Microsoft Office Communications Server
Photograph by World Economic Forumon Flickr.
LMC is used for more structured meetings, Communications of the ACM conferences and application sharing and can run natively against either OCS or the LiveMeeting hosted service. The Live Meeting client uses PSOM to download meeting Microsoft Office Communications Server content.
The Archiving server is not an overall end-to-end compliance solution, as archiving requires you to install the Archiving Server and to configure front end servers accordingly. OCS 2007 also enables organizations to interoperate with three proprietary IM services: AOL Instant Messenger, .NET Messenger Service, and Yahoo! Messenger. When Microsoft Office Communications Server Microsoft Office Live Communications Server was originally launched on 29 December 2003, it replaced the Exchange Instant Messenger Service that had been included in Exchange 2000, but which was removed from the Exchange 2003 feature set.
Some of the roles of OCS are supported in virtualized environment. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 ( MOC or OC ), Group Chat Client, and the LiveMeeting console (LMC) 2007 are the primary client applications released with OCS. Video in OCS is also interoperable with third party solutions such as Tandberg and PolyCom systems as well.
OCS uses a modified and incompatible Interactive Connectivity Establishment for NAT tranversal and TLS encryption to enable secure voice and video both inside and outside the corporate network. OCS 2007 also supports remote users, both corporate users on the internet (e.g. This is a version of the MOC more oriented towards receptionists or delegates / secretaries or others who get a large volume of inbound calls. Other client software and devices include: One basic use of Office Communications Server is instant messaging and presence within a single organization.
Holders of Exchange 2000 licenses which include Software Assurance are entitled to receive Live Communications Server as an upgrade, along with Exchange 2003; however, Live Communications Server Client Access Licenses must be purchased as normal for new users. OCS R2 was announced at VoiceCon in Amsterdam in October 2008 , just 364 days after releasing Office Communications Server 2007. There have been attempts by other vendors at providing solutions such as Yahoo! s Enterprise Instant Messenger; however these attempts have been largely unsuccessful.
Media is transferred using RTP/SRTP. However, if a hybrid gateway is leveraged, such as one from Microsoft s Open Interoperability Site, then in fact everything is encrypted from all points. IM is only one portion of the OCS suite.
R2 adds new features such as Group Chat and Attendant Console. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, OCS 2007, is an enterprise real-time communications server, providing the infrastructure for enterprise instant messaging, presence, file transfer, peer-to-peer and multiparty Voice and Video calling, ad hoc and structured conferences (audio, video and web) and PSTN connectivity.
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 Communicator client also uses HTTPS to connect with the web components server to download address books, expand distribution lists, etc.
Federation can be configured either manually (where each partner manually configures the relevant edge servers in the other org) or based on use of the appropriate SRV records in DNS. Microsoft Office Communications Server uses a modified and incompatible Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for signaling along with the SIMPLE extensions to SIP for IM and presence. By default, Office Communications Server encrypts all signaling and media traffic using SIP over TLS and SRTP.
This means that customers can keep their existing investment in these systems, but extend video to the desktop via Office Communications Server. 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 organization’s existing messaging and telephony infrastructure and can adapt to changing business needs.
This is dramatically different than traditional telephony and VoIP vendors who charge for additional clients, endpoints, and interfaces into the communications system. The improved on-premise audioconferencing capability puts Enterprises in control of their audioconferencing infrastructure while saving money on audioconferencing costs over hosted bridges. mobile or home workers) as well as users in partner companies.
OCS 2007 supports federation - enabling interoperability with other corporate IM networks. The other major components are VOIP telephony and video conferencing through the desktop communicator client.
The Group Chat feature lets organizations set up searchable, topic-based chat rooms that persist over time, allowing geographically distributed teams to better collaborate with one another while preserving organizational knowledge. Interestingly, all of these features are covered under a single license per user through the Enterprise Client Access License (ECAL) from Microsoft. PIC was first introduced with Service Pack 1 for Live Communications Server 2005, PIC is licensed separately for Yahoo, but is free for AOL and Messenger service. OCS has a gateway to XMPP. The ejabberd XMPP server has a bridge that enable federation with OCS servers, without gateways (transports). Pidgin, a popular multi-protocol instant messenger client on Linux, now has a third-party plugin implementing the extended version of SIP/SIMPLE (text only). The beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 will be available to R2 voice partners in April 2010. The launch is expected in October 2010. Microsoft has also announced that OCS 2010 will no longer support the ECMA TR/87 standard for Remote Call Control for new users of OCS.
(These latter features are often not possible even within a single organization using public IM clients, due to the effects of negotiating the corporate firewall and Network Address Translation). The Group Chat client is a stand-alone client for OCS s Group Chat Facility. Microsoft also ship the Microsoft Attendant Console.
This extensibility is one of the major reasons that Gartner has placed Microsoft at the top of their Unified Communications Magic Quadrant for 2007 and 2008. Competitors to OCS include: In the Instant Messaging space, the free public instant messaging networks (Google, Live Messenger, Yahoo and AOL) are widely used and represent a degree of competition. 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.
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 dialing rules that apply to calls made by users from their work phone also extend to their cellular calls. There is one exception to this - traffic between the Mediation Server and a basic media gateway is carried as SIP over TCP and RTP.
This version has major advantages over the original solution and positioned Microsoft firmly in place to be a major player in IP Telephony and Video (Telepresence). 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. An ICQ corporate client and server option once existed, but it is no longer supported or developed. It s important to note that products such as Cisco Unified Presence Server (Version 6.0.2+) support federation with Microsoft Office Communicatiion Server 2007 to provide presence of Cisco IP Phones and remote call control of the IP Phone from the Microsoft Office Communicator client. .
This limits interoperability with existing PBXs. Remote access is possible using mobile and web clients. Microsoft released Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in February 2009 OCS 2007 also has the capability to log and archive all instant message traffic passing through the server and to create Call Detail Records for conferences and voice.
OC 2007 is the client used for IM, presence, voice and video calls and ad hoc conferences. These features can help provide compliance with legal requirements for many organizations.
