2. Tweet about your experience at the
Softchoice Discovery Series Events!
#SCDiscovery
3. Today’s Agenda
Intro to Softchoice
What is Unified Communications?
Current Communication Challenges
Why Microsoft UC?
Introducing Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Architecture, Deployment, Licensing
Q&A
4. • US$1 billion in Sales (2009)
• #1 MS EA Advisor in North America
• 40+ local sales offices & 5 call centers
• 19,000 Customers
• 900 employees
• Canada’s Top Solution Provider
– Computer Dealer News Magazine
• Canadian Headquarters
• Traded on TSX Symbol: SO
Softchoice at a Glance
5.
6. • Microsoft Managed Partner in US since 1997
• Manage most EA’s in North America
• Microsoft LAR of year in 2009
• Customer Acquisition and Retention Award 2009
• DDPS, SDPS and EDPS Certified
• 28 Microsoft Business Development Team
members including 6 Microsoft Enterprise
Architects
8. Unified Communication is the direct result of the
convergence of communications and applications.
The integration of real-time communication services
such as Instant Messaging (chat), presence
information, telephony (including IP telephony), video
conferencing, call control and speech recognition with
non-real-time communication services such as unified
messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).
What is Unified Communications?
10. End-usersandITStaffmay be
Overwhelmed
For End Users
• Shifting Workforce: More remote users than ever
• Typical businesses average 6 devices & 5 communication apps per
person
• Learning curve just to be able to communicate
• Travel is expensive and inefficient
For IT Admins
• Too much infrastructure to manage, too many user accounts
• Technology that isn’t integrated
• A prevailing “do more with less” attitude
• IT staff turnover & training issues
12. The Business Impact of UC
Drives up Productivity
• Maximize individual productivity
• Increase collaboration among employees, partners and
customers
• Get projects done faster / more efficiently
Drives down Costs
• Reduced # of systems = reduced power, cooling, and overall
infrastructure costs
• “Do more with less”
• Lower travel costs
• Decrease telephony/conferencing costs
• Speed learning curve for new employees
14. Gartner on Microsoft UC
To be included in this Magic Quadrant,
solution providers must have at least three
of these technologies in their UC solution:
• Voice and Telephony
• Conferencing
• Messaging
• Presence and IM
• Clients (thick, thin, PDA)
• Communications Applications
http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-
products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article19/article19.html
15. Microsoft’s History with IM
Cloud Based IM Solutions
Personal IM Solutions:
• MSN Messenger 1.0 (1999)
• MSN Messenger 3.0 (2000)
PC-to-PC, PC-to-Voice (Net2Phone)
• MSN Messenger 4.5 (2001)
5-person Group Chat
Corporate IM Solutions:
• Windows Messenger (2001)
SIP support, file xfer, app sharing,
and whiteboarding
RTC API Support
• Office Communications Online
On-Prem IM Solutions
Corporate Solutions:
• Exchange 2000 IM Service
• Live Communication Server 2003 (LCS)
• Live Communication Server 2005
• Office Communicator Server 2007 (OCS)
• Office Communications Server 2007 R2
• Lync Server 2010
* Microsoft reports 330 million monthly Windows
Live Messenger users as of 2009
17. The Lync Server 2010 Client Experience
Choose WHO to
communicate
with…
Browse Contacts Search For People
18. …and choose HOW you want to communicate!
Call People See People Follow People
19. • No more Live Meeting client!
