March first 2010 Telenor TSOC discovered that a new worm was on the loose on Windows Live Messenger. This time it is in your native language and therefor the probability of users actually clicking on the link is much greater. The worm sends a link from one of your contacts in MSN and if you click it a trojan will be downloaded to your PC and install itself. This is a huge risk for businesses that allow users to use Windows Live Messenger in their company network. If one PC get compromised in the internal network the possibility for it infecting other PC’s is even greater. This is one of the main reasons to implement OCS 2007 R2 as the only business solution for chat. Some arguments are:
Encrypted internal chat solution
All traffic stay inside you organization
Can federate and chat with other organizations in a secure manner
Can add global rules for blocking links, file transfers and unpatched clients
Can add MSN contacts and be sure that messages with links is blocked server-side
In addition to secure chat OCS gives the businesses the ability to implement Unified Communications and is therefore way more than just a chat client.
About this trojan
First you get a message from one of you contacts saying, seen this?? :D and it links to hxxp://www.facebook-c.com/image.php?Photo023girl.JPG. The trojan adapts to the language on the computer and will display the text in you native language. In norwegian it will be se på dette bildet :D with the link following. The link points to a site at Yahoo and so the links was live for a day or two. It still was a huge security risk. The trojan is written in Visual Basic and executes a C++ program. It installed itself as c:\windows\winmbu.exe and granted itself access through the local firewall. The program gave the owner of the trojan access to
Communication with C&C over the IRC protocol
Sending of messages over MSN and Yahoo messenger
Download and run files on the infected computer
At release date only 13 of 41 antivirus products detected this file. So even with an updated antivirus on the local computer 69% of the antivirus solutions would not have detected it.
I am pleaced to announce that a OCS solution I designed and deployed is featured as an Official Microsoft Reference. It is an Enterprise Voice solution based on SIP-Trunk and delivers voice to 12 locations. We competed against a phone solution purely based on mobile phones with a netcentric call center solution. The customer wanted single number reach using the mobile phone as the only number and simple management.
With OCS we could deliver:
PSTN delivered over SIP-Trunk using Telenor as vendor
Mobile phone number as the only number shown when dialing from OCS
Dual Fork when calling the mobile number
Presence status delivered from mobile phone network directly integrated with OCS, without the use of the Communicator client
Dial-in Conferencing
Response Groups
Attendant Console
The bonus was the full Unified Communications solution that was delivered with OCS, wich the other solution did not have, with presence, chat, video and collaboration across multiple locations.
The customer was very pleased with the solution and it works as intended. The article is in norwegian, but one thing to note is that the customer appreciate the simplicity of administering OCS as a telephony solution vs a regular PBX because it’s Microsoft, it’s based on AD and they can manage and update it themselves.
Found this YouTube video from Microsoft Summit 2009 in Sweden that explains very well what Unified Communications is and what it can do for a customer. Take a look, the clip is in swedish
Gartner updated their magic quadrant for Unified Communications september 1st, 2009. It is always interesting to see what Gartner has to say about the UC market. It is good to see that Microsoft still is in the lead followed closely by Cisco and IBM. I often use this in presentations at seminars to explain some of the reason why we promote Microsoft as the UC vendor of choice. Here is an excerpt from the article.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s UC solution is based on Exchange Server, OCS, and Active Directory. Microsoft also has strategic partnerships in specific areas, such as live voice/IP-PBX and conference bridges, and a growing set of major system integration and channel partners.
Strengths
The OCS Pilot and Lighthouse programs have allowed Microsoft to increase OCS voice and audioconferencing deployments, despite the slow economy. Through these programs Microsoft, its partners, and its channels have gained experience with the OCS solution. As a result, while the UC solution remains in the early stage in key areas, it is making progress and is being deployed to more sites and to larger numbers of users.
Exchange UM continues to gain acceptance and maturity in the market. Deployments have expanded beyond smaller (fewer than 2,000 subscribers), into the midsize (2,000 to 5,000 subscribers), with a few deployments in the very large (10,000 plus subscribers) market.
Microsoft’s historic strength in several UC areas, combined with promising emerging initiatives, results in significant potential. Historically strong areas include clients (desktop, Web and mobile clients), e-mail, collaboration (IM, presence, Web-conferencing, and SharePoint). Emerging areas include increased visibility of SIP trunks from carriers and from IP-PBX providers, significant new end-to-end UC solution providers, such as HP, and increased presence in contact centers.
