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Technical blog about Exchange, OCS and Lync by Ståle Hansen

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Slides and videos from my Lync sessions on NIC2012 are now available

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 16/01/2012

This year Nordic Infrastructure Conference (NIC) arranged for the first time. I am really honored to be considered to speak at an international conference and together with so many great speakers that I look up to. Speakers like Brian Komar, Johan Arwidmark, Martin Lidholm, Olav Tvedt, Thomas Lee and many others attended and I enjoyed their sessions. See list of speakers here: http://www.nic2012.com/nic2012_agenda/speakers. My sessions where about Lync Server 2010 troubleshooting and integrations. I enjoyed speaking there even though my spoken english is not the best, I think I got the points accross :) View the videos from NIC: http://www.nic2012.com/nic2012_agenda

Lync Server 2010 Troubleshooting

The goal of this session is to help you understand what troubleshooting tools that are at your disposal and will show them in an actual scenario. When troubleshooting a solution as Lync Server 2010 it is smart to know how things work as well. Therefore this session will also touch upon how the Lync SIP server works and what the Lync Edge server actually is.

View the video and download the slides

Lync Server 2010 Integrations

This session will take a look at all the differente integrations with Lync Server 2010 and how they play out. Expect to get a good overview of the possibilities available to enhance the experience of Lync. This session will not contain that many demos but will focus on pros and cons with the different types of integrations.

View the video and download the slides

Also take a look at the other Lync sessions by Martin Lidholm

I also did a Flash Talk at the Microsoft Booth demonstrating how to roll out Custom Presence States using Set-CsClientPolicy and also how to set it in registry

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

Virtual Technical Solution Professional (V-TSP) at Microsoft Norway

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 02/01/2012

In january 2012 I became a Virtual Technical Solution Professional (V-TSP) at Microsoft Norway. Virtual means that I am still employed by Atea but work closely with the local Microsoft team.

My role as a V-TSP is to provide technology overviews, proofs-of-concept, technical demonstrations, and technology assessments for Microsoft customers. The V-TSP program demands that the partner have the gold competency and that the provided resource is highly skilled and certified within the area of expertise.

I am really looking forward to work even more closely with Microsoft and make sure their customers implement Microsoft Lync and the Unfied Communications proftfolio to the fullest by combining the broad best-of-breed UC technologies from Atea together with Microsoft.

Here is some information I found regarding the V-TSP program

The Microsoft Virtual Technology Specialist Program (V-TSP) is a select group chosen from the elite in Microsoft’s partner community, whose focus is to augment Microsoft’s internal Technology Specialist team. Their primary role is to communicate the value of Microsoft Solutions to customers and to provide architectural guidance for Enterprise Integration solutions. The Microsoft V-TSP program was designed to create a deeper relationship with Microsoft Partners, the Product Teams at Microsoft Corporate, and Regional Microsoft Offices, in order to provide highly skilled solution specialists to Microsoft customers. It is designed to enable a high performance team of partner-based resources to deliver pre-sale activities and resources to empower customers and help them meet their solution and integration needs.

V-TSPs are chosen by Microsoft because of their superior architectural, development, consulting, and customer interfacing skills. Microsoft utilizes these type of individuals in partnership with the Microsoft regional Offices, in pre-sales efforts to secure Microsoft solution opportunities. This includes meeting with Microsoft customers, participating in customer visits with Microsoft representatives, as well as, participating in broad reach events like presenting training and seminars to Microsoft customers.

Microsoft V-TSPs have direct access to online resources and documentation and resources that are usually solely reserved for the Microsoft internal teams. They also have early access to extensive information about all new Microsoft product releases, which benefit Atea and Microsoft customers.

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Want to work with Lync and Exchange and be a part of the best UC team in Norway?

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 12/11/2011

Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Exchange consultants from Atea are in big demand these days and we need to add more skillful hands. In Norway Atea seeks consultants, architects and advisors that want to work with Lync and Exchange in the Oslo area, Drammen area and Bodø area

Why work with Lync and Exchange in Atea?

