Some key messages from Microsoft’s virtualisation launch yesterday

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I watched yesterday’s Microsoft virtualisation webcasts with interest and, excited as I am to know that I will finally get my hands on Hyper-V Server and SCVMM 2008 in the coming weeks (and to get confirmation that live migration will be in the next release of Hyper-V), there wasn’t a lot else there that was new on the virtualisation front. Even so, I don’t want to downplay the message – Microsoft does have an excellent story to tell around its virtualisation products – and I was interested in how this fits into the overall “big picture” for IT.

Gartner’s VP and Chief of Research for Infrastructure and Operations, Tom Bittman, presented a really interesting slot about how virtualisation is just one part of a much larger transformation of the way that IT is delivered to business customers (I’ll cover off the rest of Bittman’s presentation in a separate post).

Of course, Bittman was speaking at a Microsoft event and so it should come as no surprise that his view is not dissimilar to Microsoft’s view of dynamic computing, which has two major streams: the dynamic data centre; and user-centric computing – i.e. becoming less concerned with managing devices and more concerned about providing a seamless user experience (leading into predictable demonstrations of desktop, presentation and application virtualisation – Microsoft is a software company after all).

There were some interesting messages in the technology pitch though:

“If you know Windows, you know virtualization.”

This was stated several times, first by Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President, Servers and Tools Business at Microsoft but also by other speakers. It’s clearly something that Microsoft wants to highlight – i.e. it’s not necessary to spend thousands training people on specialist virtualisation products – Hyper-V is built into Windows Server 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager uses a familiar Windows interface.

“Having a complete management solution is really critical, and with System Center, our customers are able to manage the physical environment, the virtual environment, as well as their applications in a fully integrated way. That’s an offering put together that nobody else in the industry really provides.”

[Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft]

This should not be underestimated. There may be other products that perform various technical elements of a virtualisation solution in a more functional manner, but management is critical to the success of any virtualisation implementation – and I do not know of any other vendor who can manage physical and virtual machines in one place.

I nearly laughed loud when Bob Muglia said:

“There is no magic in VMotion, it’s just a feature and we’ll have that feature in the next release of Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008.”

[Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft]

i.e. we’ve got it working now – so stop slating Hyper-V because it doesn’t do live migration… it can, it will (but is it really that important?).

Even Kevin Turner’s CxO-level presentation was interesting (there will be another post following on that one too) and I was interested to see the slide about the relative costs of Microsoft and VMware virtualisation (based on pricing from the web).

Microsoft slide showing VMware solutions as 3x more expensive

Take it with a pinch of salt, given the source, but it is still a big difference. VMware will point out that software cost is minimal given the overall cost of the solution (and they are correct) but if the low-cost solution also provides a holistic view for management whilst the IT organisation is under pressure to become more efficient and effective at the same time as reducing costs, adapting to changing business demands and providing a dynamic IT service that is better aligned with business needs… I know which one I’d choose.

Microsoft Unified Communications: part 3 (putting it all together)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last few days, I’ve been describing the Microsoft view on Unified Communications (UC), based on a presentation given recently by James O’Neill.

In the first two posts in this series based on James’ presentation, I outlined the business need for unified communications and some of the Microsoft technologies that can be used to address those requirements before examining some of the benefits to be gained thorough adaptation of communications to fit modern working practises. In this third post in the series, I finally move on to the technology, looking at the main steps involved in implementing a UC solution using Microsoft products.

It may also help to check out my post from April 2006 which provides an introduction to voice telecommunications for IT professionals.

In a traditional communications infrastructure, voice and data networks are managed independently:

Traditional (non-unified) communications

Even though there has been a move to replace telephone cables with standard CAT5/5e/6 cabling in recent years, and IP telephony has become more commonplace so there has been some convergence at the network level, the voice and data systems are typically separate (although their directories may have been integrated).

Implementing Exchange Server 2007’s unified messaging capabilities allows the removal of the PBX voice-mail system and provides voice-mail, fax and speech capabilities within Exchange, accessible via standard e-mail clients, Outlook Web Access or through a voice call:

Unified messaging with Exchange Server 2007

To enable the integration with the PBX, a VoIP gateway may be required (some PBXs may integrate directly).

