Welcome to the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit!
The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit is a comprehensive technical resource for planning, deploying, maintaining, and troubleshooting Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. While the target audience for this Resource Kit is experienced IT professionals who work in medium- and large-sized organizations, anyone who wants to learn how to deploy, configure, support, troubleshoot, and develop for Office Communications Server 2007 will find this Resource Kit invaluable.
Within this Resource Kit, you'll find in-depth information and task-based guidance on managing all aspects of Office Communications Server 2007 including Instant Messaging, Web Conferencing with audio and video support, Remote Call Control, and Enterprise Voice. You'll be exposed to troubleshooting techniques and diagnostic tools to help you be successful in deploying and monitoring Office Communications Server. You'll also find numerous sidebars contributed by members of the Unified Communications product team and Microsoft consultants that provide deep insight into how Office Communications Server 2007 works, best practices for managing the platform, and invaluable troubleshooting tips. Finally, the Companion CD includes additional tools, worksheets, documentation, and over 100 sample Windows PowerShell functions that you can use and customize to help you automate various aspects of managing Office Communications Server 2007 in enterprise environments.
Office Communications Server 2007 is the successor to Microsoft's real-time communications server, Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1. To existing support for IM, presence, federation, and public IM connectivity, Communications Server 2007 adds the following capabilities.
Enterprise voice As Microsoft's software-powered VoIP solution, Office Communications Server 2007 provides a flexible, economical, full-featured alternative to hardware-based VoIP offerings. Enterprise Voice can be deployed in various scenarios, ranging from greenfield deployments to full integration with existing PBX installations.
On-premise Web conferencing Office Communications Server 2007 offers an alternative to Microsoft's existing online conferencing service, Office Live Meeting. Like Live Meeting, Office Communications Server 2007 on-premise Web conferencing supports slide presentations, whiteboarding, application sharing, and other familiar real-time collaboration features. A single Live Meeting console serves as client for both on-premise and online conferencing. On-premise Web conferencing also supports inviting partners, consultants, and other outside users who lack enterprise credentials to participate in conferences.
Multiparty IM Office Communications Server 2007 makes it possible to add new participants to an existing IM conversation and to escalate a conversation on the fly to an on-premise, audio/video Web conference.
Enhanced presence Office Communications Server 2007 enables users to optionally expose more detailed contact information to selected watchers and to assign various groups of watchers permissions to view different sets of presence information.
Improved federation support Office Communications Server 2007 makes federation at once easier to manage and more secure.
The above features dramatically raise the bar for unified communications solutions in the enterprise. At the same time, they represent new vulnerabilities that Office Communications Server 2007 addresses in a variety of ways.