Paul Schnackenburg07 May 2008, 8:44 AM
Microsoft wants to run everything, from email to your phones. Communications Server 2007 is designed to unify all of a business’ communications.
Communicating in the business world used to be easy. There was phone, fax and snail mail. Then came email and mobile phones, totally changing the way we ‘got hold of’ people. And now we have Instant Messaging, blogs and VoIP.
IT vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco and others recognise that it’s time to unify these different communications channels. From Microsoft comes Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007), with some drastic improvements over its predecessor.
The previous version, Office Live Communications Server 2005, offered corporate-controlled IM and conferencing. OCS takes this further by enabling communication anywhere using both IM and VoIP, in a controlled and secure manner. The big news is VoIP and video conferencing, but OCS also offers strong collaboration tools. For the daring, there’s also a new IP phone to go with OCS, improved archiving and call data records CCDR).
The Vision
Imagine Peter in sales, connecting his laptop to the internet in a hotel somewhere and signing into his Office Communicator 2007 client. With Public Internet Connectivity (PIC), he’s now part of the corporate phone network, can be reached
by incoming phone calls and participate in conferences.
OCS makes this possible with internet-facing edge servers, digital certificates authenticating connections and encryption of all traffic. Peter makes phone calls simply by selecting a name from a list and doesn’t have to remember people’s phone numbers.
Or, picture Jane in marketing, who needs to work from home for a few days. She takes her Office Communicator Phone Edition in her bag and plugs it into her home ADSL router. It automatically connects in the same way as above — and as far as co-workers and clients are concerned, she’s in the office.
Or Ralph in HR sending an IM message with a question to Bob, who realises his answer will take too long to IM back, so he calls Ralph back simply by clicking his name on the screen. Halfway through the conversation, they see that they need input from Anne, so she’s added to the call, which now turns into an audio conference. If necessary, the conference can be escalated into a web conference with shared applications and a whiteboard area. Or, if video would make points clearer, webcams can be used to enhance the communication.
Microsoft VoIP
The ace card in OCS 2007 is Enterprise Voice, Microsoft’s term for software-based Voice over IP (VoIP). Most people have heard of Skype and other personal VoIP systems, but their use in businesses is generally frowned upon. The IT department has no control over the traffic and no way of monitoring it.
This means that corporate secrets can too easily ‘walk out the door’; but on the other hand, the benefits tese communications systems bring can’t be ignored.
OCS offers the best of both worlds, with centralised policies, archiving of all communications and secure, encrypted traffic. Microsoft’s take is to add an enterprise-grade software VoIP system to your existing Personal Branch Exchange (PBX) and integrate the two — not rip out the old/replace with the new.
All Present and Accounted for
One of the biggest problems with traditional phone systems is that you have no way of knowing whether the person you’re trying to reach is available to take your call. The result is a game familiar to us all: phone tag.
Contrast this with an IM system where you can instantly tell if someone is away, busy or in a meeting. OCS takes this one step further with Enhanced Presence, where you can group your contacts (‘buddy list’) based on their relation to you: Personal, Team, Company and Public.
People classed as Personal can see all your contact information and will be privy to all details of your current availability. Team members get most information and can reach you when you’re in a meeting (company contacts, by contrast, can’t and also aren’t privy to your mobile number). Public contacts will only see basic presence information.
The second challenge with IM systems is that you have to specify your presence status manually. OCS helps here by integrating with your Outlook calendar to automatically set ‘busy’ when you’re in a meeting. It also uses mouse and keyboard activity and, of course, what you’re doing in Communicator to see if you’re in a call or conference.
Administrators can also specify custom presence states, like ‘interviewing’, for instance. Enhanced Presence also extends to email — you can directly see when reading an email what the status of the sender is. SharePoint also shows the status of document authors, and it’s easy for developers to add presence to in-house applications. These icons can be clicked to initiate communication. The problem with public IM systems for IT departments is the same as with Skype for VoIP: there’s no control. Using Federation in OCS, your internal system can be securely connected to AOL, Yahoo! and the MSN/Windows Live networks. If you work closely with specific business partners, a direct link from your OCS system to theirs can also be established in a secure fashion. Conversely, unwanted visitors from other domains can be put on a deny list.
Communicate Anywhere
The main client for OCS is Office Communicator 2007, which offers access to all the functionality of OCS.
There’s also a client for Smartphones (Windows Mobile 5 and 6). For conferencing scheduling, there’s an Outlook add-in that works with all versions from 2000 to 2007.
If a meeting escalates into a web conference with slide sharing and the like, OCS also offers the Office Live Meeting 2007 client. When you’re stuck on the road with no device of your own, OCS can be used through Communicator Web Access (CWA), a web interface which runs on your public-facing OCS server.
