 MCC has been a leader in consulting services surrounding
the new Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, and its predecessor,
Live Communications Server 2005. If your business requires Unified Communications, you
can now leverage this powerful offering from Microsoft to optimize your business
processes and change how the work is performed.
Building on our experiences in VOIP PBX phone systems, telephony servers including
Asterisk consulting, and
deep expertise in the Microsoft platforms, we are uniquely competent in installing
and configuring OCS for businesses. Office Communications Server
runs on Windows Server and takes advantage of key Microsoft technologies such as
Active Directory, SQL Server, and Microsoft Operations Manager. Our Microsoft-certified
experts can provide professional consulting services for each of these foundation
technologies to ensure you fully-leverage and integrate Office Communications Server
reliably. We can also perform your migration from Microsoft Live Communications
Server 2005 to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Our Office Communications Server consultants can provide these benefits for
your business:
Presence-enabled Communications.
Office Communications Server 2007 is the ideal Presence platform for any enterprise
in which Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, and/or Microsoft Office
are already key infrastructure elements. User status and availability are
automatically adjusted and presented throughout the Microsoft product suite.
Communications can be automatically launched from the presence indication across
the entire range of IM, voice, video, web, and e-mail, using these tools singly
or in any combination.
Team Collaboration within the Enterprise.
Office Communications Server 2007 is also the right tool for the next level of communications,
i.e. communications among teams in the enterprise. Office Communications Server
2007 includes all the software needed for expanding any real-time communications
(IM, voice, video, web sharing) into a group communication, adding up to 100 parties
to a call in progress. The team communications can also be scheduled
in advance. All this is included in the Enterprise Client Access License,
needing only the addition of servers as required for usage and capacity.
Team Collaboration across Enterprise Boundaries.
Office Communications Server 2007 will make it even easier for companies to link
up with their supply chains, partners and customers. Office Communications
Server 2007 presence and IM can be federated with other Microsoft systems in other
enterprises and with most of the public IM/Presence services (e.g. MSN, Yahoo!,
AOL). In addition, any PC user outside the enterprise can be “invited” into
an Office Communications Server 2007 voice, video, and/or web calling or conferencing
session on a secure and robust link from their PC.
Mobility for Microsoft Office Users.
The Communicator Mobile (often called COMO) software client for Windows Mobile devices
is a solid mobility client for Microsoft Office users. COMO provides secure
Presence indication and IM functionality between mobile users and the rest of the
enterprise. It also provides click-to-call controls to launch calls through
the cell phone portion of the wireless device. COMO with Office Communications
Server 2007 is a viable alternative to& BlackBerry devices provided by Research
in Motion (RIM).
Telephone Integration
 OCS,
in concert with SIP trunking, allows businesses to combine their voice and data
services onto a SIP-based trunk rather than use primary rate interface (PRI), T-1
or other types of TDM links. We can guide your business to the right combination
of product configuration and SIP trunking services to provide a powerful unified
messaging solution at a surprisingly economical price.
Integration to Business Processes.
Office Communications Server 2007 provides two excellent modes for integration to
business processes.
- Any application or portal developer can embed the Office Communicator client functions
or toolbar into their application interface or portal. This embedded functionality
has two options: a) the toolbar can be made visible to the application users when
and as appropriate; or b) the developer can just invoke the Communicator functions
when appropriate, transparently to the user.
- Any business process can use Service Oriented Architecture methods, along with the
Software Development Kits (SDKs) provided with Office Communications Server 2007,
to invoke the communications functions.
OCS R2 New Features
Next-Generation Collaboration
• Dial-in audioconferencing. Office Communications Server
2007 R2 enables businesses to eliminate costly audioconferencing services with an
on-premise audioconferencing bridge that is managed by IT as part of the overall
communications infrastructure.
• Desktop sharing. This feature enables users to seamlessly
share their desktop, initiate audio communications and collaborate with others outside
the organization on PC, Macintosh or Linux platforms through a Web-based interface.
• Persistent group chat. This enables geographically dispersed
teams to collaborate with each other by participating in topic-based discussions
that persist over time. This application provides users with a list of all available
chat rooms and topics, periodically archives discussions in an XML file format that
meets compliance regulations, provides tools to search the entire history of discussion
on a given topic, and offers filters and alerts to notify someone of new posts or
topics on a particular topic.
Enhanced Voice and Mobility
• Attendant console and delegation. This allows receptionists,
team secretaries and others to manage calls and conferences on behalf of other users,
set up workflows to route calls, and manage higher volumes of incoming communications
through a software-based interface.
• Session Initiation Protocol trunking. This feature enables
businesses to reduce costs by setting up a direct VoIP connection between an Internet
telephony service provider and Office Communicator 2007 without requiring on-premise
gateways.
• Response group. A workflow design application manages incoming
calls based on user-configured rules (e.g., round-robin, longest idle, simultaneous),
providing a simple-to-use basic engine for call treatment, routing and queuing.
• Mobility and single-number reach. This extends Microsoft
Office Communicator Mobile functionality to Nokia S40, Motorola RAZR, Blackberry
and Windows Mobile platforms, allowing users to communicate using presence, IM and
voice as an extension of their PBX from a unified client.
New Developer Tools for Business Applications
• APIs and Visual Studio integration. This improves the efficiency of
everyday business processes by enabling businesses to build communications-enabled
applications and embed communications into business applications.
Please contact our Microsoft OCS Consulting team for a free demonstration.
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