• Lync Meeting Recorder – record in
WMV format
• Panoramic HD video
• Infrastructure consolidation
• Users benefit from a truly
converged client experience
Conferencing Enhancements
20. Mobile Clients:
Interoperability in Action
• Communicator Mobile
• iDialog for iPhone
• FUZE for iPhone & Blackberry
• Blackberry Office Communicator
• Microsoft Office Communicator for Windows Mobile
• Silverlight-based web client
• 3rd party Linux clients
• “Lync for Mac” – new Lync client in Office 2011 for Mac
21. Lync Connects People in New Ways, Anytime and Anywhere
Access messages through your PC, mobile device, or the WebConnect in real time across devices from a familiar interface
PC WebMobile
22. New Lync 2010 Client Features:
Contact Cards – available across Office & SharePoint
Unified Contact Store – all contacts in a single view
Activity Feeds – Facebook-style status updates from peers
Skill Search – search SharePoint personal sites for the right skill
Conversation View – list all communication (meetings, voices calls, IM’s,
etc) that you’ve had with someone
Device Transfer – go from desktop VoIP to laptop to mobile phone
24. Microsoft Lync Server 2010
▪ Integrated conferencing experience
▪ Enhanced 9-1-1 for NA
▪ Survivable branch appliances
▪ Call admission control
▪ More options for devices (including lower cost)
▪ Call park and malicious call trace
▪ Additional data center survivability options
Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007
▪ “Anywhere access”
▪ IM and rich presence
▪ Desktop integration
▪ Voice features for mobile workers
▪ Unified messaging with Microsoft Exchange
2007
▪ Audio and video conferencing
▪ Web conferencing (Microsoft Live Meeting
client)
Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007 R2
▪ Desktop sharing
▪ Dial-in audio conferencing
▪ Higher resolution video
▪ Single number reach
▪ Attendant console
▪ Response groups
▪ SIP trunking
Lync Server 2010 delivers on Critical Voice Features
25. Interoperability - Choice in Voice!
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can replace your PBX, but its not a one size fits all
solution
Replace your entire PBX to create a complete UC solution
Enhance existing PBX with VoIP, or
Add IM, Presence, and Conferencing to your PBX
26. Call Admission Control: Enforce bandwidth policies, QoS for audio/video, max
bandwidth per session, Internet overflow for video
Traditionally QoS functionality required expensive network gear
Malicious Call Trace: flag harassing or threatening calls, trace calling number,
gateway/SIP trunk
Call Quality Notification: notifies you of bad connections
Visual Voicemail
Call Routing: forward calls to another line or “simulring” (cell, home phone, etc)
Call Park: Determine who’s allowed into conference based on invited/uninvited,
authenticated/anonymous, locked/unlocked meeting, etc
Device Transfer: switch between devices during call (headset, IP/USB phone, etc)
Voice Client Features
27. Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA):
• Leverages a PSTN connection for backup dialtone
and fails back to WAN link when available again
• SBA Vendors
Data Center Resiliency:
• Failover dial tone to alternative datacenters
• Active/Passive Registrar failover
Media Bypass:
• No longer need mediation server in remote locations
• No longer needed for IP-PBX interop
E-911:
• Native 911 location awareness
• New Location Information Server role
Voice Server Features
28. SBA - User Experience
Features Available with WAN
Down
PSTN Inbound and Outbound calls
Intra-Site calls, Inter site calls (PSTN
Rerouting)
Hold, Retrieve, Transfer
Authentication, Authorization
Voicemail Deposit (Redirect to
ExUM in Data Center)
Voicemail Retrieve (through PSTN)
Call Forwarding, SimulRing, Boss-
Admin, Team-call
Call Detail Records (CDR)
All 2 Party Intra Site
communications
Audio Conferencing through PSTN
Contact Search
Features Unavailable
Inter-site Data (IM, App
Sharing, etc.)
Conferencing (IM, Video and
Web)
Presence & DND based routing
Modify Presence or Change
Call Forwarding Settings
Contact List
Response Group and Call Park
WAN Up
All Features Available
WAN Down
Basic Voice Features Available
Resilient Lync Server 2010 clients: Lync, Attendant Console, Lync Phone Edition
29. Mobility Features
• New hardware/software partners – over 30 Lync certified partners!
• Improved device monitoring & reporting – IP Phone Inventory Report, User
Activity Report, Call Quality Report, P2P Session Detail Report
• Single Number Reach
30. Audiocodes Mediant 1000 –1U, 4E1/T1, redundant power supply, MSBG-
Firewall, Routing engine
Mediant 2000 – 1U, 480 concurrent calls, redundant power
supply
Dialogic DMG 4000, 1U, 4 E1/T1, Redundant power supply
Ferrari 1U, 4 E1/T1, Redundant Power supply
HP SBA Module running on Procurve 54xx switch Chassis.
