Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Remote telephony. In LCS 2005, if you want to work remotely and use A/V, data sharing, or remote access, you must first connect through your VPN. This requirement is necessary because these features are intended to be point-to-point, and they can't be proxied via the LCS 2005 Access Proxy. Because public IM services already provided these functions, improving upon this area was important when Microsoft replaced LCS 2005 with OCS 2007. However, you still need yet another edge server. Whether the Edge Server role can (or will) coexist with LCS 2005's Access Proxy server role is yet to be determined—but it must if you want to provide Live Meeting, A/V, or telephony support for remote users.

If connectivity "at the edge" works as intended, the Edge Server role will be a major victory for Microsoft. One area that will become clear over time is how the quality of a call that's routed through the Internet via the edge server is affected, especially when multiple users are hitting the gateway at once. According to Microsoft, a high-quality two-way (dual stream) call requires approximately 80Kbps of bandwidth. Multiply that by 20 simultaneous calls, and you could have some congestion on your Internet pipe.

A Force to Be Reckoned With
When Microsoft releases it, OCS 2007 will be a force to be reckoned with. The previous LCS presence capabilities have been greatly improved, and the voice capabilities have a lot of promise. Although certain features still need improvement from the beta version (mainly related to administration and scalability), OCS 2007's one-stop-shopping approach to presence, collaboration, voice, video, and conferencing will make the product more of a "need" than a "want." With OCS 2007, Microsoft deftly reigns in the current silos of communication, putting the rest of the UC world on notice.