they faced, and changing user behavior around how calls are handled.

How OCS 2007 solved environmental challenges and created new customer experiences.

Damien Caro — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:34:00 GMT

Brepols Publishers, a small Belgium company of 30 employees has deployed Office Communications Server 2007. Wim Borgers explains in this video how OCS 2007 helped them overcome the following challenges :

- Be environmentally friendly and implement a modern phone solution that is compatible with buildings from the 16th century, protected by the UNESCO.

- Create exceptional user experience routing incoming calls to different Exchange 2007 auto-attendant based on source number identification.

- Have a robust solution ready for the future of enterprise communications.

Tech Ed 2008 Interview with Sean Smith (Customer using OCS)

Harold Wong — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Sean Smith, Sr. Network Engineer with CorVel, shares a little bit of his experience on deploying Office Communications Server 2007 at his company.

Tech Ed 2008 Interview with Joe Schurman (MVP)

Harold Wong — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:33:00 GMT

In this short interview, Joe talks about some of the testing he has been doing with Office Communications Server 2007 in a Virtualized environment.

Tech Ed 2008 Interview with Ken Ewert (OCS)

Harold Wong — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:45:00 GMT

Ken Ewert talks about Sustained Engineering for Office Communications Server (among other things).

Tech Ed 2008 Interview with Peter Schmatz (OCS)

Harold Wong — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:42:00 GMT

Interview with Peter Schmatz (Office Communications Server team). Peter discusses things like the Best Practice Analyzer for OCS and other integration items.

What's cool with Unified Communications?

Joey Snow — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:01:00 GMT

I caught up with Joe Schurman at TechEd and we talked about the cool and new happenings with Unified Communications. Joe gives us some insight on the things that folks asked him at the UC booth and gives us a really cool improbability demo on his Mac. Joe also talks about some new things on the horizon for the small to mid-size market.

TechNet Radio: Persistent Group Chat

Eric Ostrowski — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:51:00 GMT

In this episode of TechNet Radio, Kevin Remde talks with Ken Ewert about what’s new in Persistent Group Chat. Persistent Group Chat is a part of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. In Persistent Group Chat, attendees can enter and exit a chat room and information remains persistent over time, which allows users to revisit a thread later to pick up information they might have missed, or use as a reference. Listen in to hear about the exciting new features of this product.

A Conversation About An OCS Deployment

Kevin Remde — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:59:00 GMT

Jacob Thornberry of Brooks Stevens took a few minutes out of his busy day as their lone IT Pro to talk to me about his recent rollout of Office Communications Server 2007. I thought this conversation would benefit anyone who is considering rolling out OCS, and so with Jacob's permission, we recorded our conversation for your benefit.

I recently gave some talks at the Office Connections conference in Orlando, and created a resource document for the attendees, full of OCS-related resources. You can find those resources here.

And here is the book that Jacob mentions in the interview: