Found on YouTube: OCS IM etiquette training

#OCS in the conference room–ClearOne INTERACT AT-OC

I don’t remember really where I got the question last but I get it a lot and the answer has previously always been buy a Roundtable…

Well as of today I will change that answer.

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Its called The INTERACT AT-OC from ClearOne

Add your conferencing room to the Communications Server Ecosystem with the INTERACT AT-OC . The INTERACT AT-OC is a complete room audio solution that connects to the Microsoft Communications Client’s PC with US B audio. It includes a tabletop dialer, an audio mixer, loudspeakers and microphones. Simply unpack the solution, plug in the microphones, connect the loudspeakers, add the PC and the room is ready for a CSCS conference.

              • Applications
                Use Collaboration capabilities in the group room
                Video conferencing
                Web conferencing
                Audio Conferencing
                Enable Microsoft Communications Server in group rooms
                Boardroom
                Training Center
                Executive Office
  • Advantages
    Bring Microsoft Communications Server Voice into the Conference Room
    Just add a PC to run the Communications Server
    The PC connects to INTERACT AT-OC via USB
    Create Group Video Conferencing using Microsoft Communications Server at a fraction of the cost
    Just add the PC, LCD and USB Camera to INTERACT AT-OC.
    HD capabilities with Communications Server
    As easy to install as a Conferencing Phone
    Plug & Play
    Connect Microphones to Mixer
    Connect Speakers to Mixer
    Connect Dialer to Mixer
    Connect PC to USB Port
    No programming required
    Uses Desktop Microsoft Communicator Client

More info http://www.clearone.com/docs/datasheets/800-154-002-02-DS_Rev1.0_INTERACT_AT-OC_Datasheet.pdf

Why not connect 360 000 000 people with your business??

In only three of the OCS (Office Communications Server) installations I have done during the years have they chosen to enable Public IM Connectivity!? And about 50% have chosen to enable open federation.

Why are CIOs (and other C_Os) so afraid when it comes to connecting the business UC platform with the public cloud IM platforms or with other partners/ customers via federation?

  • Is it because of SPIM or the way that spam changed email, or that someone might send something malicious?
  • Because we don’t want our employees to just sit around and chat all day?
  • Or because they are afraid that its easier to initiate a social engineered attack via IM / chat?

For me UC is about communications without boundaries, if I want, I should be able to have a HD video call to a customer when I’m at home. I should be able to have a Facebook chat with my wife when I’m at the office. I should be able to escalate an email to a video call and then transfer it to my mobile phone whenever I want and wherever I am.

And I want to control who, when and where I talk to whoever I want to. To be able to answer or not, to transfer or send to voice mail and so on… And all of this from one simple and easy to use interface, that is accessed from a computer or from my mobile phone.

But I guess that communicating in this way takes a lot of practice and not everyone should or could do it. For me I grow´d up in IRC chat rooms and my ICQ number is 1020818. As everyone else my age I switched over to MSN / Live Messenger for my private life and what I start to see now is that most of my friends now switching over to Facebook and web enabled chats and that more and more businesses are enabling its users for UC in different ways.

So, why would you connect your business IM system to the public cloud?

Well about 90% of my contact list in MOC (Microsoft Office Communicator) consists of contacts from outside of my organization, about 15 people (that I didn’t know in real life) have added me and asked work related questions that have generated business. Most of the communication with my customers I work with is done in MOC (either IM, voice, video or desktop sharing) and most of the sales to my existing customers has originated from a conversation in MOC.

The fact that its possible to just open my contact list and see the presence of someone I have not talked to for a long time and if he/she is available its really easy to just sending away a quick “Hi, busy?, how are you and what about that thing we talked about last time…”

I would in 85% of the cases most certainly not call the person on the phone to ask the same questions. And this has and will continue to generate business for me, and I expect it to be more and more since more businesses are enabling technology like this for its users.

But still, what are the dangers of enabling communications with the public, like we do with email? I can send email to anyone I have an email address to and I can call them on the phone if I got the number. But when it comes to IM and chat, the upper management are often scared of something, but when asked of what, they most often don’t know what to answer.

