Unified Communications @ Microsoft

Ok,  so its not maybe your typical business decision that needs to be made quickly but it IS a prime example of how presence and instant messaging can be far more effective than the telephone or email in the right situation.

Given the unusually nice weather that we are currently having and the desire for me to make the most of it,  a few of my friends and I decided to have an impromptu BBQ at my house tomorrow.  On checking the weather though at around 4pm I soon learned that we might have a little bit of rain on the way :-s.

With this in mind,  I started talking to the chief organiser of BBQs (thanks Emma) and within a few seconds we managed to pull in the rest of the attendees for this all important evening meeting of Microsoft employees.  Literally 15 minutes later we have a time, food, drink and chairs organised for a 6.30pm start (thats 1.5 hrs away).

This would have taken days to do over email and the chance of getting everyone on the phone at the same time would have been minimal (I could see at least two people in conference calls).

I hope the BBQ rocks as much as OCS did in helping us organise it !

When you rip out the old telephone system and put in a new one,  there is normally some hardware that needs to be moved which could come in the form of cabling or perhaps telephone devices.  Picking a Unified Communications system that doesn't require 'rip and replace' can save you this grief and could stop accidents like the ones below.

You have been warned ! ;-)

As I have already mention on my blog,  we are in the middle of a '3 nights only' tour for PS Exchange Unplugged which so far has taken us to Cambridge and Manchester.  After the 'smoking shuttle' incident on the last Exchange Unplugged Tour I didn't think there was anything worse that could happen .... it appears I was wrong.

It all started when Paul Brombley unfortunately took a turn for the worse and Julian and I stepped in to do his OCS session towards the end of the day.  He took us through the setup of his portable OCS environment on the shuttle but unfortunately we could get access to it so we went to plan B and decided to use the internet connection (which had been ropey all day) and use our corporate accounts for the demo.  This was all looking good until 10 minutes before we needed to go on when we realised the internet had 'died' and wasn't coming back to life anytime soon ..... PANIC !!!!!!!!

It was at this point that the resourceful and 'we will not give up' ethos of Julian and I kicked in and we decided we were not going to be beaten by the technology. 10 minutes later the both of us were back on the internet and connected to OCS and LiveMeeting ....... using our mobile phones and the local 3G connection!.  I will start with Julian's configuration because I think it's even more ludicrous than mine.  Julian had his Samsung Windows Mobile device configured with 'Internet Sharing' but because he didn't have his sync cable with him he had to resort to Bluetooth.  My connection was a little better with my PC connecting to a HTC Athena using a sync cable and then connecting to 3G/HSDPA with 'Internet Sharing' enabled again.  A pretty neat way to get onto the internet given we were in the basement of a hotel.  With a few minutes to spare,  Julian and I were signed into Communicator and LiveMeeting ready for our session.

We start our session and I explain the situation to the attendees in the room using a diagram similar to this one,  this diagram would you believe it looks better than the original :-).  Its at this point we start the demos with fingers, legs and everything else crossed.

Julian starts and IM session with Steven Hutchinson from Tayside Fire & Rescue and seconds later escalates to voice ... after a short pause we hear Stevens voice over the speakers .... phew !.  Julian then escalates to video and after a short pause again Stevens face comes up on the screen along with Alasdair from Tayside Fire & Rescue (they are on a Microsoft Roundtable).  The little 'warning triangle' appears at this point to say the bandwidth isn't perfect and after a few seconds the resourceful RTC Audio and RTC Video codec makes a few changes ... everything settles down and a after a brief introduction from the guys from Tayside,  Julian continues with this 'pitch'. 

Now I thought this would be enough but Julian,  a seasoned 'demoer' of OCS in extreme conditions,  decides he wants to push it a little further and I raise my eyebrow as he starts to explain that you can conference other people in and proceeds to drag Neil May from POST CTI into the video call too.  A few seconds later,  Neil May's face appears on the screen and Neil,  Julian,  Steven and Alasdair start to have a quick conversation.  While this is all going on I have a big smile on my face as I really was amazed and proud of OCS and its ability to take on the challenge of such terrible network conditions and still deliver a great demo .... the next time I have the 'QoS discussion' with anyone,  I am going to point them in the direction of this post and simply tell them that 'QoS is optional,  not required'.

