By Chris Lehr, Simpler-Webb Microsoft Consultant

Simpler-Webb is, for the most part, a single site office. But, we have several people who work out of state; one employee in Houston, one in San Antonio, one in Connecticut, and one in Georgia. While some of these employees make the trek back to our headquarters in Austin, TX for company meetings, they are not faces we get to see in the office all that often. In addition, much of our sales and consulting staff regularly work remotely either from home or on the road while at customer sites. Simpler-Webb is about fifty employees strong. Some of those work second and third shifts for our 24/7/365 Managed Server department and Service Desk, but this morning at 10:30am I walked the office and did a headcount. We have thirty-one people in the office and thirty-eight are signed into instant messenger. Of course, as we move into the holiday season, more and more days are spent working remotely so that many of us can be close to our families and friends and still be productive.

Obviously, having remote users offers unique challenges when delivering successful solutions for our customers. Currently, we use Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) and an Office Communicator client on our PCs to offer us Instant Messaging (IM) and presence. Most people already know what IM is and have used some iteration of the public IM providers; be it Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Google Talk, or other clients. Presence is also offered in these tools, but in a more limited fashion. With OCS, we have complete integration with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange 2007. Our presence is based on our actual online/offline/away status like other IM clients, but also updates based on calendar appointments. So if I am in a meeting, I am automatically marked as busy for the duration of the meeting and other people in our organization can see that status. All users can also set their presence manually in the case an important phone call comes in or a meeting occurs unexpectedly. This presence feature is very portable and easy to integrate into many other Microsoft products. SharePoint is a prime example of another place where I can see availability of users, everywhere from our Employee Directory to on a document they created. In Outlook, when I receive an email sent to multiple people, I can immediately see the recipients, as well as their presence information. So if I need more information, I see who is available to take questions right now, rather than responding to the email and waiting for a response. The same is true when I have a client on the phone and need answers from another department or have an inquiry about the wording in a document. Having immediate access to who is and is not available to provide information helps everyone in our office work faster and more efficiently.

While using IM to communicate internally is easy and quick, we also want our communications to be secure and available externally on the Internet so we can access it on the road. We accomplish this by deploying an OCS Access Edge server with a trusted third party SSL certificate. With this in place, our employees can now use the communicator client offsite without a VPN connection. This also opens up the option to use the Mobile Communicator Client on our Windows Mobile phones. So now if I am offsite, I can sign in and communicate instantly and directly with whomever I might need to without even a laptop. Having this Access Edge server also allows us to do federated Instant Messaging. This means any partners, vendors, or customers that also have OCS with an Access Edge server deployed and federation configured can pass instant messages between the two organizations securely by using mutually encrypted communications. This is the ideal solution for companies that have users utilizing public IM services to transfer data or information that likely should not be traversing the Internet unsecured.

OCS is more than just IM and presence. It also allows web conferencing using LiveMeeting for both internal and external participants, VoIP calls and one-on- one video conferencing. Internally, we use the LiveMeeting service to hold and attend meetings using a webcam and wireless headset from home or on the road. Many of our customers are also using LiveMeeting to realize a significant cost reduction. We frequently work with credit unions and have encountered the inherent need to meet with people from multiple branches or locations. By using OCS and LiveMeeting, those meetings can now occur without travel time and expenses. Many customers have also successfully used LiveMeeting as a training tool to record a meeting or training session for unavailable employees to view later. With the cost of travel rising steadily in the past six months, we see a lot more companies looking to take advantage of these technologies in order to reduce the overall cost of meetings.

One of the coolest parts of using OCS for Unified Communications is the new hardware coming available to support the technology. There is wide availability of webcams, microphones and headsets for voice and video communications, but two in particular stand out:

• The Microsoft Roundtable device. We had the opportunity to evaluate one of these for a few months and have placed an order. It has a 360 degree camera that offers a panoramic view of a conference room. This is a great fit for us as we typically have most our meeting attendees in the office with a handful joining in remotely. This enables the remote user to have a much richer experience since they can see and hear everyone in the meeting room from anywhere in the world. It also has voice sensing technology to focus a “main view” on the direction from which the voice is coming. This means you have the ability to focus on the speaker while seeing and hearing all people’s reactions, and like watching the evening news, you see the camera switch to the next presenter’s seat. 

• Microsoft OCS-centric IP telephones. While this is a more generic choice, IP phones can allow you to use a phone as a signed-in OCS client that supports voice and presence, but also ties in your presence to being on/off the phone. Having Enterprise Voice enabled in an OCS organization with a VoIP gateway, you can extend your existing system to put cheaper phones on desks where full phone functionality might be needed that your existing system might already offer.

In summary, OCS is a lot more than just Instant Messaging. It’s a faster, more productive way to communicate with your employees and external partners and can even become your phone system. What’s more, with integration with web conferencing, you can actually save money spent on travel and still give your users the experience of an in-person meeting. With the speed of interaction today, we’ve seen a lot of interest in this business-driven technology and expect to see much more over the coming year.