Dear Ståle Hansen, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Lync technical communities during the past year.

I feel very honored to be part of this outstanding community and I want to mention the MVP Summit as a highlight of the experience. With all the cool things happening around Lync, Office and Windows 8 I look forward to contribute to the community the coming year as well.

Resources

About the MVP Award Program
Lync MVP Awardees
MVPs.org community site
Microsoft MVP FAQ

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

• Telephony with Lync on the Nordic market
• Lync Server 2010 Mobile Clients

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

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.

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?

• Oslo: http://www.finn.no/finn/job/fulltime/object?finnkode=31571479
• Drammen: http://www.finn.no/finn/job/fulltime/object?finnkode=31771272
• Bodø: http://www.finn.no/finn/job/fulltime/object?finnkode=31395958

Why is Atea the best UC team in Norway?

• Atea is Microsoft Unified Communication Partner of the Year Norway four times in a row
• Atea focus on more than Microsoft UC, we have great teams within Cisco, Avaya, Aastra, CIC, Trio, Competella, Telenor and TeliaSonera
• Atea focus on and have the ability to deliver best of breed solutions across multiple platforms

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

- 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

• Since I replaced my DVD tray with an additional hard drive I created a bootable USB stick and ran the installation from that
  • Se here how to: http://www.mydigitallife.info/windows-7-usbdvd-download-tool-creates-and-makes-bootable-dvd-disc-or-usb-flashhard-drive-from-iso-image/
• After the OS was installed I started adapting the Server OS to work more like a workstation
• I installed Windows 7 drivers downloaded from the web, everything installed as expected
• Followed two good guides regarding converting the Server OS to a Workstation OS
  • http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/
  • http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2008/02/21/windows-server-2008-as-workstation.aspx
• After finishing the guides my Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 worked as i wanted it to with Aero and all drivers present
• Now I was ready to install all my tools and Microsoft programs like Outlook and Lync, my primary collaboration tools.
• Tested Lync HD Video and approved the quality
• I want to mention one site that has made it easy to install all the necessary add-on applications all at once
  • http://ninite.com/

Installing the Hyper-V role

• Since Hyper-V disables hibernation and sleep I needed a way to adapt this with some manual tweaks
• Found two good articles on this
  • http://old.markharrison.co.uk/blog/2008/09/sleep-hibernate-with-hyper-v.htm
  • http://arjunachith.blogspot.com/2010/06/enable-hibernate-and-sleep-with-hyper-v_05.html
• I ended up doing the following as a workaround and enabling sleep and hibernate
  • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hvboot]“Start”=dword:00000003
  • Reboot
  • Open a command prompt, type “powercfg.exe /hibernate on” to enable hibernation
• After each reboot sleep and hibernation is available untill I start Hyper-V with the following command
  • net start hvboot
• I also needed to enable Hyper-V to be able to use my wireless for internet
  • Here’s the workaround: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/09/using-hyper-v-with-a-wireless-network-adapter.aspx

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

• http://www.synergyonline.com/blog/blog-moss/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=21
• http://www.energizedtech.com/2011/03/using-powershell-to-auto-start.html

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

Here is what Gartner has to say about Microsoft in their article

Microsoft

Cautions

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

• 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