Johann's Unified Communications : launch

OCS 2007 R2 Launch

jkruse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:03:47 GMT

Streamlined Communications

Today, users face the challenge of managing their communications across many devices and applications, which negatively impacts productivity. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 streamlines the way users manage communications, enabling them to find and communicate with the right person, from whichever applications they use most.

New call management capabilities let receptionists and team assistants take a large volume of incoming calls and quickly route them to the intended recipients with a simple click, while delegation features allow executives to completely hand over the management of their phone calls to their assistants. New desktop-sharing capabilities allow users on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms to collaborate with one another at the same time they talk to each other using enhanced audio conferencing features. The Group Chat feature lets organisations set up searchable, topic-based chat rooms that persist over time, allowing geographically distributed teams to better collaborate with one another while preserving organisational knowledge.

Operational Flexibility and Control

IT environments are very complex and create extra administrative overhead for IT administrators. IT is also called upon to deliver on imperatives like cost control, security, integration with existing infrastructure, and managing compliance requirements. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 allows IT administrators to meet these challenges effectively by giving them the ability to provide flexible communications solutions to users and by delivering the tools they need to help manage secure, compliant communications.

The new on-premise audio-conferencing capability puts IT in control of their audio-conferencing infrastructure while saving potentially millions of dollars in audio-conferencing costs. The Single Number Reach feature allows IT to log business calls placed by users from cellular phones for accounting purposes while helping to ensure that the same dialling rules that apply to calls made by users from their work phone also extend to their cellular calls. The new video monitoring capabilities allow IT to monitor the quality of video calls and conferences on their network, while support for SIP-trunking does away with the need to manage expensive on-premise gateways.

Extensible Communications Platform

One of the biggest advantages of having a software-based communications infrastructure is that businesses can embed communications capabilities into existing line-of-business applications and use communications and workflow capabilities to automate business processes, which saves money, saves time, and improves customer service. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers an extensible communications platform that works with an organisation’s existing messaging and telephony infrastructure and can adapt to changing business needs.

The new Agent Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM built using the published platform APIs in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 gives call centre agents the ability to see presence information and the ability to click to communicate right from within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM screens. Additionally, software developers can automate business processes with instant messaging (IM) and e-mail workflows using such familiar development tools as Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

To find out more about this new release, register for the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Virtual Launch Event. OCS 2007 R2 will be available to customers and partners at launch.

UC launch events so far

jkruse — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:03:00 GMT

Greetings to everybody who has attended the UC launch events in Australia so far.

We did Melbourne and Canberra last week, Sydney earlier this week, Adelaide is tomorrow, and finally Brisbane and Perth next week. Certainly an exhausting schedule (sorry if I've been slow to reply to your emails!) - but it has been an exciting experience, and after beating the drums for over a year it is great to hear the positive feedback from customers and partners now that our UC suite is a reality.

So far I've presented on OCS VoIP Architecture and Communicator End-user Experience, and in the rest of the cities you can hear me talk about VoIP Interoperability/Topology (i.e. how to get OCS working with your existing environment) and Exchange 2007 SP1 (especially SCR as this is the feature that is exciting most of our customers).

I look forward to catching up with any of you who will be attending the rest of these events!

Technorati Tags: uc2, launch

TechNet Updates November: Unified Communications

jkruse — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:29:10 GMT

In case you didn't see it at TechNet Australia.....

To support the Unified Communications Launch events in Sydney and Melbourne (more details to follow about these events), TechNet will be running a series of Technical Readiness events across the country for IT Professionals wanting to learn more about the technology.

I'll be presenting VOIP Topologies and Interoperability.

What will be covered?

Office Communications Server 2007 Deployment
This demonstration will walk through deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 starting with the planning & deployment guide, standard edition installation, user provisioning and entitlement, configuration, and finally validation. OCS 2007 will be the main emphasis of this demonstration. This session can be broken down into three parts. In the first part of the demonstration, we show the easy setup of Standard Edition 2007, this allows an organization to provide IM, peer to peer voice call capabilities immediately. The second part of the session will include an overview of complex installation topologies recommended for OCS 2007; this includes considerations for Enterprise Edition deployment, Edge server roles, various MCU roles, Mediation server and the Archiving server role. The third part of the session focuses on federation and public internet connectivity features of OCS 2007. This includes setup of Edge server roles for Public Internet Connectivity and Federation capabilities. It will also cover integration with Exchange 2007 SP1 Unified Messaging which enables an exciting set of features for end-users.

Mobility and Anywhere Access
This presentation will demonstrate the benefits of remote access and mobility features for Communicator and Exchange. The scenario will focus on how users stay connected and can work without interruption while travelling and on the go. Users continue to have access to presence and contact information and choice of communication options including mail, instant messaging, voice and multi-party conferencing. They can view documents and access SharePoint sites remotely. All these features increase productivity for the organization and are easy to set up by IT Pros. We will talk about implicit benefits of cost saving and lower help-desk calls.

VOIP Architecture
This presentation will describe to network managers and administrators the VoIP architecture of Office Communications Server 2007, demonstrate OCS’ superior quality of experience for voice and video, and describe the network requirements for implementing OCS in the data network. We will discuss Microsoft’s user-focused approach to quality with OCS, the core media stack and codecs used for VoIP in Office Communications Server 2007, and network provisioning for enterprise deployments of Office Communications Server 2007. The attendees will leave with knowledge of the advanced media technologies present in Office Communications Server 2007 and how those technologies relate to planning for a deployment in their environment.

Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Overview
This demonstration will walk through the feature enhancements introduced in Exchange Server 2007 SP1. The demo will cover a range of new technologies, from Windows Server 2008, Standby Continuous Replication and OWA 2007, to enhanced functionalities such as Mobility, end user experience and administrator management.

VOIP Topologies and Interoperability
This demonstration will expose administrators to the voice configuration and management experience in Office Communication Server 2007. We will walk through administrative tools, explore RouteHelper, and implement key deployment functionality such as dial plans, new site deployment, and least cost routing. The administrators will leave with knowledge of basic telephony deployment scenarios and options for more complex configurations.

Registration Details
Canberra Friday 16th November
Brisbane Thursday 22nd November
Adelaide Monday 26th November
Perth Wednesday 28th November

I will post the major launch events (Sydney and Melbourne) information soon. The launch events will also have technical readiness sessions brought to you by TechNet.

Technorati Tags: uc, ocs, technet, launch, events, uc2