Whilst I was in the process of writing this posting I was a little unsure as to whether I could openly state the launch date for the OCS & OC public beta. But having trawled through the TechNet blogs, Damien Caro's Blog openly stated that the launch date is
26th March
Back on the 7th March when I last posted about the fact that Jeff Raikes had completed his keynote speech and that Microsoft had released the sign-up link where you could apply to join the OCS & OC 2007 public beta, (Office Communications Server 2007 Beta).
OKay, if you read that posting and then signed-up, (Office Communications Server 2007 Beta), you will have by now received an e-mail advising of the Public Beta launch date.
For those of you who have not yet signed-up but would like to join the beta programme then please click on Office Communications Server 2007 Beta or follow the link at the foot of this posting.
As you will appreciate being involved with the Private Beta, not only brings the benefits of sampling the initial software release & the ability to govern the development; but it also creates a headache in that there is a very fine line in what I can and cannot say. The rule that I follow is that if the information is in the public domain, (available on the web), then I can talk about it. If however, I am unable to find any public resources, or I am unsure about the source of the information then I will not publish.
Alright, the download will be available sometime around midnight US Pacific Time - this roughly equates to sometime around midday in the UK.
From the information that has been published, the full download will be approx 3Gb with the majority of that size being given to OCS 2007 Speech Server, (90%).
What is included
- Office Communications Server 2007 Standard & Business Evaluation (Build 6090.0)
- Office Communicator 2007
- Communicator Web Access
- live Meeting Console
- Resource-Kit
- OCS 2007 Speech Server (Build 2.0.61285.0)
Additional Benefits of joining the OCS Beta
- you will receive the latest available OCS & OC 2007 beta
- Microsoft Office Meeting Console & Office add-in
- All participants will have access to beta-Central, allowing access to
- documentation
- virtual labs
- webcasts
- access to the community forum, where you're able to collaborate with members of the beta community
Please Note ...
If you are a member of the Private Beta programme I understand that you will not automatically be transferred to the Public Beta. Therefore you will need to sign-up by following this hyperlink - Office Communications Server 2007 Beta
With the launch of the Public Beta, all resources associated with the Private beta will be closed from the 6th April 2007.
At this point anything else that I publish would be pure speculation; so once the product is out in beta I'll be in a better position to provide more information & I'll update the posting,
Good Luck
Arthur
Beta Sign-up
https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=b04fc4c9-2727-4581-b34a-09c8673f8ebb&lcid=1033
Damien's Blog
http://blogs.technet.com/dcaro/archive/2007/03/24/beta-publique-d-office-communication-server-2007-mocs-2007.aspx