Office Communications Server

Designing a Resilient Microsoft Unified Communications Environment

As organizations move to unified communications it becomes imperative that disaster recovery and business continuity be incorporated into the design and implementation. In the event that a natural disaster or other catastrophe strike the primary data center, there needs to be a fall-back plan in place to ensure that the business can continue to communicate and work productively.

The ability to provide some sort of failover redundancy or site resiliency has been seen as an Achilles heel of Microsoft Office Communications Server. Microsoft has made some enhancements though in R2 and produced a white paper describing how to accomplish site resiliency with Microsoft OCS 2007 R2.

Here is the description Microsoft provides for the white paper:

This white paper describes a site resiliency solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The solution includes an Enterprise pool that spans two geographically separate sites. The solution provides a failover mechanism between the two sites to ensure that Office Communications Server functionality such as instant messaging, presence, and conferencing remains available even if one of the sites becomes unavailable.

This white paper is divided into three main sections:

Forefront Security for OCS Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

For organizations that rely on Microsoft unified communications, Forefront Security seems like a natural fit. With components to protect and secure Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications Server, as well as client endpoints, Forefront Security provides comprehensive protection for a Microsoft unified communications environment.

To make things even easier to monitor and manage, Microsoft has developed a Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft provides the following overview of the capabilities of this tool:

The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides real-time insight into the health and performance of key Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (Version 10) components and services. The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack alerts the administrator to critical events affecting the security of their OCS environment. Proactive management of the Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server environment is facilitated through management pack activity reports on IM scan performance.

Feature Bullet Summary

• Monitoring of current license state
• Monitoring of Antimalware Engine health and update activity
• Monitoring of IM Scan Job availability
• Monitoring health of required Forefront Security for OCS services
• Reports on key Forefront for OCS performance counters

Sprint Rolls Out General Availability of SIP Trunking

Sprint was one of the first SIP trunk providers certified with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2). Now it is expanding availability of SIP trunking to all business customers.

Sprint SIP trunking customers will be able to leverage Sprint’s Global MPLS network and utilize a single IP network connection to facilitate voice, date, and video conferencing connections.

SIP trunking and VoIP enable customers to save significantly over traditional local and long distance expenses, and it is also a key component of unified communications.

Microsoft Unleashes More Comprehensive IM Connectivity

Organizations using Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) have a powerful instant messaging tool with Office Communicator and Communicator Mobile. Federation allows different organizations running OCS to link up so that the users in each entity can see each other’s presence and communicate seamlessly.

As it turns out, not every organization is running OCS 2007. I know, right? There are even a vast number of small and medium businesses with no enterprise instant messaging solution. Go figure. Many organizations rely on free IM options- AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, etc.

Microsoft had two announcements this week that change the landscape for instant messaging with OCS 2007. First, it released the XMPP gateway for OCS R2.  The new gateway expands the options for IM by enabling connectivity to systems such as Google Talk and Jabber. 

The second announcement was that connectivity with AOL is now included in the licensing price, along with Windows Live, which was announced a few months ago.  That means that OCS 2007 R2 can connect with AIM and Windows Live Messenger accounts without the need to purchase Public IM Connectivity (PIC) licenses.

Organizations that want/need to connect with Yahoo IM accounts will still have to purchase the necessary PIC licenses.

Using Presence Effectively

Presence is arguably the glue that makes unified communications work. It is Presence, the ability to determine the current status and availability of contacts, that enables users to communicate more efficiently. Presence can let you see who is available, what they are currently engaged in, and allow you to choose the most effective method for communicating with that contact.

Maybe. I should say that Presence can do all of that…when used properly. However, users who simply set their status as Away when they are really sitting at their desk working because they don’t want to be bothered undermine the value of Presence. Similarly, users who have high idle times and show as Available when, in fact, they haven’t been sitting at their computer for the past hour also reduce the utility of the Presence information and in effect render it useless.

To be fair, as the concept of Presence and status have evolved from consumer instant messaging clients, the level of granularity for assigning status as well as the ability to control who sees what haven’t been there. In the early days of instant messaging services like ICQ status basically amounted to Available, Away, and Offline and pretty much anybody could see that.

Unified communications solutions like Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) have greatly expanded the concept of Presence though. Presence can tell if you are in a meeting or on a phone call. Presence can provide details about your status instead of just black and white information like online or offline. OCS 2007 R2 also allows users to determine how much information to share with contacts. One contact may only be able to see if you are available or not, while your manager or project team can also see details about what you are doing and when you’ll be available.

With access to the inner-workings of OCS, it is possible to determine whether a user is *really* Away, or if they are actively using their computer and just hiding behind the Away status. As this blog entry points out though, it is not an elegant solution. Uncovering the real Presence state is not something you want to provide every user, but for an Administrator this information may be valuable in determining how users are employing Presence and developing policies and user awareness programs to try and address any issues.  