All of these automatically traverse NAT firewalls to connect back to corporate OCS servers seamlessly, using the Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) standard. If you have several devices, all of them can ring simultaneously and you can choose where to answer, or, alternatively, the call can be directed to voicemail. It’s easy to choose what to answer because incoming phone calls can be given a subject, just like emails.
Managing multiple calls no longer requires cryptic ‘on hold’ codes on a phone: Communicator simply opens a new tab for each one and you switch between them with a mouse click. To be able to make voice calls, you need speakers and a microphone or a USB headset. If you’d like someone to call you back, you can put a link in an email which will call you back when clicked.
Communicator now supports Rich Text Format (RTF) for IM, so you can send clips from Excel and other applications simply by cutting and pasting.
Conferencing has never been so much fun
Scheduled meetings are handled through an Outlook add-in which emails invitations to participants. Impromptu meetings are started when an IM conversation or a voice call is extended by inviting more participants.
Meetings can be closed (available to invited participants only), for authenticated users only or open to anyone. Focus is a part of the conference server — it initiates conferences, authenticates participants, notifies users of changes (users joining or leaving) and enforces policies.
When full audio, video, app sharing and presentation slides are needed, OCS offers Live Meeting. The present offering of Live Meeting is a Microsoft-hosted service, whereas the OCS version is driven by internal servers.
Archiving
One business feature that sets OCS apart from consumer IM/VoIP systems is automatic archiving. Based on policy, all IM, voice and conferencing content can be archived centrally.
New in OCS is a feature borrowed from the telephony industry, Call Details Record (CDR) — this collects IM, VoIP and meeting usage statistics for analysis or charging. The archiving also helps end users: they can search through IM conversations, emails, voice calls and conference content for a particular topic.
OCS Building Blocks
The challenge with building a phone system using software is the expectation that we have of phones. They just work — pick up the handset and you always get a dial tone. Compare this with many IT systems whose reliability can be sketchy at times.
For small-to-medium business, the Standard version of OCS is a good fit, although it doesn’t offer high availability. All roles run on the one server with a local SQL Server Express database. New in OCS is that a single server only requires one digital certificate, no matter how many services run on it. Microsoft recommends fewer than 5,000 users for Standard — above that, the Enterprise version separates functionality from data storage. Pools of front-end servers connect to a back-end SQL Server database. With the Enterprise version, a separate Archiving server is recommended; a Mediation server provides connectivity to existing PBX systems and the Director offloads the authorisation of users from the IM and Voice front-end servers.
Security is on hand in several ways in OCS, not the least with IM filtering out selected file types and options for blocking SPIM (like spam but through IM).
Installation of OCS is a fairly complex effort, but there are lots of wizards to lead you through every step.
The big kahuna in Exchange 2007 is Unified Messaging, offering voice mail access in Outlook and the option to call Exchange from a phone and have your emails and calendar read back to you. OCS integrates with Exchange and can use Exchange distribution groups to find contacts. If you don’t have a PBX, the Exchange auto attendant can function as one, with OCS providing phone functionality.
The codec used for OCS VoIP is Microsoft in-house-developed, rather than Global IP Sound (GIPS), which is used in Skype and Google Talk. Management of OCS is done through a standard MMC console — user settings are accessed through a new tab in Active Directory Users and Computers.
Would you like a phone with that, Sir?
With OCS now offering VoIP functionality, Microsoft has also partnered with hardware manufacturers in order to offer a new IP phone — Communicator Phone edition.
It has a 5.7in, 320 x 240 colour touchscreen that mimics the interface of Office Communicator with a contacts list etc. For security, the phone will lock itself after a few minutes; to unlock, you have to enter either a PIN or use the built-in thumbprint reader. The phone runs Windows CE 5, supports DHCP, VLAN, PoE (Power over Ethernet) and can download updates from an in-house WSUS server. When you have missed calls, these appear as a list so you can choose whom to call back; voicemails are also listed.
For boardroom video conferencing, OCS supports Microsoft’s Roundtable 360, a new conference phone that identifies the active speaker and broadcasts a closeup of their face.
Unified Communications — the battle is ON!
OCS is impressive, offering plenty of functionality and, when paired with the Communicator Phone, a really useful tool. Its complexity makes deployment in smaller environments unlikely. Microsoft isn’t alone on this battlefield; Cisco and others have very capable products. Time will tell whether Microsoft’s approach of having strong integration with popular existing products (Active Directory/Windows, Office and Exchange) will prove a winning ticket for OCS.