After the event I had a flick through the feedback forms and I think 'Andy' summed it up quite well with the comment 'Very impressive & something I will recommend'.   Well done OCS,  well done Windows Mobile,  well done Steven,  well done Alasdair, Well done Neil and Well done Julian .... indeed a proud day for Deakin !

The middle of last week I went away to New York with a few friends for a four days and as such my mailbox didn't get the attention it normally does.  I must admit that I did still sync me email in the morning while recovering (if you want a list of good bars in New York let me know) but this wasn't in order to reply to an emails .... just to delete the ones that were FMI (For My Information).

This is all well and good but when I came into work on Tuesday,  I was met by a considerable pile of email to the tune of around 290 emails (its worth noting at this point that I am not a member of any distribution groups so all of these had my name in the email directly) which needed to be processed while dealing with new emails and IM that were coming in during the day.  How can one fix this problem you might ask yourself ?

Last Thursday I was at a location with no internet connection which has oddly enough enabled me to get on with a lot of work.  Without all the emails and IMs coming in for the last 8 hours,  I managed to sort out my mailbox to a more manageable 91 unread emails (its below me 100 email target - yah!),  only checking my phone for emails once an hour to see if anything new and important has come in.  As you can see in the image,  I had 32 emails sitting in my outbox ready to go when I got home.

So is offline the new online?  I certainly is for the odd day where you return from holiday and need to catch up on email.  I am seriously considering putting an 'Offiline Day' in my calendar once a month so people know I am working on the emails they sent 30 days ago but have not replied to yet :-)

Why don't you give it a try and let me know how you get on!?

Just after the the OCS launch,  the UC team in the UK embarked on the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 that saw us travel to 9 venues during 3 weeks on the road seeing nearly 1000 attendees.

Well,  similar to any good rock and roll tour,  we have decided to do a few more dates to our tour and the 'bus' will again be on the road during the month of March.

Reserve front row seats for your team at the Microsoft Exchange Tour Unplugged for Government.  Discover how the latest unified communications technologies can help you to deliver integrated voice, data and web communications that: help reduce your carbon footprint, meet your Gershon and CSR07  efficiency targets, make mobile and flexible working easier; contribute to real estate rationalisation and address other key challenges on the government agenda.

Microsoft's Unified Communications Experts will take your team through a rich agenda covering Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server, Live Meeting, the Nortel Alliance, Compliance for Public Sector and how Unified Communications will drive Transformational Government. Your team will learn how to map out the upgrade and see how Exchange Server enables your organisation to operate securely anytime, anywhere.

If you are public sector customer,  sign yourself up for one of the following 'gigs'.

 12^th March – Cambridge Garden House, Cambridge

13^th March – Arora International, Manchester

20^th March – Cardinal Place, London

See you on tour ! .... again :-)

Back at the tail end of last year,  Microsoft in the UK did two product launches for OCS,  one in Vinopolis and one at the IP07 show in Earls Court.

We have attended IP07 for two years now (it was called IP06 before just in case that isn't obvious) and this year we are also planning to attend the UC 08 event which incorporates 'VoIP for Business' which many of you will always be aware of.

Given that I now have a bit more time on my hands than I did in October last year,  I am going to try something a little different for our stand and therefore the creative minds of Microsoft and Imago are putting together something a little special,  an opportunity to experience Unified Communications how you would be using it in your day to day life.

I don't want to give away any more information for now .... that may come later .... so for now is probably best to tell you a little bit more about what UC08 is all about.

Unified Communications '08, Incorporating VoIP for Business is relevant for professionals with the following job titles working in organisations of all sizes and in all sectors and will give these professionals an opportunity to see all areas of Unified Communications from a number of vendors.

- CIOs, Business Managers and Technical Directors

- Sales and Marketing Directors, line of business managers

- IT Directors, IT and Network Managers and Communications Managers

If all of this sounds like your sort of thing,  then pop along to the registration site and get yourself a pass.  If you come along to the Microsoft stand be sure to get my attention and say hello !

Last year I went to an event in Newcastle at The Sage that was run by the guys at CodeWorks where Rob Gray,  Chris Rothwell and I talked about how Microsoft use and enable Collaboration and Communication.  A great time was had by all (well the three of us at least) and the discussion continued long into the night accompanied with a few drinks.

The guys are CodeWorks are running another event at the same venue from the 21st to 23rd of May which I am glad to say is being sponsored by Microsoft as well as a number of other organisations.