So my question is simple: What is it that scares them???

Please comment your thoughts.

Mastering MS UC – #OCS & #Exchange UM in Stockholm 26/5 – 3days

I we managed to score some sweet deals from some of my partners (Microsoft, Plantronics, Interoute, Ingate, Dialogic) for my lab @ http://labcenter.se/Lab/2055 and my office is starting to look like a Best Buy or something with all the gadgets and stuff i got for the lab now.
There is Bluetooth headsets, wired ones, phones, speaker phones, CX5000 (roundtables), HD webcams, sip gateways and some other surprises.

So if you are in to Unified Communications and want to learn some more of the whole ecosystem around Microsoft’s UC offering i really recommend you to sign up.

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In three intensive days together with me, we will go through the various components of Microsoft’s Unified Communications offering.

Office Communications Server with Exchange is the foundation of Microsoft’s unified communications offering and in this lab we will review and build OCS 2007 R2 from scratch, with all its various roles, including Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging.

The Lab contain many practical exercises and goes through the basic functions such as IM, online meetings in Live Meeting, Federation and Desktop Sharing. After that we will deepen ourselves in Enterprise Voice, SIP trunks, SIP gateways and the Exchange UM role.

We will also look at OCS in the cloud and compare the differences between having one yourself or buy it as a service from for example Microsoft Online Services.

http://labcenter.se/Lab/2055

Put 1 billion $ in r&d for Windows Phone and you could get some really sweet integration with the rest of the MS UC platform

Microsoft’s Bill Koefoed has told Brendan Barnacle (a Pacific Crest analyst) that Microsoft is planning to invest $1 billion in research and development for Windows Phone.

With the iPhone and Android as its toughest competitors i truly believe that IF Microsoft can see the bigger picture and integrate not only Xbox and live services but also Exchange, OCS, SharePoint and maybe some Dynamics in to WM7, they will be really strong in start line.

What i would like to see is a full integration of OCS in the phone, with true single number reach, presence in the phone book from all different sources like Facebook, OCS, Linkedin, Live messenger and so on, so that i can transfer a call to someone with the benefits of a full client, but from inside the phone. Real integration of exchange UM in the interface of the phone, so that i can manage my calling rules directly from inside the interface of the phone. One button call to OVA. Send to voice mail and have a nice interface that let me choose from lets say two different greetings, where the first one should be a boring old voice mail and the other one should be a “Hi leave a message and please hold on while i revive it, and if i find it important enough i will let you be connected” sort of thing… Or a integration in to the CRM system so that the phone can present data about the caller of an incoming call, and let me check some stats of the customer while in a call…

Well i could do this all night since i have a loot of cool features i would build in to the phone if i had 1 billion $ to play with…

You can read more about the original story over at Forbes

Someone wrote about how i feel about the Iphone and UC VS Windows Phone and UC

So i don’t have to write that much more then, for a fair and really good comparison about the pros and real cons that i also felt with my iPhone, head over to jschurman’s blog and the post Mobile Unified Communications – Why I switched from an iPhone to Windows Phone

UC Lab @ labcenter

My OCS / Exchange UM lab is now live at labcenter.se

We review and build OCS 2007 R2 from scratch with all its various roles including Exchange 2010 UM. The lab contains many practical exercises to bring up the basic functions such as IM, online meetings in Live Meeting, Federation and Desktop Sharing. After the basic functions we will also immerse ourselves in the Enterprise Voice, SIP trunks, SIP gateways and Exchange UM-role

So if you are waiting for the next step in your UC deployment or are in the planning stage or process of rolling out Microsoft Unified Communications in your organization i highly recommend you to get some practical  skills first by attending this lab.

http://www.labcenter.se/Lab/2055

Collaboration tools shouldn't be forgotten in a UC implementation

So to be 100% Unified in all your communication you will need some things, one of them might be SharePoint for the collaboration part.


SharePoint in Plain English