Redundant Power supply, 8 E1/T1, Layer 2 functionality
NET UX Series. 1U, 8 E1/T1, Redundant power supply. MSBG-
Firewall, Routing engine
SBA - Partner Solutions
Audiocodes:
Existing M1k
and M2k
gateways can be
converted to
SBA
Dialogic: Existing
DMG4000 Hybrid
can be converted
to SBA
NET: New HW to
support SBA.
Migration plan for
customers wanting
to move to UX
platform.
Ferrari: Existing R2
Hybrid gateway can
be converted into
SBA
HP: Customers
using ProCurve
switches can
convert it into a
SBA by buying
the module
35. Extend Communications to Business Processes
Integrate presence with line of business applications
Contextual Collaboration
On the device—person to person
Streamline Communications:
▪ “Enhanced Presence”
▪ “Click to Communicate”
▪ Communications context
Business Process
Communications
In the middle-tier—machine to
person
Cut-down Human Latency:
▪ Notifications and Alerts
▪ Outbound Calls
▪ Expert Finder
Anywhere Information Access
Anywhere, any device—person to
machine
Extend the Reach of the
Application:
▪ Web Chat
▪ Query-Response Bots
▪ Interactive Voice Response
Productivity-Enhancing
Apps
Efficient Application
Creation
Enterprise-Grade Platform Extensible Software
Foundation
36. Interoperable and Extensible Platform
Lync 2010 works with other Microsoft Applications
and third-party vendor technologies
Integrate and Enhance Existing Investments
Take advantage of interoperability to replace,
enhance, or add voice options
Offer Choice in Voice
Integrate presence with line of business applications
Extend Communications to Business Processes
39. Improved Infrastructure
• Central Management Store – XML stored in SQL containing
Topology, Policies, and Configuration.
• Virtualization support for all server roles
• Visual infrastructure planning with Lync 2010 Planning Tool and
Topology Builder
• Improved monitoring on services, components, and voice
quality
• Improved System Center Operations Manager MP
40. Infrastructure Considerations:
Active Directory Requirements
DNS Requirements
Certificate Infrastructure Requirements (Internal CA, PKI)
High Availability requirements (hardware load balancers, SQL cluster, etc)
Network Requirements (QoS, bandwidth, session resiliency)
Monitoring (define voice quality success)
Telephony Considerations:
What devices are in my environment (desk, mobile, etc)
Pure IP PBX solution or integrate with existing PBX?
What are my existing Dial Plan, Policy, and Routes?
What are my user’s dialing patterns for outbound and internal calls?
What are my VOIP Integration options with existing infrastructure?
41. 6 Steps to Ensure Adoption:
1. Develop Readiness
Plan
Review organizational requirements,
success metric
2. Define Support
Strategy
Define support resources / escalation
plan
3. Pilot Program
Key user groups, usage scenarios,
validate deployment
4. Training Plan Develop end-user training courses
5. Generate Awareness
Keep users informed, advertise
launch, prepare everyone!
6. Measure Usage and
Adoption
Establish reporting to assess
usage/adoption
42. Planning Tool & Topology Builder
• Recommends a multi-site topology
based on your inputs
• Provides WAN bandwidth est.
• Exportable XML imported into
Topology Builder
• Compatible with Visio
48. Grandfathering Policy
• From Now until 12/31/2010
– New L/SA CoreCAL Customers & existing CoreCAL SA customers can add OCS
Std CAL for 50% off!