Enterprises looking into UC, particularly those with Microsoft applications already in place, should understand the Microsoft portfolio, because it represents a new paradigm for communication by a market leader. Microsoft’s solution, while comprehensive, is also the basis for a range of partner offerings.
Cautions
The telephony functionality in OCS remains in the early stage. Although these have made progress in the last year, they are not yet competitive with best-of-breed products. Enterprise planners should understand their limitations before committing to expanded deployments. Planners should anticipate that clear, accurate material explaining the products and how to support them is sometimes lacking.
While the UM component of Exchange has gained acceptance, it has limitations, including requiring an Exchange 2007 upgrade, third-party PBX integrations for trunks and alerts like message waiting notification (MWI), it requires an e-mail license for all users, even those who only want voice mail, and only one form of telephone user interface (TUI).
Microsoft’s OCS audioconferencing and videoconferencing product set has expanded its interoperability and endpoint support abilities this year, but these functions remain new and have not yet been proved in the market.
Many of the OCS communication functions, such as telephony, video and public switched telephone network (PSTN) integration, require solution integrators and employees with different skills than many firms presently have. Planners should ensure that their providers and internal staff have relevant experience in key areas.
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications
Source: Gartner 2009
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate UC product providers based on the quality, efficacy and overall maturity of the products, systems, tools and procedures that enhance individual, group and enterprise communications. Ultimately, UC providers are judged on their ability and success in capitalizing on their vision (see Table 1).
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria
Weighting
Product or Service
high
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy and Organization)
high
Sales Execution/Pricing
standard
Market Responsiveness and Track Record
standard
Marketing Execution
standard
Customer Experience
standard
Operations
standard
Source: Gartner (September 2009)
Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate UC product providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical statements about current and future market directions, innovations, customer needs and competitive forces, and how well these map to Gartner’s overall understanding of the marketplace. Ultimately, UC product providers are rated on their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunities for providers and their clients (see Table 2).
Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria
Found a post by Mark Fugatt about some great material on UC and OCS. “UC How To” is a great tool that I find useful for pilot users in my deployments. Since the tool is in Englishit will not suffice as the training tool in a production deployment for my Norwegian customers, but it is a great resource. The Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2 is a great resource for deploying an UC solution in production and gives tips about how to go about and inform the users etc.
UC How To The Microsoft Unified Communications “How-To” training tool is a Microsoft Silverlight™ 2 application that provides step-by-step instructions for common UC tasks. You can customize the How-To application to your company’s needs based on the UC features you’ve installed. For example, if you have installed all UC features except Communicator Mobile and Communicator Group Chat, you can modify the XML file so that those features and topics do not appear in the interface. Web version can be found here: http://stage.xcarab.com/microsoft/rolodex/
Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2 The Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit for 2007 R2 provides guidance and resources for IT Pros, Helpdesk, and Trainers to speed adoption and usage of Unified Communications technologies in the enterprise. The kit includes Planning Checklists, Awareness materials, including Poster, Door Hangers, and E-mail samples, and User Education Materials such as Quick Reference Cards, Flash Cards, and links to Web-based Training.
I saw this great post over at nojitter.com. It was about how to implement UC successfully in a business. See the conclusion below
To sum up, in order to motivate end users to use their UC capabilities, begin the process with a sponsorship team and head cheerleader, get your CXOs to set an example, get users throughout the organization excited about UC, and provide the training necessary to encourage proper usage of the solution
Here is the video of the Microsoft keynote speaker at VoiceCon 2009. It is always interesting to hear what is important to focus on in the time that comes.
March first 2010 Telenor TSOC discovered that a new worm was on the loose on Windows Live Messenger. This time it is in your native language and therefor the probability of users actually clicking on the link is much greater. The worm sends a link from one of your contacts in MSN and if you click it a trojan will be downloaded to your PC and install itself. This is a huge risk for businesses that allow users to use Windows Live Messenger in their company network. If one PC get compromised in the internal network the possibility for it infecting other PC’s is even greater. This is one of the main reasons to implement OCS 2007 R2 as the only business solution for chat. Some arguments are:
