back to article I was working in the lab, late one night...

The most important message I have for those considering Office Communications Server is to take the time to play with it in the lab. My experience with OCS prompted me to install it in a lab environment to see what it could really do, even though I had already installed it directly into a production environment as a replacement …

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  1. xj25vm

    Would you like caviar with that?

    And the use of this article is? Not really delving into technical stuff or detailed specs. Not really doing a critical appraisal of pluses and minuses (aside from the fact that you have to install some other Microsoft products after, not before). Not really comparing it with possible alternatives.

    A typical airline magazine article - let's read it, send our cheque to Microsoft (or any other company, for that matter) and be on our merry way to the golf course. And let the grunts in the IT department struggle with our ill informed decisions based on what our best chums advise. Does the author really work with these tools, or is it just stuff read from other sources and compiled into a light-breakfast article?

    Oh, I know, technical details are heavy going, not-that-sexy, might even make some lighter stomachs squeamish. But the devil *is* in the detail.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @xj25vm

      This is the third in a series of three articles about OCS. The previous one did mention how much of a pig it was to install and maintain.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm glad it shares information..

    .. because, being Microsoft, it won't be any good at protecting and containing it..

  3. jake Silver badge

    The more we forget history ...

    Great. Trevor's discovered 1985ish technology ... What ever will be next? The joys of the TSR in Corporate Computing? A review of the NeXT Computer System? Commentary on how narsty "New Coke" is? Perhaps a review of Bobbysocks!' "La det swinge"? Or maybe an explanation of what "Buckyballs" are? How about how to cheat at Tetris?

    I'm on tenterhooks ... The possibilities are nearly endless ... Me, I'm hoping for a complete set of "Calvin Ball" rules.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @jake

      Thank you ever so much for your support.

      1. jake Silver badge

        ::wry grin::

        You really don't understand my humor, do you, Trevor?

        I'll leave you alone for the duration ... I actually like your writing. Carry on.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    advert???

    this whole thing reads like an advert !!!!...

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Whatever happened to just being periodically impressed by the shiny?

      From time to time, I am still impressed by technology. It's rare, as i am growing increasingly jaded with time, but I do periodically step back and thing "you know what, that's kind of cool." In this case of this article, I had been awake for about 82 consecutive hours whereupon I managed to get into a bit of a discussion with a friend of mine about where technology is now versus where it was at the dawn of the net.

      There's nothing in Office Communication Server that a telco or really good PBX hasn’t been able to do for about a decade now. The difference is that now you can run the server for this kind of thing in a VM on second-rate hardware. If you are running the client on a physical box and have a decent headset you are off to the races.

      I don’t know about you, but actually do find that kind of cool. Not too long ago this would have been completely beyond the reach of any SME. PBXes were too expensive, and the software solutions were similarly priced. Today, OCS and it’s various competitors are priced right, with only the complication of the install and maintenance being a preventative factor. Five years from now, I am sure the administration of something like OCS will be so simple that every SME out there would be able to host one if they so chose.

      If you work in a company that has thousands of staff and the latest, greatest technology it’s easy to overlook how neat it is when something like this trickles down to the rest of us. Essentially it’s the ability to run something that is your own Skype-style server, but with some real integration into other products. (Such as Office, SharePoint, etc.) Cisco’s got a good one too, and well worth a look.

      The last time I took even a sideways glance at unified communications, Live Communications Server 2005 was just hitting the streets, and the entire endeavour was laughable. OCS 2007 R2 is a completely different animal, and I was thoroughly impressed. It makes me want to hunt my local Cisco rep and get them to demonstrate the latest greatest, because I am sure they are a generation beyond Microsoft in this. (They always are.)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Wow

    "I wrongly assumed that anything Microsoft cranked out wouldn’t be worth the hassle of more than a basic implementation."

    This attitude Astonishes and worries me greatly.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @AC

      Not /all/ microsoft stuff, just Microsoft software of that particular generation. By and large the entire Visat/2007 generation of Microsoft software was complete pants. I would go so far as to say that OCS 2007 R2 might well have been one of the very few not crap pieces of software Microsoft put out from that era.

  6. Doug Glass
    Go

    I wonder ...

    ... how many of you "life experience newbies" understand the reference "I was working in the lab, late one night..." without having to research it on the internet?

    Bobby would be proud.

    1. FozzyBear
      Happy

      Does this

      Involve wearing a white coat, whilst a short ugly dude scurries around doing your bidding with you laughing manically in the background! BWAHAHAHA.

      'Cause I have to admit this sounds more like the standard Microsoft install and config scenario to me...

  7. J. Cook Silver badge
    Coat

    Ah, the monster mash.

    We are working on getting a full -on test lab set up at $work- granted it's largely older equipment, but it's still serviceable at the moment, and it'll let us do a few neat things. From talking with co-workers that have lived in this particular industry for a while, I've also found that we are something of a rarity in that we are planning and building such a lab.

