Using Microsoft's OCS as a unified messaging platform

Product Test and Buyer's Guide This newsletter is sponsored by Juniper Networks Never close your office Your network never stops, why should your business? Extranet portals deliver anytime, anywhere access to clients and partners. View this Webcast and learn how they deliver a competitive advantage and hear a real-world case study from a healthcare IT CEO on how they work in the real world. Product Test and Buyer's Guide, 07/03/07 Using Microsoft's OCS as a unified messaging platform By Michael B. Hommer Sr., Robert Smithers Office Communication Server, Exchange and Office Communicator put voice on a level playing field in Microsoft nets. Compare Products with Network World's VoIP and Convergence Buyer's Guide From deployable IP-PBX systems to unified messaging, Network World has detailed information on hundreds of products. Side-by-side comparisons along with objective test and review results make it quick and easy to find the solutions that are right for your enterprise. Click here to find out more. In our initial evaluation of the first public beta code for Microsoft's Office Communication Server 2007, we measured it against what we know to be standard in the standards-based Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) IP PBX world. But here we see what comes to life if you run this new code in an all Microsoft world. When it's deployed with Window Server 2003, Active Directory (running in native mode with DNS), Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2000, IIS 6.0 and Certificate Server on the back end with Windows XP clients running Office Ultimate 2007 and a beta version of Office Communicator 2007, the final result is easy user access to e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging and conferencing capabilities from the same interface. OCS 2007 includes a deployment wizard to help guide IT administrators through the installation process. The Enterprise Edition can be installed in a consolidated topology, all components on a single physical server (as we did in our evaluation), or an expanded topology, each component on separate physical server. The wizard was very effective in walking us through each step of the process and provided meaningful feedback on issues that arose. For example, one of the steps failed and indicated that ASP, which we had not preloaded, could not be verified and may need to be installed. For more on this test, please click here.

TODAY'S MOST-READ STORIES: 1. The $2.3M home lab of Quadruple CCIE 2. Top 25 'iPhonies' 3. Harry Potter worm says he is dead 4. Withdrawn Black Hat paper hints at security flaws 5. iPhone buzz reaches to Microsoft's back yard 6. Lawyers show how to avoid hiring an American 7. 3Com to spin out TippingPoint 8. IPv6 D-Day is coming up fast 9. Gartner to IT: Avoid Apple's iPhone 10. Hackers target C-level execs and their families MOST E-MAILED STORY: How MySpace is hurting your network

Contact the author: Hommer is engineering manager and Smithers is CEO of Miercom. They can be reached at mhommer@miercom.com and rsmithers@miercom.com, respectively. This newsletter is sponsored by Juniper Networks Never close your office Your network never stops, why should your business? Extranet portals deliver anytime, anywhere access to clients and partners. View this Webcast and learn how they deliver a competitive advantage and hear a real-world case study from a healthcare IT CEO on how they work in the real world. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: security.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007