Replacing any existing instant messaging systems with Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 (or implementing OCS as a new service) can provide VoIP connectivity with the existing telephony systems, enabling both “soft” and “hard” IP phones to be used. In addition, Live Meeting can be used to provide conferencing facilities:

Unified communications with Office Communications Server 2007

With this infrastructure, OCS will integrate with Exchange and work collaboratively to route calls, present caller ID information (used in the subject of messages), perform directory lookups, etc. but for OCS to integrate with a PBX a gateway is required. A basic gateway also requires an OCS Mediation Server to be deployed whereas an advanced gateway includes the necessary technology to integrate directly with the PBX.

Effectively, there a four levels of integration:

  1. None at all.
  2. Basic gateway with mediation server.
  3. Advanced gateway.
  4. VoIP capabilities built-in to PBX.

Microsoft has partnered with a number of manufacturers to provide hardware that integrates with OCS, and the strategic gateway partners are Audiocodes, Dialogic and Quintum.

This approach allows legacy routers, gateways, PBX and phones to be maintained (after all they are a significant investment) but integrated with software solutions to adopt new ways of working, as featured in Microsoft’s VoIP as you are campaign. For organisations that are ready to remove the legacy telephony altogether (e.g. in a green field site) an advanced gateway can be used to integrate the VoIP system with public telephone networks:

Full Microsoft Unified Communications

The call path is as follows:

  • User initiates a call.
  • OCS looks for valid endpoints and sends a packet to say that there is an incoming call (including call forking, if configured).
  • An endpoint (possibly voice-mail) accepts the call and the server drops the other connections.
  • Once the call is established, the server drops out of the conversation (aside from logging the call details) and the call continues on a peer-to-peer basis.

There are a few additional points to note:

  • Where network address translation is in use, an OCS Access Proxy may be deployed.
  • If the call is routed over the PSTN, the gateway is just another party on the call (as if it were a phone).
  • In a conference scenario, Office Communicator clients only have a single channel of data in each direction and so where multi-party calls are placed, a media control unit (MCU) is required to act as a negotiator. At this point, the direct call is dropped and a new multi-party call is set up via the MCU. Live Meeting clients can send multiple video channels (plus sound and desktop conferencing on separate channels).

Having outlined a VoIP-only solution, it’s often the case that the legacy infrastructure cannot be completely removed – there are still some limitations around VoIP that OCS cannot address (at least not in the current release). For example, if there is a loss of power, then there are no network switches and there is no telephony (the same issue also applies for IP Phone systems using Power over Ethernet – such as Cisco IP Phones). As a consequence, and to meet health and safety requirements, it may be necessary to retain some traditional telephony infrastructure for emergency calls. Even if they are accessible through OCS, emergency calls present another challenge in that the call will be placed at the gateway, which may be in another city, country, or even continent to the person making the call, so dial plans need to be carefully designed.

Clearly this post is heavily biased towards Microsoft products and another major player in the unified communications space is Cisco. In the next post in this series, I’ll take a brief look at the approaches that the two vendors have taken to unified communications (and it will be a brief look, as I have very limited Cisco experience!) before I wrap the series up with some notes from my own OCS implementation last year.

Christmas has come early: App-V, Hyper-V Server, SCVMM and live migration in Hyper-V all on their way!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Get Virtual Now

I’d heard that something big was happening in Redmond today (well, maybe not in Redmond, but in Bellevue anyway…). I knew about the getVIRTUALnow events and I watched the opening session on the web but there had to be something else. Well, there is – Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V, formerly SoftGrid), which RTMed last week, will be part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP) R2, due for general availability within the coming weeks. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will be released within 30 days, as will Hyper-V Server (which will be a free download – not $28 as previously announced). And, as Scott Lowe reported earlier, live migration will be supported by Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Read more in the associated Microsoft press release.

iPhone always out of juice? Reset the battery indicator calibration with a full discharge/charge

Posted on By Mark Wilson

There’s a lot of FUD around about iPhone battery life (and a lot of science involved in understanding the optimum recharge regime for Lithium-Ion batteries) but, even so, I was finding that my brand new iPhone 3G was getting down to around 30% after a just few hours of light use. It didn’t seem unreasonable if I was making calls but just sitting in my pocket?