  • Atea strive to always deliver best practice deployments
  • There are about thirty active consultants with Lync and Exchange as their primary focus placed all over the country
  • Some of the consultants have worked with Microsoft UC as their primary focus since Live Communications Server 2005
  • We have an active internal community that share knowledge internally using SharePoint 2010 and strive to help each other as best we can
  • Atea encourage consultants to be active within the global Microsoft community through forums, blogging, presenting and user groups

Who should apply?

  • You want to deep dive and focus on becoming a valuable resource within Lync and Exchange
  • You are always looking for new challenges and want to work with a variety of deployments from simple to complex
  • You want to learn from some of the best Lync consultants in Norway
  • You aim for Certified Master within Lync or Exchange
  • You are familiar with PowerShell scripting

Where to apply?

Why is Atea the best UC team in Norway?

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Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications 2011

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 25/08/2011

August 11 2011 Gartner released the yearly Magic Quadrant for 2011 for the Unified Communications Segment. Here is a short summary of the report

The trend within Unified Communications (UC)

  • The Enterprise UC market has matured significantly since the previous report
  • The vendors now have
    - Seamless interoperability within the suite
    - The administration is more centralized
    - The deployment is even more easy than before
  • Gartner recommends to mix vendors for best-of-breed functionality
  • Single vendor still achieves acceptable functionality

The Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications 2011

Analysis: What has happened since last year?
Compare with last years post: http://msunified.net/2010/08/09/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-unified-communications-2010/

  1. Microsoft is still in the lead having the vision and being able to execute on it
    • Releasing Lync has strengthened their telephony offering
    • Office 365 with Lync Online have given them an edge in the UCaaS segment
    • The Skype acquisition will improve the Lync family offering even more
  2. Cisco is closer than ever
    • Got a more integrated approach with their UC 8.x release
    • Successfully integrated Tandberg with existing telepresence solution
  3. Avaya has the same position as last year
    • Improved on existing functionality
    • Added the Flare gesture oriented user interface
  4. Alcatel-Lucent have jumped from challenger to the leader quadrant
    • Advanced their portfolio and have to prove that they can deliver
  5. Siemens Enterprise Communications has taken a minor step from visionary to a visionary leader
    • Advanced their portfolio and have to prove that they can deliver

My take on this

As a Microsoft Unified Communications Architect it is good to see that the vendor of my primary focus is the market leader. I agree that Lync was a big step regarding voice and that Lync Online will be a good extension of Lync on-premise. Working in Atea we focus on vendor interoperability. Having even more vendors in the leader quadrant makes it equally more difficult for our customers to find the best solution.

Gartner says:“Using multiple vendors to offer users best-of-breed functionality in all UC areas, will also allow migration of existing investments”

This statement is very true and will demand an even broader vendor focus from the partners implementing UC. I am happy that Atea have this broad scope of competency and can design and deploy best-of-breed functionality based on Microsoft, Cisco and Avaya combined with third-party solutions.

Here is what Gartner says about Microsoft

Lync 2010 offers a full suite of UC functionality. Although the real-time functions in Lync — including voice, telephony, video and related conferencing — are not as mature as other functions (such as IM/P and Web conferencing, email and UM), they have improved significantly over the previous version, which was known as Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Microsoft has developed a strong
set of technology and service partners that offer a growing ecosystem.

Microsoft offers a visionary approach for addressing enterprise communication and collaboration requirements. Enterprises looking into UC should consider the Microsoft solution and, at a minimum, understand the vision and how solutions of this type might change their business processes. Enterprises considering deploying Lync telephony and video should understand its limitations and infrastructure requirements.