    Mines the one with "graveyard smash" printed on the back.

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. xj25vm

    It's been available for a good while

    Trevor wrote:

    "From time to time, I am still impressed by technology."

    Well, maybe you wouldn't have had to wait so long to be impressed with technology - if you didn't keep your eyes firmly planted on the big boys - Microsoft, Cisco et all. Asterisk runs on Linux, and could do a whole bunch of this stuff and more for years.

    "There's nothing in Office Communication Server that a telco or really good PBX hasn’t been able to do for about a decade now. The difference is that now you can run the server for this kind of thing in a VM on second-rate hardware. If you are running the client on a physical box and have a decent headset you are off to the races.

    I don’t know about you, but actually do find that kind of cool. Not too long ago this would have been completely beyond the reach of any SME. PBXes were too expensive, and the software solutions were similarly priced. Today, OCS and it’s various competitors are priced right, with only the complication of the install and maintenance being a preventative factor. Five years from now, I am sure the administration of something like OCS will be so simple that every SME out there would be able to host one if they so chose."

    Again. Asterisk is free. It runs on top of a free and open source operating system. There are people running it on 266MHz ARM processors. I run it on old pc's starting from 500MHz. It can do Interactive Voice Menu's, Music on Hold, Queuing, voice mail, voicemail over email. It can plug into mobile phones and use a mobile phone as an outside line. It can talk to SIP and IAX clients - software and hardware - and a whole bunch of other protocols. It can plug into a ham radio network. It can do conferencing. Actually, it can do lot's of things. Just look it up. And it could do this for years and years. I have it installed in small companies starting from 5 employees.

    Yes, it does require skills to install and configure. But in terms of software and hardware costs - it doesn't get more affordable then that. It is free. People the world over use it in large call centres, small companies, as well as at home to do all sorts of work for them.

    OK - so OCS can integrate with AD. But you can make Asterisk do that as well. Samba can talk to AD - and with a little script trickery, you could make Asterisk pull info from there. And that, by itself - is not exactly a revolutionary, killer feature.

    Oh, and there are quite a few other software PBX's out there - I only happen to be most familiar with Asterisk.

    So rolling your eyes over and being impressed with Microsoft latest gizmo seems somehow unwarranted to me.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @xj25vm

      Asterix is entirely another ball game. It's shiny, and I adore it. I use it quite a bit as well in smaller installations, and am actually in the process of getting all the bits I need for a home server. What Asterix doesn’t do is integrate with all the other gibbons and bobs that my company uses on a daily basis. What you seem to be missing is that Microsoft is selling INTEGRATION between their various bits of software.

      I am sure at least part of it is to lock people into their products, but the end result is quite impressive. I am pro open source as much as can be achieved, but open source is still little more than a disparate connection of independent projects that can rarely agree internally to a project, let alone work together to get the kind of integration going that a full-blown Microsoft installation can produce.

      Even Cisco, for all that their tech is a generation beyond Microsoft, can’t sell the integration that Microsoft can. You accuse me of wearing blinders, but I would argue that for the first time in a good long while I’ve taken mine off. Eyes wide sir; take an honest and unbiased look at how all the bits of Microsoft’s current generation of software fit together. Put a lab of all the latest shiny together and give it an honest go.

      I think you will be impressed, and maybe just a little bit afraid. If Microsoft don’t botch up the next generation of software by pulling another Vista, then I expect that they will reclaim the Enterprise server and Office Productivity market with such a vengeance their total and complete dominance will be undisputed for the next twenty years to come.

      I am not a Microsoft fanboy sir, in fact I think it’s one of the most terribly run companies in IT. It is a collection of warring fiefdoms that rarely get along with a lack of unifying vision that I find painful. That said, they have managed despite themselves to produce (through a long birthing process of trial and error) a collection of Really Cool Stuff that nobody else (at the moment) can touch.

      Cisco, Open Source, IBM, you name it. They can reproduce the individual components, but noone else has tied it all together, and that integration is something I find truly impressive. Most especially because the integration is entirely optional. Each of these products stands alone, but combined there is a synergy that is greater than the sum of their parts.

      Please don't assume that just because I am capable of being impressed when the old dog performs new tricks that I haven't been paying attention to all the other hounds in the kennel.

  10. BradMacPro

    Title of this article...

    This is the first words from Boris Picketts' Monster Mash from 1962.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Microsoft was just coming off of..."

    "When I started planning my network upgrade, Microsoft was just coming off of Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007."

    There's a journalist just asking to have their license to use the English language revoked.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Meh.

    Catchy title leads to yet another Redmond puff-piece. As if El Reg isn't littered with enough Borg spew to start with.

  13. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
    Joke

    And my Monster from his slab began to rise

    To his surprise, it's Microsoft Office Communication Server. Made up of lots of disparate bits held together with stitches and bolts!!

    (sorry, don't know whether this is actually the case, but the analogy seemed too good to let go without a comment!)

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