In theory, the best advice on increasing battery lifespan comes from Apple and they do say that:

“For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

Then, one of my friends told me something that Apple doesn’t mention and it seems to have made a big difference to my indicated battery life.iPhone usage I don’t turn off Wi-Fi, 3G, location services, etc. unless I’m getting low on charge (because I actually want to use those features that I bought the phone for…) and I don’t have push e-mail since moving to GMail but, following my friend’s advice, I let the phone run completely out of juice and it took a long time to completely die after the warning messages for 20% and 10% battery power remaining. Then, after a full charge, my battery indicator seems to have calibrated itself to a much more realistic value (for reference, I’m on firmware v2.0.2).

Of course, usage patterns will vary but my iPhone is currently showing about 60% battery with 55 Minutes of use and 21 hours and 58 minutes on standby since the last full charge.

The iPhone 3G battery guide and charging tips post on Macrumors has a stack of information about iPhone battery life (including cited sources).

Microsoft Unified Communications: part 2 (unlocking the potential for new communications experiences)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week I spent some time at Microsoft in one of James O’Neill‘s presentations on the Microsoft View of Unified Communications.

In the first post in this series from James’ presentation, I outlined the business need for unified communications and some of the Microsoft technologies that can be used to address those requirements. This post looks at some more of the benefits, as communications experiences are adapted to match modern working practises.

The first goal of unified communications: whenever I see a name, I also see presence

We communicate with people, not addresses, yet it doesn’t seem strange to us to dial a network address (a phone number) to speak to someone. Obviously, that’s because telephony has a long history, but it seems pretty odd today – after all, when did you last e-mail someone by IP address? That’s where directories come into play – just as on a mobile phone we tend to store contacts by name, in a corporate environment we should be able to contact our colleagues (or federated contacts) using Active Directory (possibly integrated with other directory systems – such as the internal telephone system).

Having found the right contact, we have a huge choice of media for communications, and the most appropriate medium may vary according to a number of factors:

  • Would you phone someone you know is out? Possibly – but you’d probably call their mobile phone.
  • Would an IM chat save a long e-mail exchange? This one is a little more tenuous – I often find that I’ve spent 20 minutes on IM when a 2 minute phone call would have sufficed.
  • Do you ever ask “is this a good time for a call”? Almost always!

The choice of medium is driven by presence – and when we have presence information, we can use it to make a decision.

After all, how would you connect of the person was:

  • On holiday for a week?
  • In a meeting for the next 30 minutes?
  • Around but not at their PC?
  • At their PC but with a do not disturb sign?
  • Available?

Technologies like the Office Communicator client can even set levels of permission (e.g. personal contacts may be able to override do not disturb status, certain contacts may be able to view home phone numbers but not everyone, etc.) and Office applications can also show presence through smart tags which include a “jellybean” presence icon.

The second goal of unified communications: where I see presence, I should be able to start a conversation (in the right medium)

Once I have a contact’s presence information, I can choose an appropriate form of communication. Should I contact them on a 1:1 basis or multi-party? Should I use voice, video, a data conference, instant messaging or e-mail? Then, using unified communication technologies I can let the computer place the call so that it may be routed according to my contact’s working hours, availability (presence), or other rules – possibly even allowing call forking so that two or more devices ring simultaneously and the first to be answered takes the call.

Using unified communications products a conversation can even switch modes mid-communication, for example:

(Instant message) “Are you free for a call?”
(Instant message) “Yes, but I’m travelling right now!”
(Click to call – and the call is routed to the contact’s mobile phone based on their working hours)
(Communicator-mobile voice call) The conversation continues until… “I’m in the office now, let’s transfer this to my desk phone.”
(Transfer call)
(Communicator-communicator voice call) The conversation continues until some expert advice is needed “Let’s bring Dave into the call – he’s the expert in this area.”
(Click to invite others)
(Multi-party voice call) “But what if I show you this diagram”
(Click to start Live Meeting)
(Conferencing) Each party can see a shared desktop, etc.
…

This example shows that the rich functionality provided by the various unified communications technologies allows for new conferencing experiences. Add in devices like the Office RoundTable and the whole feeling of a conference call changes (I’ve lost count of the number of times when I’ve tuned out of a voice conference because I’d lost track of who was talking or couldn’t hear them properly on a conference phone) – and meeting content can be recorded and stored for subsequent playback. Then there is Unified Messaging in Exchange Server, allowing voice-mails to be stored with notes in the recipient’s Inbox as well as voice access to have e-mails read over a voice call, to move calendar appointments, to access the directory and call contacts, etc.