I for one will be attending this event and see it as an opportunity to speak to people about technology, ideas and the future (as the tag line suggests) .... something I have not done in a while since and plan to rectify !

If you come along ... come find me and lets talk !

A few people have already posted about this so I thought I would quickly make one myself.

Two Microsoft Roundtables (oddly enough they were in the same room) starred in a recent episode of CSI:NY,  I wonder if this means they get a start on the hall of fame in Hollywood?

I have been meaning to write my thoughts about this for quite some time as its one of those conversations I have with both partners and customers on a regular basis.  After having a really interesting conversation with Simon Horrocks at Psytechnics and spending a few hours on my motorbike with no radio to entertain me,  I think I now can summarise it into one post.

Quality of Service is a good thing,  don't get me wrong,  I understand the reason why it sometimes needs to be in place but when you sit down and think about it,  it really only solves one type of problem.  Quality of Service looks at the packet header ensuring the packet gets from A to B in time with minimal packet loss,  jitter and latency.  That's all very good but it doesn't really tell you much about the quality of the payload i.e. the actual conversation.  All the packets could be getting there in time and in the right order but if there is a hiss on the line,  its too quiet or people are speaking over each other then they experience isn't very good at all.

Quality of Experience however looks at the information within the payload,  looking to see if there is an echo,  checking the conversational quality and listening quality to see if its too quiet,  too loud or has any imperfections.  With this level of inspection you can then truly know if the call is a 'good call' or not.

As a new motorbike rider,  I see the difference between QoS and QoE in action every day I got out for a ride.  All of the cars on the road get people from A to B,  providing the basic transportation of packets (people) from one place to another (good QoS).  However,  this is all for nothing unless the quality of the payload (the driver) is up to scratch,  if there is one thing I have learnt quickly its that the quality of the driver is more important than the quality of the vehicle they are driving.

Points to take away from this post

1. Understand both Quality of Services and Quality of Experience and that there is no point getting the packets to their designation if the call experience is bad
2. Continuously assess the quality of your driving (QoE),  I or another motorbike might be behind you and we will be assessing your quality and acting accordingly ;-).  If this post causes one less person to pull out in front of me or another fellow motorcyclist then I will be happy

Two things there for you to think about on your drive home :-)

I get asked quite a lot what the options for outbound fax for Exchange 2007 are and up until now I have had to say 'its available from third party vendors'.

I am pleased to say that I recently discovered one vendor that we have been working with in particular,  Captaris.

I wont go through what it does because there is more than enough info on their website,  it does look pretty impressive though as it supports tracking of inbound/outbound faxes via the Exchange Messaging Tracking Log,  support for current Office and Windows release and even has the option to transport faxes into Sharepoint .... nice !

Over the last six and a bit years,  I have seen lots of spoof videos made by various people within Microsoft but almost all of them have not seen the light of day.

At CES 2008 this year,  they played 'Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft' which you can view here .... highly amusing stuff I thought.

If you have a spare 5 mins,  I also recommend you take a look at this one,  this one and finally this one.   All good examples of why 'rip and replace' is more dangerous then you would have thought.

Something for you to do this afternoon if 'work' is getting a little boring :-)

A number of people have asked me where they can download a copy of the presentations from the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 that happened at the end of last year.  Now that I am 'back online',  I think this would be a great opportunity to use Skydrive so if you want to download a copy of the presentations,  you can find them using the link below :-)

Back in May 2007,  I did a blog post about all the new devices that were coming out.  That blog post has served me quite well as I have referred to it a number of times when people have asked me what devices are available.

Well I am glad to say there is now a Microsoft official site that lists them all in a little more professional manner than my blog post.  Pop along to here,  credit card in hand and follow the links to the manufacturers own sites.

Yes yes .... I know ... there has been a little bit of a drought on my blog of late.  I have been busy over the last few months or so with preparation for the second half of the Microsoft financial year,  a ski holiday,  taking my motorbike test and a few other bits and bobs, but I will am now back 'typing fit' for the new year.

Given we are now in the first week of the 2008,  I thought I would take a little time to reflect on the last 12 months.   Going through my own blog posts,  I am actually in awe of how far we have come along with the Microsoft Unified Communications vision.  If anyone ever says to me that the pace of change is too slow and we are not delivering,  I will be sure to point them towards this post. 