Strengths
  • Microsoft has had an impressive and growing list of Lync and Exchange UM deployments, from small (fewer than 300) to midsize to very large (more than 10,000) enterprises, in both centralized and distributed configurations. Although a few of the deployments report that they have completely eliminated their PBXs, most current deployments use Lync for some employees, while other employees and functions remain on the PBX. Microsoft’s pending Skype acquisition offer, along with the Lync Online and the Office 365 cloud service offerings, suggest that Lync will mature as a comprehensive and hybrid UC product.
  • Companies report that, once deployed, Lync functions can be integrated into business processes and applications, providing new, different and effective ways to perform tasks. In some cases, these new functions are achieved by deploying Lync enhancements from a growing list of ecosystem partners.
  • Microsoft has better positioned Lync to compete in telephony markets by adding several partner telephone handsets, by bundling of basic Lync functions in the Core client access license (CAL) and by offering a specific Lync Voice CAL.
Cautions
  • Enterprise planners should understand that Lync’s telephony and video functionality is new and has seen fewer deployments than traditional PBX vendors. As a result, in many cases, a phased or trial deployment approach may be an effective way to ensure that the system and the underlying network provide the needed functionality, quality and performance.
  • Most enterprises that integrate Lync with existing PBXs have done so via direct SIP trunking. Gartner research indicates that there are few reports of successful deployments based on a tight client-side or server-side integration. The difficulty is likely to result from the newness of the solution and the competitiveness of the UC market.
  • Although the bundling associated with Lync 2010 is positive for addressing basic users, Microsoft needs to support more integrations with front-office capabilities, such as contact center and switchboard functionality, to develop this product as an overall replacement for legacy communications infrastructures.

Read the full report here: http://www.gartner.com/technology/streamReprints.do?id=1-1728DMD&ct=110823&st=sb
Also read a good review here: http://www.ucstrategies.com/Gartner_UC_Magic_Quadrant_2011.aspx
Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications: UC integration improves: http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/news/2240074737/Magic-Quadrant-for-Unified-Communications-UC-integration-improves

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Installing Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V as LAB and UC workstation

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 12/07/2011

Last week I got a new laptop (workstation), it was quite an upgrade from my previous machine sporting

- 16 GB memory
- Intel i7 quadcore
- Builtin HD cam
- 120 GB SSD

Wanting to convert it to the a powerful tool for my UC labs and my UC workshop I thought maybe installing Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and use it as my desktop OS. After all Server 2008 R2 share the same basecode as Windows 7. This will enable me taking advantage of all the cool server roles that are available on this platform and at the same time not installing unnecessary features. My main motivation was getting some hands-on Hyper-V and using it as my virtualization platform. Figured that would make it simpler to take advantage of the Lync labs available by Microsoft and some of my own.

Wanting to check if at all feasible I asked an open question on Twitter:

  • StaleHansen: Is there any use of installing Server 2008 on my Laptop workstation? Thinking about utilizing Hyper-V for lab’s #Server2008 #HyperV #mvpbuzz
    • bartsurminski: You can configure server 2008 r2 to act as a fully configured workstation and use Hyper-V  http://t.co/1kPBAD5
    • tomarbuthnot: Server on laptop works fine. Just no hibernation with hyper-v. In the end VMware workstation wins for me
  • StaleHansen: Thanks for the tip, but do you have sleep? Use that a lot today.
    • tomarbuthnot: No sleep with hyper-v. All power stuff disabled. Also VMware wrkstn does all a/v sharing the hardware. Tried both, vmw For me
    • gusfraser: Tried both. Win7 for hibernation & either VMWare or VirtualBox work for me. 2008 tips here http://t.co/9TJ2kml

After this conversation I found out two things

  1. Twitter works!
  2. It is doable, but need to be aware of hibernation limitation when using Hyper-V

I decided I would try, and reinstall if it was a fail. I started searching around the web for how to go about this and found a lot of good resources in addition to the ones from Twitter.

Here is my install path for Installing Server 2008 R2 as my lab and UC workstation

Installing the Hyper-V role

I have run this configuration a couple of days now and are still enjoying it. Especially enjoy dynamic memory management and having Microsoft’s full hypervizor at my fingertips when working and doing lab’s

I am also looking into using PowerShell to start the Hyper-V service and control my VM’s. Found these resources to start me in the right direction

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service 2010

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 06/01/2011

Gartner released their Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) 2010 december 2010. This is the second time they release a MQ for this segment. They say it is a market that is in a maturity phase and will continue to change in the coming years. No participants are in the Leaders quadrant this year.

