The sharks have been circling for awhile and now it looks like it's official. Response Point, Microsoft's SMB VoIP platform, is dead. Earlier this summer Microsoft announced its first substantial layoffs in memory and with it purged most of the Response Point team. Read more
The kingdom known as Nortel is falling apart. Regardless of the many conjectures as to why they failed the fact is there won't likely be a "restructured Nortel". Instead, anything desirable will be sold off to the highest bidder and the rest liquidated to cover bankruptcy obligations. Read more
Most of my posts are directed at UC technophiles, however sometimes we get caught up in the technology hype and lose track of the goal of technology in the enterprise. That is, to help people do their jobs better, faster, more efficiently, etc. IT exists to provide the enterprise a competitive advantage with relation to technology. Read more
For the last two weeks or so I've been testing a preproduction unit of the Plantronics Savi Go wireless headset for OCS. I have a "tanjay" and a wired USB headset but I can't believe how much happier I am with the wireless "Go". And that's a perfect name for it. Normally when I'm on a call, especially conference calls, I'm chained to my desk by the OCS phone or USB cable. Read more
Who knew no MSMQ could kill OCS? Enough alliteration. If you don't have MSMQ installed and you the April 2009 patches will fail to install correctly.
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Someone FINALLY released a conference phone solution for OCS! While there are a lot of solutions that require being tethered to a PC via USB, the SNOM Meeting Point is the first standalone conference device that doesn't require you lug your laptop to the conference room. While it's a GREAT solution, and currently the only one available, it does have some flaws. Read down for a full review.
SmartSIP was rather quietly released this week at Evangelyze.net. It allows enterprises to integrate Microsoft OCS with virtually any other SIP platform and endpoint device.
I've been following the progress of this project for awhile and while I haven't had a chance to try it out yet it looks very promising. Essentially it acts as middleware between OCS and other (otherwise unsupported) SIP platforms.
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Microsoft is making a big deal about their "expanded alliance" with HP. It's not quite much ado about nothing, but it's close. I'll summarize the announcement for those of you who don't want to read it all.
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I had an opportunity to chat with Jamie Ryan, CIO of Aspect Software, about his ongoing rollout of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. You may be surprised at some of the topics around server count, redundancy, ROI and ease of management.
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I use CoMo, communicator mobile, almost everyday. Whether it's to make a call from my mobile "from the office" or just IM with colleagues, a mobile strategy is key for any UC solution.
Now it's even easier to get CoMo,. Just surf over to http://getcomo.com from your mobile device. It's not just for Windows Mobile, the Java version is also available. Read more
Here's the funny part, if you're running on Server 2008, Response Group Workflows are broken out of the box. Either no one is using RG's or everyone's running them on Server 2003 x64 because I couldn't find a single reference to this anywhere on the web. I hacked around for days to figure out why and finally came up with a 2 pronged solution. Read more
Technically the voice prompts and hold music for OCS 2007 R2 audio conferencing is not supposed to be configurable. In fact changing it can have some strange consequences throughout the system. However, if you absolutely HAVE TO change them, it's possible.
First of all, I wouldn't recommend changing these settings. Do so at your own risk. It is also completely unsupported by Microsoft. From MS KB article 961177: Read more
Jens (JTR) Rasmussen posted a great explanation of the unexpected behavior for CWA and phone number normalization rules. Put simply, CWA doesn't always play by the rules! Read more
Microsoft released Forefront Security for Office Communications Server 2007. I've been working with the product for about 9 months and seen it go through a number of changes; each iteration substantially better than the last. In fact, you can read more about Convergent Computing's experience in the Microsoft FS OCS case study. Read more
I had a great experience using OCS I wanted to share. I was in a meeting with a client the other day and we got a little off topic.They asked a Cisco VoIP question I didn't immediately know the answer to. However, I did know a few people in Microsoft's UC group that had recently moved over from Cisco. And since my company is federated with Microsoft I could easily see who was online and available. Using Communicator mobile on my phone I pinged one of the former Cisco folks and got an instantaneous answer. That's pretty amazing! Read more
Sometimes I'm amazed when companies release products that simply don't work as advertised. This is the case with an AudioCodes Media Gateway I'm using in an OCS deployent currently. Although I was wary of using AudioCodes based on less than spectacular past experiences they are the only vendor to support both loop start and ground start in their analog gateways. Without an alternative I ordered up a Mediant 1000 with 2 4-port FXO LS/GS boards. Read more
Exchange UM has a lot of great features... well beyond just voicemail showing up in your inbox. Although getting voicemail to your inbox is important, Exchange UM can do a lot more. When you're first enabled for Exchange UM a new tab is added to Outlook under Tools->Options. Click on Voice Mail and you'll see this page where you can set various options including what folder to read when using Outlook Voice Access and the default number for "play on phone" (more below). Read more
If you've loaded up OCS 2007 R2 Edge services on Server 2008 you might have noticed something strange. What happened the management tools?!
First, OCS 2007 R2 no longer installs the management tools by default for any server role. You can run the admintools.msi or choose to install them from the first screen of the OCS setup menu. "Administrative Tools" is in the righthand column. Even then, you need to use Computer Management for the Edge Server role. Read more
I had a chance to sit down with Betsy Frost, general manager for Microsoft unified communications, at VoiceCon SF 2008. With the recent release of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 I thought this was the perfect time to post my notes from our VoiceCon chat. Read more
Microsoft is officially launching Office Communications Server 2007 R2 today. Check out the launch site to participate or for more information. Microsoft has also launched a TON of new documentation. I have a more complete list below, but the best place to start is What's new in OCS 2007 R2. Read more
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