Licensing Changes and OCS Grandfather Policy
52. Hardware Requirements“Frontend” (FE) Spec*
CPU 8 cores (Dual Quad-Core) 2.00 GHz+
12 gigabytes (GB)*
Attached storage (hard disk drive 10K rpm+, 72GB+)
Applicable to other roles (Edge,
Monitoring/Archiving)
2 network cards (NICs) 1 GB+ per second (GBps)
* Baseline for 100,000 user pool with 10
FEs and 1 BE
“Backend” (BE) Spec*
CPU 8 cores (Dual Quad-Core) 2.00 GHz+
32 GB*
Attached storage (10Krpm+, 72GB+), multiple
spindles
2 NICs 1 GBps+
Server Virtualization support
Including Audio/Video/AppSharing roles
53. Lync Server 2010 Server Roles
Archiving and Monitoring Server Role
Audio/Video Conferencing Server Role
Central Management Server Role
Lync Web Application Server Role
Director Role
Edge Server Role
Group Chat Server Role
Mediation Server Role
Reach Application Sharing Server Role
Survivable Branch Appliance Role
Unified Communications Application Server Role
Web Conferencing Server Role
5 mins (BM intro)
5 mins business drivers (cloud tags, etc.)
15 mins Roadmap + Credibility (slides 1-12)
15 mins New stuff: (e911, SBA, …)
10 mins Architecture considerations (infra)
5 mins CTA (Licensing & promotions CTA)
10 mins Q&A & surveys and prizes
Stay after for Add’l questions
Recap what Softchoice is about
Technology Sourcing: Beyond offering one of the largest selections of software and hardware technology products anywhere in North America, our goal is to help our customers maximize their IT spend. We do this by leveraging one of the most cost effective supply chains in the industry, by providing access to the most competitive pricing and through ecommerce tools and reporting capabilities that give you line of site across the entire purchasing process.
IT Asset Management: Our goal in Asset Management is to enhance the value and utilization of your technology investments. Through our expertise in large volume purchasing contracts as well as robust IT assessment and hardware roll-out capabilities, we can help you achieve new levels of savings and efficiency while improving your control over your environment.
Solution Design and Delivery: To drive business performance we leverage a range of technical resources, including in-house Enterprise Architects as well as local Services Partners, to support the design, fulfillment and implementation of key business solutions. Core areas of competency include Workload Optimization, Storage Backup and Recovery, and Unified Communications and Collaboration.
In working with Softchoice across these areas, we help optimize your spending, assets and business performance.
Softchoice has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft, beginning in Canada and then entering the US market in 1995 and becoming a Senior Managed partner in 1997.
Over the years Microsoft Awarded Softchoice with multiple awards for our partnership bust most recently:
LAR of the Year in 2009
Customer Acquisition & Retention Award 2009
We Offer Dedicated Microsoft Resources.
- Enterprise Architect’s
- Microsoft Product Specialists
- Microsoft Licensing Sales Specialists
- Software Asset Management (SAM) Specialists
- Local and regional account manager
We Offer the Following Microsoft Tools.
- Licensing gap analysis
- Software Asset Management (SAM) assessments
- Volume Licensing Management (EA Management) Lifecycle process
- Customized Roadmap assessments
- Cost analysis Strategy & Planning
- Software Assurance benefits & planning services & reports
- Media Fulfillment
- VLSC, eOpen Resource Guide
We Offer Exclusive Softchoice Solutions.
- Optimized Datacenter
- Desktop Virtualization Viability Assessment (DVVA)
- Tech Check Services
- IT Asset Management-as-a-Service (ITAMaaS)
- Windows 7 Readiness
Citrix and Softchoice Partnership
Citrix and Softchoice are growing their partnership since 2007
Softchoice has expanded their resources in the Virtualization environment to 10 across North America and growing as our business grows.
Spring 2010 Citrix awarded Softchoice as being a part of their Citrix-Microsoft Virtualization Program
Gartner - The term "unified communications" sometimes is misused. This results in confusion. Users should be aware that some products that are labeled as "unified" cannot be integrated with other vendor products into a full portfolio. These mislabeled products are capable of being used only in a stand-alone and nonintegrated manner.