That’s just the unified communications part – but why should web applications be restricted to e-mail and web addresses to provide contact details? tel: URIs can extend contact to voice calls, and can integrate with directory systems that use the E.164 standard for number formatting.

Incorrectly formatted phone number on Microsoft's websiteSadly, I know of at least one large IT services company that mandates the +44 (0) xxxxxxxxxx format for its directory updates (which is confusing to computers, as they will dial the +44 and the 0, rather than substituting one for the other) and even Microsoft’s own contact pages have an incorrect number which not only includes the UK (44) code in front of a full 11-digit number (including the 0 – which won’t work) but prefixes that with (011) which is the US international dialling code but is by no means universal (it’s 00 in the UK, and 0011 in Australia – hence the standardisation on the + symbol).

LG-Nortel IP8540 (Tanjay) deviceThe unified communications experience need not be limited to software either. Whilst Microsoft claim that the desk phone reached an evolutionary dead end some years back (Cisco, Siemens, et al. may disagree), they have also partnered with LG-Nortel, and Polycom to produce IP and USB phones to integrate with Microsoft unified communications software. Codenamed Tanjay and Catalina respectively, these devices either include an Office Communicator client with a touch screen and a fingerprint reader for authentication or extend the Office Communicator desktop experience to include a handset.

Hopefully, this post has helped to illustrate some of the new ways of working that incorporating unified communications technologies into the infrastructure can facilitate. In the next post in this series, I’ll move past the theory and benefits of unified communications and start to look at implementing the technology.

New footer in site feed

Posted on By Mark Wilson

This evening, I’ve made a change to the markwilson.it site feed (which, incidentally, makes me feel warm and fuzzy as I see more and more people subscribing – and is a good way to keep up with the stuff I post on this site). The change involved adding a footer to each item in the feed. It’s only short, I hope it won’t spoil your enjoyment of the content, and it looks something like this:

Creative Commons LicenseThis blog post was written by Mark Wilson for markwilson.it. Except as noted otherwise, this work is ©2004-2008 Mark Wilson and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. (What is this footer about?)

Why did I do this? Basically, it’s an attempt to make sure that where people scrape this site they don’t abuse the effort that I put into writing original content. The content here is copyrighted but I license it for non-commercial use, with attribution, as long as it is not altered or transformed in any way.

By including a footer which sets out where the original content can be found and highlighting the terms under which this content is offered (with a link explaining what the footer is about), I’m making it clear where the feed content originates from.

If you’ve come here by following a link from a site that is not the original source, please let me know.

In the spirit of Creative Commons, I should point out that I “stole” the idea from Merlin Mann, whose site at 43 Folders is much bigger and better than mine (I hope that this content is sufficiently original not to count as a derivative work) and that I use Sherief Mursyidi’s Feed Footer Joost de Valk’s RSS Footer WordPress plugin to make it happen.

“How Do I?” videos on the Microsoft TechNet website

Posted on By Mark Wilson

One of the things I’ve been working on recently is producing some “How Do I?” (HDI) videos for Microsoft. Basically they are 8-30 minute screencasts looking at implementing a particular technology and these IT Pro-focused videos are coming online on the TechNet website.

The two I’ve produced so far are both concerned with the server core installation option for Windows Server 2008 and are based on my presentation at the UK user groups Community Day last April. My first two videos are available at the links below:

Hopefully people will find them useful – I’d be interested to hear any comments.

After more than four years of avoiding Skype, I discovered it’s not bad at all…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

In 2004, one of my colleagues tried to get me to use Skype. I wasn’t impressed, especially as I was working on a client site and the proxy server kept on blocking connections to strange educational sites all over the world.

I’ve since learnt that was because of the peer-to-peer networking nature of Skype with it’s system of supernodes but, even so, for the last few years, I’ve managed to avoid it, favouring traditional voice communications and more recently, SIP-based VoIP. Then, as I blogged previously, James Bannan and I decided that we would like to put a podcast together and, as he’s in Australia and I’m in the UK, Skype looks like the most sensible communications option. I listen to a lot of podcasts where the presenters are geographically dispersed and apart from the odd glitch when someone is clearly on a weak connection or running some CPU-intensive software, everything seems fine.

