I was at the Office Communications Server 2007 launch today, held at Vinopolis in London, UK. I missed the complete morning sessions because I got caught up on a client firewall issue. But what I did see I thought was great day.
If you've read this blog before, you'll have seen previous posts about Live Meeting and Unified Communications. Mainly because I love technology, resell Live Meeting and setup the Live Meeting User Group .
One thing I have been meaning to get round to doing, is integrating my trixboxPro IP phone system into Office Communications Server(OCS). trixboxPro is built on Asterisk, an Open Source IP phone system. trixbox built one million lines of code into it and bundled a bunch of great services, and you have an excellent IP phone system capable of integrating with VOIP, analog or digital calls.
Microsoft was giving out some great swag. Only next time, I need to make sure I pick up a bag with the cool Jabra IP phone rather than the bag with the equally lovely but far cheaper Jabra headset.
Here's a photo of Mark Deakin presenting at the OCS 2007 launch.
Chris Dalby is founder and Director of Yellow Park, a Microsoft Certified Partner located in Kent, UK. Yellow Park is a multidisciplinary company specializing in a range of services, including network support for Windows networks, communications, Live Meeting, web and email hosting, online integration and development. You can also find Chris at his other blog, where he covers more general IT related content, mixed in with a bit of culture and fun. In his spare time, Chris enjoys walking and running in his local woods with his two favorite girls; wife Gosia and Kaija a Doberman.
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Global availability still some time away though unfortunately...
Impressive OCS launch and overall largely positive reviews all around. One of the critical success factors however for how well Microsoft will be able to establish OCS globally will be the availability of OCS devices, in particular the RoundTable.
Microsoft has failed thus far to certify the devices widely so as a result you only get it in just 10 countries at this stage (US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, NL, ES, JP, AU) ... so for anyone outside of these countries, such as Hong Kong, looking to get one there's no published roadmap nor timeline even. This will also mean that companies with international presence that like to use the RoundTable devices can forget about using RoundTable for all subsidiary locations, unless they order them through any of the above 10 countries and then ship them to other countries not on the list. But that likely violates the license agreement (since they are not certified) and you won't have warranty support in other countries.
This significantly weakens the OCS value in my view since LiveMeeting without RoundTable is not much more than what you get with WebEx for a long time and desktop video conferencing, IM and presence can be had with Skype Business for much lower investments.
So, Microsoft, when will this be made available in other countries?