So i’ve been playing with Office Communication Server 2007 to pass time. Thanks to the Microsoft Partner Licensing Program we can use this software internally, in production, without paying anything.
After playing with it in VMs for a few days, I decided to deploy it internally. Of course, the current deployment is not very integrated - our PBX is years old, and we have no chance to get any decent sort of integration, and we’re not yet on Exchange 2007 (though this is planned). As such, I didn’t expect to much usefulness out of. Boy, was I wrong.
OCS 2007 is several products in one, and it has a few drawbacks in a small business deployment (because it was designed for bigger environments). The price of the product isn’t prohibitive for a small business - 1500 CHF for the server, and 100 CHF per CAL (for Standard versions - the Enterprise versions are more expensive).
So, what features can one expect from OCS2007?
Services
Instant Messaging
One of the OCS2007 functions is an internal Instant Messaging server, with all the standard features you probably already know from ICQ, MSN et al. This part could easily provided by using e.G. an internal Jabber server and a Windows Jabber client like Pidgin. So why use OCS2007 for instant messaging? The reason is easy: Integration. The server software integrates into your Active Directory environment. You extend the AD schema, and all the user information is stored directly in Active Directory, with no need to maintain yet another user database. While that’s an advantage, it not much of a selling point (because the CEO usually doesn’t care if need 3 more minutes to add a user).
So let’s talk about integration on the client. After installing Office Communicator (the IM/VOIP client for OCS) on the client, you will notice full IM integration into Outlook, see the status of all the recipients and senders of the mail. This is a very nice feature, because it offers you information at a glance, without having to open the IM GUI to see whether someone is available for a quick follow up or not. But it gets better: this Integration also works in Sharepoint Services 3.0 and MOSS 2007. Also, the Unified Messaging part of Exchange Server 2007 integrates nicely into OCS 2007. You can check your voicemail using OCS 2007, with a fully graphical interface (similar to how the iPhone handles it’s voicemail)
Besides the ability for instant messaging, there is another very important feature - at least in our company: availability and presence. We have a HQ and a branch office, and our HQ is split over three floors. So usually it’s not easy to tell if someone is at his workplace or not. While Outlooks calender helps to establish the general whereabouts of a person, its not at-a-glance, and it doesn’t help if the person just isn’t at his desk (for whatever reason).
Office Communicator sets your presence to away at the instant you lock your machine, which people do when they walk away from their desk. As such, you can tell whether someone is currently working at his desk or not. This is very cool, and helps to save time on unnecessary phone calls to which no one answers.
There’s also a web client - Office Communicator Web Access. At the first glance, it is indistinguishable from the full desktop client, so the web interface is very nicely done.
Voice over IP (SIP)
OCS 2007 is also a fully blown VoIP solution. I can’t talk about this part too much - i haven’t worked with the mediation server or more enterprise VoIP integration (as said, our PBX doesn’t support that).
The Softphone client, integrated into the Office Communicator works nicely though, the voice quality is normal, and we didn’t have much problems using it over WAN lines.
You can also connect hardware IP phones to OCS2007, which should work with standard SIP phones - not having one, i didn’t test this. There are some very nice looking OCS specific IP phones out there.
Live Meeting
I’ve attended a few Webcasts done using Live Meeting 2005. With OCS 2007, you can now host Live Meetings (using the 2007 client) directly in your company, with no need for any hosted services. This feature might not be terribly useful if you’re working for a single-location Small Business, but it can be a timesaver when spread across the country (or world). Live Meeting also integrates into Outlook (see the above screenshot).
It works flawlessly, and i had few problems using Live Meeting. Didn’t really deploy this into production yet, though.
And more
OCS 2007 can also do a lot more stuff than i mentioned here. Most of this, like CDR and Archival is not necessary (or financially viable) in Small Businesses, so I didn’t invest too much time.
Drawbacks
So, what are the drawbacks of OCS 2007 in a Small Business? The main point i see here is that you need at least three servers - a Standard Server (hosting all the services), a mediation server for connecting to your PBX, and an Edge server offering internet connectivity. These are at least three OS instances that need to be maintained. Add to that the cost of either a proper virtualization server, or a few 1U boxes, and you’ll get into unviable price regions pretty soon.
For basic functionality, you can leave both the Mediation and the Edge server away. This means no integration with your PBX, and no external access to your server - at least in theory.
If you just need external access to IM, you can create appropriate SRV records in your public DNS, and forward port 5061. This will not result in a clean service, but it’s better than nothing. But without a proper edge server, you won’t be able to access other IM networks. Not cool.
Microsoft should really make single-server deployment possible, but probably we’re too small of a market to make this financially viable.
So what’s my conclusion? If you’re an SMB, give OCS2007 a try. It’s a very cool software, and the basic IM functionality isn’t that expensive.