Skype main pageSkype main page
So, one night last month, we gave it a go (we’ll only need audio but we tried the full video capabilities) and I was actually quite impressed. I was at home, using Skype 2.7.0.330 for Mac OS X with the built-in iSight webcam in my MacBook and James was using a recent version of Skype on a Windows PC in his office.

Don’t be put off by the pixellated picture… that was just because it wasn’t exactly the best picture of James (stills from video calls rarely are) but, apart from the deliberately mosaiced face, you can see that the video quality is not bad at all.

Skype technical informationGiven that I have a consumer broadband connection and that James was on the other side of the world (although I don’t know what sort of network connection he had), things were pretty good.

If you check out the technical call information screenshot you can see that the round trip (of at least 21,000 miles, through 4 relays was taking an average of 374ms (just about the limit before delay becomes noticeable but not exactly causing a problem) and there was negligible jitter and barely any packet loss, although the SVOPC codec is designed to tolerate packet loss (I found a forum post on a German site which describes the various metrics used by Skype). Most notably for me, both CPU cores on my 2.2GHz Intel Core2Duo were being hammered as Skype encoded/decoded the video conversation but we were still managing a respectable 15 frames per second.

So, in all the whole experience was a good one. Of course, like any VoIP connection across the Internet, experiences will vary according to the traffic conditions at the time but I was suitably impressed.

I hope it gets better than this…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks back, I wrote about Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment and got slammed for being too pro-Microsoft. Well, last night Microsoft ran the first ads in its new Windows consumer campaign and I’m not going to win any friends at Microsoft for saying this – this new campaign sucks. Maybe it’s because I’m not American. Maybe its because I don’t watch Seinfeld but it’s a minute and a half of… I don’t know what. It just leaves me empty. Windows, The Future, Delicious… WTF?

Watch it and see for yourself:

Microsoft says that the ad is:

“More than just a quirky ad about nothing, the newest Microsoft ad for Windows signals the beginning of a series of initiatives to improve consumers’ experience with Windows products – in retail, on the Web and working with manufacturers to make PCs faster and easier to use.”

OK, so maybe this is a teaser. Maybe it will get better – after all, Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President for Windows Consumer Product Marketing, says that this is just to engage conversation, and that future ads will tell a story through Microsoft’s employees, through the products that Microsoft is building around Windows and how they connect the software, online services and PC experience in a way that’s new for consumers. Brooks continues to say that the campaign has two end goals:

  1. Re-engage consumers emotionally around the Windows brand.
  2. Drive a great customer experience at all touchpoints and all levels.

Sounds good… now, let me think of a competitor that enjoys tremendous brand loyalty (for all its faults) and is strong on customer experience… umm… that’s a tough one… oh yes, Apple!

For all their untruths, the Mac vs. PC ads are funny and that’s how they engage people.

I’m not saying that Microsoft should copy Apple’s ads, or counter them in some way – too much water has passed under the bridge now and anyway, they will get slated for being defensive. A big campaign highlighting the benefits of Windows is a great idea but this is too conservative, too slow. Microsoft uses some great videos at its launch events and conferences. Videos with drama, excitement and humour. They have used some good public ads in the past too – like the Xbox ad that got banned (Life is short, play more) – sure, it may have been distasteful, but it was humourous and it got people talking, so the Xbox marketing team got their next ad banned too (getting something banned is not always bad – it worked for Frankie Goes To Hollywood in the 1980s). I’m not suggesting that an ad has to be controversial to be effective (the Microsoft Unified Communications video that I featured in yesterday’s post is a good example), but it does need to grab hold of people and make them want to watch it!

Like I said, maybe it’s because I’m British and, just as our sense of humour is not appreciated globally, maybe I don’t “get” the Seinfeld ad – after all, this is a national campaign for the USA, not Europe. Maybe that’s why I’m an IT architect and not a marketing professional. I just hope it gets better than this…

Microsoft Unified Communications: part 1 (introduction)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

As well as struggling to understand what I do for a living (“Mark works in computers”), my mother-in-law struggles to understand the concept of working from home. In fact, many people above a certain age do – in the same way that they may struggle with the concept of not wearing a suit and tie, or with flexible working hours – but, to sum it up on one sentence, work is something that I do – not a place where I go.

Work is something that I do – not a place where I go.

I work from anywhere, with colleagues in the UK and Europe, but also with contacts in the US and Australia (i.e. in different timezones).