Key is “unified” – all products must be interoperable to be a truly “unified communication” solution
IT Admins:
- Too many servers, applications, networks, PBX systems, different teams managing different technologies
“Do more with less” mentality – layoffs, cost saving measures depleting teams
Training new users – steep learning curve for new admins
Too much time “maintaining” and not enough time “innovating”
Slide Objective:
Discuss the various barriers that reduce end-user productivity and efficiency due to slow communications or a disconnected experience.
Tip: Validate the barriers with customers—make the challenges below about specific customer situations, rather than generic statements. Keep it short.
Talking Points:
Here are some of the reasons that continue to create barriers to a more connected experience:
First, needs are changing. Teams are more distributed and people are on the go, working from just about anywhere. It’s difficult to connect fully when people are not physically together.
According to the Forrester, Inc., 2009 Workforce Techno Graphics survey, 41 percent of IWs demonstrated a high need for mobility.
90 percent of employees work in locations other than headquarters, and 40 to 70 percent of employees work in different locations from their supervisors. The number of virtual workers (people who work in offices geographically separated from their supervisors) has increased by 800 percent since 2000 (Nemertes Research, 2005).
The technologies are not integrated. This can lead to problems with multiple identities, overlapping investments, and an overall sub-optimal experience.
Businesses average more than six communications devices and almost five communications applications per employee (Sage Research for Cisco, September 2005).
It is costly for any organization to support a complex web of non-integrated systems. The result is often high costs for the organization and low adoption and usage by employees.
Still, there has not been much innovation in the most entrenched areas, like telephony. The phone as a device has not changed a lot since it came into common use, and people have rapidly switched to other forms of communications.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one of every six households has given up the phone line.
Likewise, a Nielsen Mobile research study indicates that U.S. mobile users are sending 1.7 times more text messages than making phone calls.
We know that communications needs a fresh approach that puts people in the center. We must design solutions for today’s needs, as users demand more flexibility in how and where they choose to work.
Let’s see in the next slide how Microsoft can help to remove obstacles and provide a connected communications experience.
Slide Objective:
Discuss the status quo of enterprise communications, and present the Microsoft vision for Unified Communications.
Note: This slide has a build and has been designed to be presented in two parts to allow for a discussion on the “today” (initial build) and the “vision” (build after you click the mouse).
Initial Build—Communications Today, Talking Points:
Technology has brought us a very long way in terms of how we communicate in the business world. E-mail, telephones, IM, and conference calling enable us to do things today that were unthinkable 20 years ago. But as these technologies have evolved, they have done so independently, in parallel with one another, creating communication silos. These independent silos have led to redundancies and inefficiencies for both the end user and the administrator. It has become difficult and expensive to maintain them and to ensure each is in compliance with business and government regulations.
For most companies today, telephony, e-mail, IM, audio conferencing, video conferencing, Web conferencing, and voice mail all live in their own disconnected silos. Each has evolved a separate operating platform—often with proprietary third-party technology—separate authentication, separate administration, and separate storage and compliance. This comes with a huge price tag and an equally enormous headache for the end user, who has to remember separate phone numbers, account names, and passwords. Plus, these users have limited communication with each device—for example, not being able to make audio calls from their computers. Ultimately, their communication is disconnected, and their collaboration and innovation are hindered.
Final Build—The Microsoft Unified Communications Vision, Talking Points:
Microsoft UC reduces complexity by putting people at the center of the communications experience. Our goal is to integrate all of the ways we contact each other in a single environment—using a single identity, presence, and inbox—while providing businesses with the power to choose how they provision those services—whether on their own premises, as cloud services, or in a hybrid fashion.
Information taken from : http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article19/article19.html
Slide to establish MS Credibility in IM (evolution of products, quantity of users running MSN)
Cloud based
Personal IM
MSN Messenger
Corporate
Windows Messenger Office Communications Online
On premise
Exchange 2000 Instant Messaging Service
LCS
OCS
OCS 2007 R2
Now: Lync
Slide Objective:
Discuss the various barriers that reduce end-user productivity and efficiency due to slow communications or a disconnected experience.
