Filed under: Business, Windows, Microsoft, VoIP
Microsoft VoIP & conferencing server ready to rock
by Ted Wallingford Oct 15th 2007 at 5:00PM
The New York Times' Bits blog reports that tomorrow, Bill Gates will be unveiling Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 in the company's first unpretentious bid to dominate the PBX phone system space. Only one problem with the Times' angle: Office Communications Server is not a PBX system. It certainly supports the use of VoIP phones and software like Office Communicator, allowing you to do a lot of what a PBX system does. But VoIP alone a phone system does not make.Not only that, but OCS doesn't support connecting to public telephone network lines without outside media gateway equipment--which means it will work great next to your phone system, filling in some important functionality blanks like desktop conferencing, but probably can't replace the old phone system altogether. Well, at least not yet. That said, what can OCS do?
Office Communications Server uses SIP (session initiation protocol) to set up all types of collaborative media streams on behalf of an enterprise user group-- supported media types include instant messaging, file transfer, VoIP calling, video-conferencing, and desktop sharing and collaboration. Plus, OCS is tied to Microsoft's Active Directory, allowing you to use your existing security and directory from your Windows network.
But if you want to call for a pizza using the Microsoft Office Communicator VoIP client, you'll still need a phone system, or at least have your Office Communications Server connected to one via SIP. We invite the excitable folks at the New York Times to calmly read about all the mature, competing products to whom OCS is only now catching up: Cisco MeetingPlace, WebEx, Scopia, and, yes, to some extent, even Skype. Then again, nothing's really new until Microsoft announces it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Marcelo said 5:34PM on 10-15-2007
mmm interesting... they have to expand their market even more
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2264664
MarC
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Will Smothers said 6:02PM on 10-15-2007
If you are looking for a Microsoft VOIP hardware solution, check out this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/hardware.mspx
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John Laur said 11:11PM on 10-15-2007
Woah guys what's with the sensationalism? I'm no fan of Microsoft, but honestly I have to say that it makes a lot of sense for a software company to stick with a software-only solution for a PBX. There are a lot of situations where a PBX does not need to interface with anything more than SIP phones and SIP trunks, and when it does it's far simpler for the PBX to only deal with SIP and let a gateway device (contrary to the writeup presented here, FXO, FXS, ISDN, PRI, etc. are both inexpensive and readily available) deal with the interface to the non-ip network, particularly if you want to try to wedge your software into every market in the world.
The notion of what has traditionally been considered a "phone system" is long gone, so I'm not sure what exactly the author means here when he uses the term. I know plenty of companies using IP-only "phone systems" and the Asterisk system I manage myself at work could easily be made "IP-only" if I implemented a different solution for faxes.
(Note that I have no idea what the call routing capabilities of OCS are, but surely it is enough to build a simple PBX out of!)
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