So the business challenges in this new world of work are about working together in real time, keeping people up to date, sharing information and working in any place, at any time. Whilst it’s important to amend business processes (and personal attitudes) to accommodate these requirements, technology plays its part too. I was recently freed from the shackles of our corporate infrastructure to use a skunkworks mobile working platform that gave me access to Exchange Server 2007’s Outlook Anywhere functionality (no need to VPN into the corporate network) and Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 but I still have some challenges to overcome – like many people, I suffer from communications chaos – playing “telephone tag”, getting stuck in “voice mail jail” and suffering from “e-mail overload”. Then there’s RSS feeds to keep up to date with and I often find instant messaging to be a distraction. Finally, I have to turn something off and MAKE IT STOP!!!

Inbox Zero helps with the e-mail overload. I’ve now reset all my RSS feeds and try and spend time at the start of each day reading the latest updates. My calendars are synchronised and my mobile phone is diverted to the VoIP desk phone in my home office when I’m not working somewhere else, and if I’m at home but away from my desk or on a call, the voice mail is forwarded to my e-mail Inbox (and filters prioritise it for action). In a way, I’ve started to unify my communications but only at an individual level.

What about my colleagues? Some of them have desk phones and mobiles – which should I call? I might be able to see their calendar and work out if they are at their desk but time of day could also be a consideration. If they are travelling then I might call the mobile. But sometimes I actually want to reach their voice mail (e.g. if I want to leave a message outside their normal working hours). If they only have one mobile phone (I have two so I can keep work and home life separate) then I don’t want to disturb them when they are on holiday – e-mail might be a better option. That’s why we need to unify the communications chaos.

World War 2 Propaganda Poster - Is Your Journey Really Necessary?Then there are meetings. As I consider whether my journey is really necessary (the picture here dates back to the second world war but these days the issue is rising fuel prices and a need to cut back on carbon emissions), I take part in an increasing number of conference calls and webcasts but I miss the interaction too… sometimes it’s useful to meet up face-to-face (where I work, my team has not met face-to-face for over 2 years, despite having been re-organised several times) but even if that’s not possible, video conferencing, and smart conference phones like the Microsoft Office RoundTable can really help.

So far, I’ve covered some of the reasons to unify communications but there’s another term that’s often banded about – unified messaging – what does that mean? Unified messaging is a form of unified communications and in order to understand the need for unified messaging, it helps to understand the concepts of synchronous and asynchronous communications.

The telephone is an example of synchronous communications – where we communicate in turn. We even have a three-way handshake at the beginning of a telephone call (phone rings, I answer, you reply). Other examples of synchronous communications are video conferencing and instant messaging.

But what if I don’t pick up the phone? It’s likely that the call will be diverted to voice mail and the caller’s brain struggles to switch to an asynchronous mode as they leave a message with all the pertinent points to be acted on later). Other examples of asynchronous communications are letters, faxes, and e-mail.

Unified messaging brings synchronous and asynchronous communications together – for example allowing fax and voice mail messages to be accessed together with e-mail in a single Inbox. Unified communications take this concept further and integrate unified messaging with instant messaging, presence awareness, video conferencing and desktop sharing.

To demonstrate the Microsoft view of unified communications, check out this short video based on the film “The Devil Wears Prada“:

In the video, a variety of Microsoft technologies are used to unify communications (all of which are available today):

  • Phone call and secretary takes message (hard desk phone – the traditional way of working – although this could be integrated with Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007).
  • Call on soft phone (Office Communicator) from a mobile contact (Windows Mobile) – forwarded to hard desk phone (Office Communications Server).
  • Instant message to instantly warn colleagues of an impending event (Office Communicator and Office Communications Server).
  • Message sent from smart phone to bring forward a meeting (Windows Mobile).
  • Conference call set up in a matter of seconds (Live Meeting, with Office RoundTable conference phone in meeting room and personal webcam in remote office).
  • Desktop sharing (Live Meeting).
  • Mobile voice access to mail and calendar – move a meeting back and call by name (Exchange Server Unified Messaging).
  • Status updates available at an instant (Windows Mobile).

Having set the scene for unified communications, subsequent posts will examine the technology in more detail, together with some of the challenges around implementation.

Credit

This post was based on the opening session from James O’Neill‘s presentation on the Microsoft View of Unified Communications earlier this week.