Tip: Validate the barriers with customers—make the challenges below about specific customer situations, rather than generic statements. Keep it short.
Talking Points:
Here are some of the reasons that continue to create barriers to a more connected experience:
First, needs are changing. Teams are more distributed and people are on the go, working from just about anywhere. It’s difficult to connect fully when people are not physically together.
According to the Forrester, Inc., 2009 Workforce Techno Graphics survey, 41 percent of IWs demonstrated a high need for mobility.
90 percent of employees work in locations other than headquarters, and 40 to 70 percent of employees work in different locations from their supervisors. The number of virtual workers (people who work in offices geographically separated from their supervisors) has increased by 800 percent since 2000 (Nemertes Research, 2005).
The technologies are not integrated. This can lead to problems with multiple identities, overlapping investments, and an overall sub-optimal experience.
Businesses average more than six communications devices and almost five communications applications per employee (Sage Research for Cisco, September 2005).
It is costly for any organization to support a complex web of non-integrated systems. The result is often high costs for the organization and low adoption and usage by employees.
Still, there has not been much innovation in the most entrenched areas, like telephony. The phone as a device has not changed a lot since it came into common use, and people have rapidly switched to other forms of communications.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one of every six households has given up the phone line.
Likewise, a Nielsen Mobile research study indicates that U.S. mobile users are sending 1.7 times more text messages than making phone calls.
We know that communications needs a fresh approach that puts people in the center. We must design solutions for today’s needs, as users demand more flexibility in how and where they choose to work.
Let’s see in the next slide how Microsoft can help to remove obstacles and provide a connected communications experience.
Activity feeds - Users can update their status and have the status displayed in the contact list.
Dial Pad - Option to use dial pad interface for calls. Users can dial by name or click to call others from their contact lists. Voicemail messages are also available from the dialing tab.
Slide Objective:
Show the familiar user experience for both Lync and Outlook from a rich client on a PC, on a mobile device, or over the Web.
Note: Slide builds to first show Lync, then Outlook.
Talking Points:
Lync: View contact availability and use IM with internal and external contacts from your PC or mobile device, or over the Web.
Outlook: View e-mail and voice mail messages from a single inbox from your PC or mobile device, or over the Web. With Microsoft Exchange 2010, Voice Mail Preview (see Mobile screenshot) allows users to see a text preview of voice messages before they listen to them.
Slide Objective:
Discuss the critical voice features in Lync Server 2010 and the converged experience for voice functionality.
Talking Points:
Previous releases (Office Communications Server 2007) have been adopted quickly and have shown the power of bringing communication experiences together. However, until now, the Microsoft solution primarily worked along side an organization’s existing infrastructure. Lync Server 2010 delivers on key communications features to provide a rich conferencing solution that is also a stand-alone voice offering.
There are several ways to save money with Lync Server 2010, including:
Travel: Because it’s easier for people to connect virtually, travel can be reduced. Microsoft has reduced tens of millions of dollars in travel budgets over the last year.
Reservation-less audio conferencing: Microsoft does over 45 million minutes a month of reservation-less audio conferencing on its communications server infrastructure, saving more than $1 million per month.
Rationalizing telephony investments: With the delivery of Microsoft Lync, organizations can rationalize their investments in a PBX infrastructure.
Lync Server 2010 delivers:
Single client experience for audio, video, and Web conferencing
Enhanced 911 functionality
Survivable branch appliances to maximize user productivity in branch offices
More cost-effective options on devices: IP phones and common area phones from Aastra and Polycom
Call admission control for better bandwidth management
More features, such as call park and malicious call trace
Additional options for data center survivability, including branch office survivability through partner appliances such as Audiocodecs, Dialogic, Ferrari, HP, and NET
With these investments, Lync Server 2010 provides a complete offering in voice for customers looking to replace their PBX.
Ready to migrate all users from PBX to Communications Server?
Replace any or all PBX and create a complete UC solution
Not ready to take PBX phones away but still want to enjoy benefits of UC?
Enhance (compliment/overlay) the PBX
Not ready for VOIP or want to stay on current solution, but still want to take advantage of all the other features?
