Tag Archives: UC
Found on YouTube: Microsoft Unified Communications in Government Video
I have missed this one and since it’s a rather old one I’m confused on how it slipped through? And its rather good though, I mean better then the devil wears prada UC promotion video so check it out.
And a old one while I’m at it
#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.
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.
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.
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
Microsoft UC Lab
This post will be in Swedish, sorry for that but its basically about my Microsoft UC lab being held in Stockholm in 2010, so if you want to learn more about Unified communications contact me for a more detailed description in English.
Mastering Microsoft Unified Communications
Lär dig den senaste och coolaste tekniken inlåst i ett bankvalv med ett blad fullproppat med minne och processor, en massa virtuella maskiner och en bärbar dator, en SIP-trunk, en växel och massa andra coola gadgets i tre högeffektiva dagar där vi går igenom Office Communications Server 2007 R2 och Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging i detalj.
Vi sätter upp grundläggande funktioner i OCS som Precense, IM, Federation och Desktop Sharing så att du när du ska ringa någon kan se direkt om personen är upptagen, och därför skicka ett mail istället för att bli borttryckt. Eller när du sitter hemma en kväll och får det där samtalet, där någon försöker förklara att det är fel på datamaskinen och det är jätteviktigt att rapporten skickas just ikväll, och du faktiskt kan se med hjälp av Desktop Sharing i OCS exakt vad problemet är och därefter kan avhjälpa det på en bråkdels sekund mot vad det hade tagit att förklara över telefon.
Vi labbar med Exchange UM-rollen så att du lär dig tekniken som gör det möjligt att:
· Få dina mail upplästa i telefonen
· Ringa till din kalender och säga att du blir sen till ett möte, eller ännu bättre ringa till OCS-servern och vara med i mötet du annars skulle missat
· Läsa dina voice-mail istället för att behöva gå ut ur rummet och svara i telefonen.
LabCenter och Tommy Clarke (TrueSec) har utvecklat en labb där vi går igenom den grundläggande funktionaliteten i OCS samt Exchange 2010 UM och därefter går ett steg längre genom att koppla in Voice i miljön för att fördjupa oss i de nya vägar av kommunikation som UC innebär.
Efter ditt deltagande på denna labb kommer du bland annat:
· Förstå Microsofts Unified Communications Vision
· Lärt dig installera och konfigurera alla de olika OCS 2007 R2-rollerna
· Begripa kopplingen mot telefoni världen
· Få erfarenhet av Conferencing
· Integrera OCS 2007 R2 med Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging
Genom att varva teoretiska och praktiska moment går vi igenom bland annat följande:
Översikt av Microsoft Unified Communications (OCS 2007 R2 & Exchange 2010)
Vi går igenom vilka licensregler som gäller, vilka roller vi behöver och i vilken ordning vi ska implementera dem för att enkelt sälja in och snabbt rulla ut en UC-lösning från Microsoft.
· Genomgång av de olika rollerna i OCS 2007 R2
· OCS 2007 R2 Architecture and Design
· Genomgång av OCS 2007 R2 klientapplikationer
· Vilken roll spelar Exchange 2010 UM i en Microsoft UC-lösning?
· Licensiering
Planera, designa, installera och konfigurera Microsoft Unified Communication
Vad bör man tänka på samt vilka verktyg kan vi ta hjälp av innan man säljer in och vid planeringen av en UC-lösning för att det ska vara smidigt att rulla ut, fungera i praktiken och kunna användas maximalt.
Därefter går vi från en grundläggande installation igenom hur man smartast konfigurerar upp de olika rollerna. Vi tar även hjälp av våra deployment-experter för att få tips om hur vi kan rulla ut klienterna på smidigast sätt och hur vi konfigurerar inställningar centralt.
· Planering inför en UC-lösning
· Installation av de olika OCS 2007 R2 serverrollerna
· Konfiguration av Remote Access, Audio/Video, and Web Conferencing Edge Servers
· Installation av Exchange 2010 UM
· Utrullning av OCS-klienter
· Konfigurering av klienter och användare
Telefoni och OCS 2007 R2
Vi tittar närmare på Mediation serverrollen, Location Profiles, Phone Usage, Policys & Routes och sätter upp routing mot olika växlar för att få ett realistiskt scenario att labba med.
· Detaljerad genomgång av Mediation serverrollen
· Policys & regler för telefoni
· Audio konferens med OCS 2007 R2
· Integration med Microsoft Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging
· Mobilitet med OCS och Exchange UM
Monitorering
Vi går igen hur vi med enkla medel kan kvalitetssäkra våra samtal samt monitorera och följa upp de krav som verksamheten ställer på oss. Vi tittar även på hur vi kan samla in samtalsdata för att skapa rapporter så att ekonomiavdelningen kan göra sin ROI.
· Detaljerad genomgång av Monitoring serverrollen
· Konfigurering och användning av monitorering
· Efterlevnad av krav
· Vad innebär MOS scores och hur ska vi tolka rapporterna?
· Hur kan vi med hjälp av samtalsdata och Reporting Services ta fram data för ROI kalkyler?
Säkerhet med OCS 2007 R2
Vad behöver vi tänka på när vi sätter upp extern åtkomst och vilka säkerhetsrisker finns det när vi kopplar OCS mot andra UC-lösningar. Finns det ”mjuka” säkerhetsrisker med bland annat PIC att tänka på och hur möter man motståndet mot det ute hos kund?
· Truesecs säkerhetsexperter går igenom lösningen vi byggt upp och ger tips om hur vi bygger den så säker som möjligt
· Genomgång av Certifikat, Edge, Director, Reverse proxy och andra krav på nätverksuppbyggnad för att få en så säker miljö som möjligt
· Säkerhet mot tredjepartslösningar som Tandberg och SIP-Trunkar över internet
· High Availability and Load Balancing
· Backup and Recovery
· IM-hygien
Problemlösning och övervakning
Vi går i denna modul igenom de olika hjälpmedel och verktyg som finns att tillgå för problemlösning och övervakning i System Center Operations Manager
· Genomgång av felsökningsverktyg
· Performance monitoring
· Genomgång av guldgruvan – Resource Kit
Förkunskaper
Du bör ha grundläggande kunskaper i:
Office Communications Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007, TCP/IP, Windows Server infrastruktur (AD, DNS, Group Policys, Certifikat, IIS)
För mer info samt bokning se http://www.labcenter.se/Lab/2055 eller kontakta Tommy Clarke på mail eller telefon +4670 918 30 40
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.
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.