Mart Muller's Weblog

Via Bink and MSGOODIES:

“On the 19th of December Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was Released To Manufacturing (Build 6907), so it is in good time for the official launch on February 3rd.

New in this version are a lot of things like telephony enhancements and new clients including the Attendant Console (A group based switchboard solution) an updated "Office Communicator for Windows Mobility R2" (Nicknamed CoMo) that includes phone state on mobile phone calls and One Number features (I will do a review of this client later), Dial-in conferencing support (Including CWA support for external clients) and of course enhancements to the overall architecture (Including a move to a 64 bit Server platform) and not least an updated CWA that now supports Desktop Sharing also for external users and non-Microsoft browsers ... and much, much more that I will talk about later (Or that you can find at other blogs).”

Microsoft just published an announcement about the code complete status of OCS 2007 and Communicator 2007. This means it will be released very soon.

"During his address at Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, announced that Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator are code complete and will release to manufacturing (RTM) tomorrow. With this milestone and launch around the corner this fall, the Unified Communications Group is one step closer to fulfilling the UC promise and helping customers streamline business communications, increase productivity and lower costs."

In the annoucement Gurdeep Singh Pall tells about the vision and future of Unified Communications. Also check out the whitepaper about the ROI for UC. Read the complete article here.

Via Bink some more Office RoundTable product pictures and movies.

First two pictures are RoundTable camara's which construct the image on picture 4. Picture three is a Wireless USB adapter for a headset.

More here

We start to hear more and more about Unified Communications lately. It is something we at Tam Tam are really looking forward to integrate into our new telephony infrastructure. Unified Communications is cool!

Today, MS published a story about RoundTable, a new UC application for conferencing calls.

"RoundTable is a table-top device, not much bigger than a traditional speaker phone at the base. It can be connected to a standard PC to offer synchronized voice and video conferencing. The device creates a 360-degree, panoramic video of side-by-side images of everyone who is taking part in the conference. It tracks the flow of the conversation, so the image and voice of the person who is speaking are spotlighted. People across many locations can attend meetings together virtually.

RoundTable works with Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Live Meeting, allowing companies to integrate virtual presentations, shared whiteboards and file sharing into their audio/video conferences. If someone misses a conference call, the RoundTable sessions can be can be recorded and viewed later."

Read the full story here

eWeek is telling us that Office Communicator for mobile devices has gone to beta yesterday. From source:

“Microsoft Corp. on Thursday released to beta its Office Communicator Mobile client, which extends the instant messaging and presence awareness of its LCS to smart phones and PDAs based on the Windows Mobile operating system.

Office Communicator Mobile will also allow Live Communications Server users to make voice over IP calls from Wi-Fi-enabled Windows Mobile phones to PCs and vice versa while within the corporate network, said Paul Duffy, senior product manager for Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile, in Redmond, Wash.

The mobile client's user interface is based on the Office Communicator 2005 desktop client, which in June of this year replaced Windows Messenger as Microsoft's preferred client for LCS.

General availability of Office Communicator Mobile is slated for the first half of 2006.

Microsoft is also extending its enterprise IM and presence technologies to Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry users through connectivity with LCS and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

IBM has also teamed up with RIM to extend its Lotus Sametime enterprise IM and presence to BlackBerry devices.”