Sit down,  buckle up and prepare yourself for a whistle-stop tour of 2007 !

• December 2006 - A little over 1 year ago,  I made a post on my blog about the Release to Manufacturing of Exchange 2007 (December 8^th 2007).  This was the start of a year of UC announcements from Microsoft.  Who would have thought that 12 months later we would be so much further along the UC journey?
• Jan 1^st - 2007 started off with me placing a piece of paper over my phone to see if I could live without using it.  I thought this could be a bit of a challenge but actually it was the first of many changes to my desktop.
• March – During March we made a number of announcements at Voicecon.  The public beta of Office Communications Server 2007 became available and we predicted that in the next 3 years 100 million people will be using Microsoft VOIP technology from the desktop via Office.  At the time these predications seemed impossible,  the product wasn’t even complete,  at the end of 2007,  I now think that this is more than possible.
• May – The dev team are still working on OCS but we also announce that a number of vendors have also been working hard on producing devices.  Later that month,  a number of those devices arrive on my desk and being able to call from my desktop becomes even more of a reality,  only a matter of time before the phone on my desk goes surely. Also in May,  Outlook Web Access has its 10^th birthday party with over 135 million users,  I think its aged quite well and becoming a great companion to Outlook itself.
• June – 22^nd of June my telephone number is moved over to OCS.  The product has not finished yet but I figure its not right to be talking to people about it unless I am using it fully myself.  My desk phone is unplugged,  never to see the light of day again.
• July – 7 months after Exchange,  OCS and associated technologies e.g. Livemeeting, Microsoft Roundtable,  Communicator are all released to manufacturing.  Not even a year has gone by and we have gone from mail,  calendar and contacts in Exchange 2003 to Outlook Voice Access and Unified Messaging in Exchange 2007 and now data, video and voice from the desktop using Communicator.  Unified Communications isn’t the future,  it’s the present!.
• August – The march of Microsoft UC continues with the licensing of our RT Audio Codecs to a number of vendors.  At the same time,   Skype has a major blackout,  a good reminder that although VOIP is available for free,  there are advantages to running this technology within your enterprise rather than relying on a consumer product.
• October – After months of preparation,  October sees launch of OCS around the world including the UK.  The culmination of a lot of late nights and early mornings for a lot of people within Microsoft sees 1000s of people in the UK experiencing Microsoft UC first hand. 
• November – Hot of the heels of the OCS launch,  Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 saw the UK team travelling up and down the country talking to partners and their customers about the Microsoft UC platform, we were so ‘on fire’ we even managed to fry a power supply.
• December - As 2007 comes to a close,  Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 is released to web.  For those that have been ‘waiting for SP1’,  now is the time to start deploying Exchange 2007 and OCS 2007.  If the last 12 months is anything to go by,  if you don’t do it now you are going to find yourself way behind the curve!

As you can see,  2007 has been quite a year from Microsoft Unified Communications and this post reminds me a) why I work in UC and b) why I work a Microsoft.  Real progress can only occur when someone makes 'big bets' and increases the pace of change.  I like to think that's exactly what we have done in 2007!

The 9th and final Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 event is now over.  The wireless mics are silent,  the kit is packed away,  demos shut down,  projectors cooling and tour T-shirts in the wash.  Its been a huge tour in such a short amount of time but has proved to be a great way to get the UC message out to a high number of customers and partners who couldn't attend the OCS launch less than a month ago.

Here are the final stats for the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007

• 3 Weeks on the road
• 9 venues
• 1700 miles
• 58.5 hours of presenting
• nearly 1000 attendees
• One dead power supply

I would like to thank all of the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 team who without their input this wouldn't have been able to happen.  The presenters have spend a lot of late nights working on their demos and presentations ensuring we had a good mix between 'slideware' and demos ... its risky to install and migrate to Exchange 2007 in 17 minutes once ... let along 9 times !.  Well done to Tony Cocks, Jason Langridge, Julian Datta, Brett Johnson, Paul Brombley, Tanya Dyason, Ewan Dalton, Eileen Brown and all the other Exchange Unplugged Tour crew who have made this possible.

After this week I have got a weeks holiday planned but soon after that I plan to go through the evaluation forms and look at how we can run the tour this time next year.

If you came to one of our gigs please feel free to leave a comment so I can convince the 'powers that be' this is something we should do again :-)