Add IM, Presence, and Conferencing to the PBX
Call Admission Control –
New Policy Server role in Lync 2010
Enforce policies on links between sites
Bandwidth available for audio, video
Maximum bandwidth allowed per session
Rerouting behavior when bandwidth limited exceeded
Internet overflow - Support failover of video sessions
Building Communication-enabled Business Processes
Microsoft Unified Communications provides you with an Enterprise grade, that is to say, a robust, secure and scalable, platform, which is highly extensible to fit all your custom needs.
Developers can efficiently develop applications on it because it leverages .NET to the fullest. Managed APIs abstract away most of the technical protocols, and just use simple to understand words that express what need to be done. And if a developer uses Visual Studio, the tools help simplify life even more.
Yet the most important part of what the platform enables are applications that are useful for customers like you.
Given that the Unified Communications space is relatively new, and so called Communications Enabled Business Processes are even less defined, we use a simple framework to discover what applications would be useful.
We distinguish three communications perspectives:
Contextual Collaboration or people to people communications
Business Process communications or machine to people communications
and
Anywhere Information Access or people to machine communications.
When we look at Contextual Collaboration there is a set of applications that deal with optimizing communications and collaboration between people. Person to Person Communications. Those applications typically run on the desktop or mobile device.
When you use UC the applications typically focus on streamlining communications between people. Seeing presence, seeing location (which is part of the presence) of people. Enabling click to call, so you do not need to move away from your application but can communicate right from within the application. Or enabling to provide context about the IM or call when you communicate with each other. We will show some example of that later in the presentation, but think of simple things like the toast showing the subject of the communication invite, or as sophisticated as starting the same application at both sides of a call.
All those people to people communications apps typically save minutes of time and make communications more rich. Plus can offer a great user experience that customers are familiar with, for Microsoft also implemented this in its software, such as Office, Exchange, and SharePoint.
The platform therefore enables three key scenarios:
Embedding enhanced presence in your application.
Enabling click to communicate (which is an IM or call or video call or app share) right from that presence indicator.
And the ability to extend the Conversation Window of Lync to show rich context at both ends of the conversation.
When we look at Business Process Communications, the three key application scenarios you can enable in your business applications are:
- Alerts and Notifications – the Microsoft UC platform can blast out huge amounts of notifications (up to 30000 IM notifications per minute for example).
- Dialing out to your customers, either triggered by the business process, or requested for by the customer, and then engage in an interactive dialog with those customers. E.g. to do a survey.
Expert Finders – finding the right person at the right time. If someone needs to approve something, have the software find someone who is authorized to do it and who has a presence state of available.
All these types of applications try to cut the human latency – bridge the gap between a wholly machine driven process and the people who need to take decisions.
When thinking about applications where people communicate with machines, the self service scenario comes to mind first.
Common scenarios in our anywhere information access ‘perspective’ are focused on self service:
Web Chat, both authenticated as well as anonymous.
Query Response bots, where people can ask questions to the bot via IM
Interactive Voice Response or IVR scenarios, where people can ask questions to the bot via the telephone and Microsoft offers built-in speech technology to understand and answer questions.
The nine applications above are of course not all you can do with the platform, but are the easiest to understand use cases.
Slide Objective:
Describe how Microsoft Unified Communications allows customers to integrate with existing investments and extend their communications platform to transform business processes.
Talking Points:
A unified communications platform based on the Microsoft Office system helps to extend investments and adapt to changing business needs.
Exchange and Lync embrace interoperability, across multiple workloads, so organizations can smoothly deploy and migrate their customers over time
Communications Server supports federation between Lync customers and with public IM networks such as Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo & Google Talk – this allows customers to connect to thousands of other Lync customers in a secure way and to reach over 500M public IM users
Lync Server also works with your existing PBX either through Direct SIP or qualified gateways
Conferencing interoperability is available so customers can integrate with their existing room based and high end video conferencing solutions – connecting the specific use rooms with every user in your organization with a video camera, which is becoming the default configuration for laptops in the consumer space today and is making its way into the enterprise.