UCaaS is a cloud-based delivery of integrated communications capabilities spanning voice, messaging, conferencing and presence. Businesses should view UCaaS as an emerging alternative to premises-based UC platforms for improving productivity, processes and workflow.

Microsoft is a challenger with its BPOS offering. With Office 365 maybe they can become a leader in the UCasS market as they can offer Lync Online and Office Online in addition to Exchange and Sharepoint. Some of the major improvements in Lync Online is

  • Federation is now possible allowing collaboration with federated contacts
  • Combine Lync Online with On-Premise deployment as you can with Exchange 2010
  • Access to the Lync 2010 client is a benefit in it self

Read the full report here: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol14/article13/article13.html

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications 2010

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 09/08/2010

Gartner updated their magic quadrant for Unified Communications July 2010. 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 Avaya. As we can se from 2009 to 2010 is that Microsoft is still in the lead while IBM has been reduced to a challenger. Cisco and Avaya has gotten a clearer UC message and are following Microsoft closely. 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 what Gartner has to say about Microsoft in their article

Microsoft

Microsoft’s UC solution is based on Exchange Server, OCS and Active Directory. Microsoft has strategic partnerships with Aspect and HP, along with a large and growing set of partnerships for gateways, survivable branch appliances, IP phones, audioconferencing service providers and SIP trunking, along with major system integrators and channel partners. OCS also integrates with collaboration and business applications like SharePoint. The same OCS and Exchange application is also used for Microsoft’s online collaboration suite, Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS).

Strengths
  • Microsoft OCS 2010 R2 has seen year-over-year increased adoption for voice and audioconferencing, and now states that it has 100-plus deployments of over 2,000 telephony users. The next release of OCS, Microsoft Communication Server “14,” scheduled for this calendar year, will add several critical telephony functions.
  • 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. In Exchange Server 2010, calendar access is integrated with the UM telephone interface, as is text-to-speech rendering of audio messages.
  • Microsoft’s historic strength in collaboration and desktops, combined with promising, emerging real-time communications, results in significant potential. 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 Microsoft’s broad UCC paradigm. When considering telephony specifically, OCS can be deployed in different configurations, depending on enterprise directions and requirements. It can be deployed with a PBX so that both are in parallel use for telephony, or it can be deployed to perform nontelephony functions, leaving telephony to the IP-PBX. As OCS matures in 2011, OCS may be able to perform complete stand-alone telephony services.


Cautions

  • The telephony functionality in OCS 2007 R2 remains in the early stage, and OCS has not yet been proved as a complete telephony displacement. Enterprise planners should understand that OCS 2007 R2 has limitations, and should carefully evaluate some critical newer features in the forthcoming version of OCS, such as call admission control and E911.
  • 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 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.
  • Currently, OCS offers an attractive initial price point for bundled communications and collaboration; however, voice capabilities will be priced separately in subsequent releases. Although some users will be allowed grandfathered pricing, others may see the competitive price advantage of the OCS bundle disappear.

Link to the full article: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article19/article19.html

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

New trojan on MSN March 2010

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 18/03/2010

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.

Link to official article in norwegian: http://telenorsoc.blogspot.com/2010/03/trojaner-spres-via-msn-messenger.html
Link to the antivirus protection overview: http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/89c677bc0044864d80244aee8201661e79f431f33c3b164aa778f363fe1cf9da-1267474859

Posted in UCC | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Official Microsoft OCS Reference

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 14/02/2010

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.

Check out the Official Microsoft Reference here: http://www.microsoft.no/msno/MSNO_CR/web/CompanyDetails.aspx?id=168

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Unified Communications Explained

Posted by Ståle Hansen on 07/10/2009

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

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