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Skype for Business Server

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Microsoft Office Lync Server (previously Microsoft Office Communications Server) 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.[1] These features are available within an organization, between organizations, and with external users on the public internet, or standard phones, on the PSTN as well as SIP trunking.

In February 2009 Microsoft Corporation released the R2 version of the server which runs solely on 64-bit platforms and is more scalable. R2 adds new features such as Group Chat and Attendant Console. Some of the roles of OCS are supported in virtualized environment.

Client software and devices

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 ('MOC' or 'OC'), Group Chat Client, and the LiveMeeting console (LMC) 2007 are the primary client applications released with Lync Server. OC 2007 is the client used for IM, presence, voice and video calls, desktop sharing, file transfer and ad hoc conferences. LMC is used for more structured meetings, conferences and application sharing and can run natively against either OCS or the LiveMeeting hosted service. The Group Chat client is a stand-alone client for OCS's Group Chat Facility.

Microsoft Corporation also ships the Microsoft Attendant Console. 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:

  • Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile 2007R2 namely COMO is a Windows Mobile edition of the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client and designed to operate similarly.[2]
  • Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2007 is a web instant messaging and presence client. This version works as well on IE, Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers.[2]
  • Microsoft RoundTable is an audio and video conferencing device that provides a 360-degree view of the conference room and tracks the various speakers.[3][4] This device is now produced and sold via Polycom under the product name CX5000.[5]
  • LG-Nortel and Polycom also make IP phones in a traditional phone form factor that operate an embedded edition of Office Communicator 2007. The physical plastic phones as referred by Microsoft Corporation are also named Tanjay Phones.[6]
  • SNOM has produced the first open SIP phone that also integrates to OCS.[7]
  • SNOM has also introduced the world's first cordless IP Phone snom m9, which can be seamlessly integrated to Microsoft Office Communications Server.

Features

One basic use of Office Communications Server (OCS) is instant messaging and presence within a single organization. This includes support for rich presence information, file transfer, instant messaging as well as voice and video communication. (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). OCS uses Interactive Connectivity Establishment for NAT traversal 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. mobile or home workers) as well as users in partner companies. OCS 2007 supports "federation" - enabling interoperability with other corporate IM networks. 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 Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for signaling along with the SIMPLE extensions to SIP for IM and presence. Media is transferred using RTP/SRTP. The Live Meeting client uses PSOM to download meeting content. The Communicator client also uses HTTPS to connect with the web components server to download address books, expand distribution lists, etc. By default, Office Communications Server encrypts all signaling and media traffic using SIP over TLS and SRTP. There is one exception to this - traffic between the Mediation Server and a basic media gateway is carried as SIP over TCP and RTP. 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.[8]

IM is only one portion of the OCS suite. The other major components are VOIP telephony and video conferencing through the desktop communicator client. Remote access is possible using mobile and web clients.

Several third parties have incorporated OCS functionality on existing platforms. HP has implemented OCS on their Halo video conferencing platform.[9][10]

Microsoft released Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in February 2009.[11] The R2 release added the following features:[12]

  • Dial-in audioconferencing
  • Desktop sharing
  • Persistent Group Chat
  • Attendant console and delegation
  • Session Initiation Protocol trunking
  • Mobility and single-number reach

Compliance

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. These features can help provide compliance with legal requirements for many organizations. 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.

Public IM Connectivity (PIC)

OCS 2007 also enables organizations to interoperate with four external IM services: AOL Instant Messenger, .NET Messenger Service, Yahoo! Messenger, and Google Talk.[13] 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 for customers with Software Assurance.[13][14] See the external user access capabilities by user type in Microsoft Lync

XMPP

OCS has a gateway to XMPP.[15]

The ejabberd XMPP server has a bridge that enable federation with OCS servers, without gateways (transports).[16]

Pidgin supports OCS for Linux clients

As of 2010 Pidgin, a multi-protocol instant messenger client which runs under Microsoft Windows as well as on Linux, supports a third-party plugin implementing the extended version of SIP/SIMPLE (text only).

Previous versions

  • 2009 - Office Communications Server 2007 R2
  • 2007 - Office Communications Server 2007
  • 2006 - Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1
  • 2005 - Live Communications Server 2005, codenamed Vienna
  • 2003 - Live Communications Server 2003

Future versions

  • Communications Server 2010, also called Wave 14 - renamed to Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Besides bringing new features such as call admission control and remote site survivability, Microsoft will have a specific Client Access License for Enterprise Voice.

Microsoft announced availability to be beginning of December 2010.

Microsoft previously announced that CS 2010 will no longer support the ECMA TR/87 standard for Remote Call Control for new users of OCS. This has changed and Microsoft claims to be committed to maintaining the interface.[17]

History

When 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. 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,[18] just 364 days after releasing Office Communications Server 2007. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. Video in OCS is also interoperable with third party solutions such as Tandberg and PolyCom systems as well (Polycom has not yet provided its connector with new Microsoft Lync 2010). 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 extensibility is one of the major reasons that Gartner has placed Microsoft at the top of their Unified Communications Magic Quadrant for 2007, 2008[19] and 2009.[20]

Competition

Competitors to OCS include:

In instant messaging, the free public instant messaging networks (Google, Live Messenger, Yahoo and AOL) are widely used and represent a degree of competition. There have been attempts by other vendors at providing solutions such as Yahoo!'s Enterprise Instant Messenger; however these attempts have been largely unsuccessful. An ICQ corporate client and server option once existed, but it is no longer supported or developed.

Products such as Cisco Unified Presence Server (Version 6.0.2+) support federation with Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 to provide presence of Cisco IP phones and remote call control of the IP phone from the Microsoft Office Communicator client.

The Siemens OpenScape solution offers a federation with the Office communicator, and also an integration into the office communicator, allowing to use the standard functionalities of the office communication suite together with the SIP based voice functionalities of the Siemens platform.

The Asterisk telephone platform supports SIP, IAX, and ISDN connections. Most telephones that support these protocols may be used with Asterisk, including software phone clients.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/capabilities.aspx
  2. ^ a b http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/user-interfaces.aspx
  3. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/uc/products/roundtable.mspx
  4. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3A_9omjWsE&feature=related
  5. ^ http://www.polycom.com/products/voice/conferencing_solutions/microsoft_optimized_conferencing/cx5000.html
  6. ^ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb970310.aspx
  7. ^ http://www.snom.com/sv/products/software/snom-ocs-edition/
  8. ^ http://technet.microsoft.com/UCOIP
  9. ^ http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/051909-interop-microsoft-hp-expand-unified-communications.html
  10. ^ http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Networking/Realize-the-World-of-UC-amp-C-HP-Tech-Work/ba-p/80761
  11. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2video.mspx
  12. ^ http://www.ocspedia.com/Misc/OCS_2007_R2_Press_Release.htm
  13. ^ a b "Public Instant Messaging Connectivity". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
  14. ^ http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/07/01/537.aspx
  15. ^ http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&p1=14471&x=18&y=7
  16. ^ http://www.process-one.net/en/blogs/article/seamless_federation_between_xmpp_and_microsoft_ocs/
  17. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=78814f28-2df5-4cff-a166-73622c7830bb&displaylang=en
  18. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2PR.mspx
  19. ^ http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article1/article1.html
  20. ^ http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol7/article3/article3.html
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