And many service providers are providing SIP Trunking and other services that help organizations save costs. There are currently 10 qualified SIP Trunking vendors including Verizon, Swisscom, and Sprint.
Microsoft embraces interoperability – As a founding member and active participant of the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF), Microsoft is committed to enabling interoperability of UC hardware and software across enterprises, service providers, and consumer clouds.
See Appendix for more information on the following:
Integrate and Enhance Existing Investments
Offer Choice in Voice
Extend Communications to Business Processes
Experience Lync across platforms and devices
Slide Objective:
Introduce the investments to the Lync management infrastructure.
Communications Server Deployment Model
New System Model – Though we have always implicitly deployed Lync in Sites and Pool, it is now explicitly defined as the deployment model
Uses new Topology Builder to model your infrastructure
Global, Site and Per User Model for Policy application
Server Roles
Front End, Back End, Edge (for remote access), AV Conf (for over 10000 users), Exchange UM, SCOM
Optional – Mediation Server, Archiving, Monitoring, Director and Group Chat
Virtualization
All roles can be virtualized
Supporting infrastructure (SQL, Exchange, etc. are virtualized as per their guidelines and supportability stances)
Hyper-V Windows 2008 not supported, primarily due to the improvements in the R2 product around media in the virtualized environment.
Virtualization is supported on all platforms that have gone through the SVVP – see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006 for details on the program and third parties that have been certified
Central Management Store
The CMS provides a robust, schematized storage of the data needed to define, set up, maintain, administer, describe, and operate a Lync Server deployment. It also validates the data to ensure configuration consistency.
All changes to this configuration data happen at the central store, eliminating “out-of-sync” problems.
Read-only copies of the data are replicated to all servers in the topology, including Edge Servers.
To administer and manage servers and services, you use Lync Server Management Shell or the Lync Server Control Panel, which then makes the settings in the Central Management Store. Configuration changes are replicated to all the servers in your deployment by the Central Management Server, which runs on one Front End pool or one Standard Edition Server in your deployment.
Planning Tool/Topology Builder
Planning Tool allows you to build out your infrastructure visually Creating Sites/Pools/Edge/Conferencing information
Topology Builder can take your planning tool output and build out your topology. Topology Builder is where all configuration changes are made. This is then used by setups to configure your servers
PowerShell
No more WMI for Automation
Everything is driven through PowerShell
Control Panel
New Web based Admin Tool uses PowerShell as engine, replaces the old MMC
Role Based Access Control
New administration model for assigning WHO can do WHAT tasks and WHERE
Monitoring Improvements
Updated SCOM Packs to present more relevant alerts and actionable items.
Also updated synthetic transaction to allow for complete service monitoring
Active Directory Requirements
Windows 2003 FFL/DFL
No Single Label Domains
RODC “OK” but still need writable DC
Locked Down environments
Careful Consideration for permissions inheritance
DNS Requirements
Split Brain DNS recommended
Reduce Complexity for user logon names
Automatic Configuration made easy as logon name matches internal records
Lync 2010 requires that the domain of the target host match the domain of the user’s SIP URI
Certificate Infrastructure Requirements
Requires PKI to support TLS and MTLS connections
Leverage Windows Internal CA for internal PKI
Leverage Publically Trust External CA for external connections like Federation, BPOS, and PIC
High Availability requirements
DNS Load Balancing
Hardware Load Balancers
SQL Clusters
Branch Offices
Secondary Telephony Routes
AD Requirements
Network Requirements
QoS
Link Provisioning
Security (Firewall configuration and understanding Lync Ports)
- User adoption is KEY to success – people don’t like change so you need to start early and address concerns
If you ask for feedback from users and then DON’T implement, it will not send a good message
Pilot program is key – and don’t just use technical users! Involve everyone in your organization!
“center of excellence”model. Bring together peeps from multiple areas – IT ops, business apps, line of biz. Group provides guidance and direction for the plans