Advances in Presence like the granular availability information found in OCS 2007 R2 make it much more useful…when used properly. It is important that users are educated about the proper use of Presence and that they are encourage not to abuse the Presence states. Without accurate Presence information many of the benefits and efficiencies of unified communications will not be realized.

Web Scheduler for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Microsoft recently released Web Scheduler for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The Web Scheduler provides a web-based interface for conference management functions giving users the ability to:

• Schedule a new Live Meeting conference or conference call
• View and modify details of an existing conference.
• List schedules of all existing user of a Microsoft Office conference.
• Delete an existing conference.
• Send an e-mail invitation to conference participants using a configured SMTP mail server.
• Join an existing conference.

The Web Scheduler is an ASP.Net application and must be installed on the same Internet Information Services (IIS) server that the OCS 2007 R2 Web Components are running on.

Web Scheduler requires OCS 2007 R2. The ability to send email meeting invites requires an SMTP server- ostensibly Microsoft Exchange Server, but others will due.

Enabling Brings OCS to the College Classroom

Colleges and universities across the country use the Blackboard Academic Suite to allow students and faculty to engage and collaborate virtually. Enabling Technologies is helping to expand the functionality of Blackboard and provide more effective communications and collaboration with OCS for Blackboard.

OCS for Blackboard automatically populates the Office Communicator client with information such as the course, users, teachers, and information about the school. Users can view the Presence details of the professor or fellow students and determine the best way to communicate. 

“The Higher Education Universities that we have contacted are very excited to trial the OCS for Blackboard application,” says Bill Vollerthum, President of Enabling Technologies.

A 45-day trial evaluation version can be downloaded from the Enabling Technologies web site.

OCS 2007 R2 Adds Ability to Display Caller Name

On our home phones and mobile phones we more or less take it for granted that the Caller ID will display the name of the person or organization calling in addition to the originating phone number. In fact, many people simply refuse to answer calls from “Unknown Caller” and let them go to voicemail by default. With Microsoft Unified Communications and Office Communications Server 2007 this has not been the case.

Thankfully, amid a slew of other recent updates, Microsoft also corrected this glaring error in call management. Mike Stacy, a Director with Evangelyze Communications, illustrates the difference with before and after screen shots in his blog entry on this subject. Stacy also points out some additional steps necessary to ensure the updates work with Office Communicator, and to configure Office Communications Server 2007 to also display caller information on outbound calls.

Resistance is Futile

You will be assimilated (for those perhaps not as nerdy as me- that is a Star Trek reference to The Borg).

That is sort of how new technologies work. Instant messaging went from IRC (Internet Relay Chat) used primarily by uber-geeks, to services like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) embraced by consumers, and eventually to platforms like Microsoft Office Communications Server providing instant messaging capabilities in the enterprise.

Perhaps you can relate to this. I know people who rejected my overtures to connect on LinkedIn. They didn’t want to join and fought the tide. Then eventually I get an email asking me to join their LinkedIn network. Ironically, many of those same friends told me they refused to join Facebook. They already had LinkedIn, so what was the point? Fast forward a few months and I am getting Facebook friend requests from these people. Then it was Twitter. Now all of those people who said that they wouldn’t join the silly networking service that only allows 140-characters per message are watching how it has transformed International politics and media in the recent post-election protest violence in Iran and thinking “maybe there is some value to that after all?”

In fairness, there have been a number of lesser services that have not reached the popular acceptance of Facebook or Twitter: Plaxo, Spock, Friendster, etc. so I can understand approaching new technologies with caution or a healthy dose of skepticism. But, those that achieve the critical mass necessary eventually go from fringe uber-geek technology, to popular consumer technology, and then to a business tool embraced by enterprises.

There is some overlap though between the features and functions of some of these services and the functionality delivered by unified communications. Can social networking be leveraged as a ‘poor man’s unified communications’? Do enterprises have to choose one or the other? Or, will there be some sort of convergence of services that enable the two worlds to peacefully co-exist in the enterprise?

Google Ripples Market With Announcement of Wave

At the Google I/O conference Google unveiled a revolutionary new collection of communication and collaboration tools dubbed “Wave”. Wave seems to be a very ambitious project from Google which potentially impacts both the unified communications and collaboration players including Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, IBM, and others, but also provides some potential competition for Microsoft Office as well.

Wave, as it was demoed at Google I/O, is still in the early stages of development. You can watch the demo from Google I/O. It is an hour and twenty minutes long though so clear your calendar and get a pot of coffee going. Techcrunch provides a detailed look at and review of Google Wave.

What do you think? Does Google Wave have what it takes to upset the unified communications industry? What about Microsoft Office Wave 14? Did Google tip their hand early enough for Microsoft developers to jump on some of the Wave innovations and try to incorporate them before the next version of Office is released?