With everything that has been happening recently I had forgotten to publish this article.
Back on the 11th December Microsoft announced that OCS 2007, (the successor to LCS2005), had entered into a Private Beta, and that Microsoft had provided the software to 2,500 IT professionals.
Those Microsoft employees who signed-up for the beta had their PBX deskphones removed, so that they would use the VoIP, and IP-Telephony elements of OCS and OC.
The ability to make full audio visual calls via the “click to call function” and conduct application sharing from your laptop whereever you are via a public internet connection, without the need to launch your VPN certainly sounds promising.
It would appear that Microsofts early adoption of Interactive Connectivity Establishment, (ICE - http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-mmusic-ice-12.txt), is beneficial in the provision of a contextual user experience.
Whislt the Redmond candles often burned late into the night during the early phases of development, to ensure the quality of communications under the jitter and signal degredation of the internet have paid off. In fact Microsoft are using the same acoustic echo cancellation process as that which is used in Windows Live Messenger, (alias MSN8).
Well much of the information is still guarded; but what we do know is that OCS & OC 2007 should be available in February as a public beta; and I can only guestimate that it should be released by early-to-mid June 2007 along with Server 2007 (Longhorn); pretty much following the Vista release cycle.
So after all this what are the benefits of OCS & OC 2007
- DEPLOYMENT OF ENTERPRISE-WIDE PRESENCE
- ENABLE SECURITY-ENHANCED ENTERPRISE INSTANT MESSAGING
- HOST ON-PREMISE AUDIO, VIDEO AND WEB CONFERENCES
- DEPLOY VOIP CAPABILITIES.
- SOME OF THE CAPABILITIES AVAILABLE IN THE PRIVATE BETA OF OFFICE COMMUNICATIONS SERVER 2007 ARE
- PLACING AND RECEIVING VOICE CALLS
- ADVANCED CALL ROUTING;
- STREAMLINED INTEGRATION WITH THE NEW UNIFIED MESSAGING CAPABILITIES IN EXCHANGE SERVER 2007
Once more information becomes available I'll post it up for you
Arthur
Arthur Pounder