UC Wave 14 - Exchange and OCS 2010

The “Wave 14″ OCS release which I’ve heard called Office Communications Server 2010 is planned for 2010. Exchange 2010 which is part of the Wave 14 UC products has been released in November 2009. The official press pass notice can be seen here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/nov09/11-09techedeurope09pr.mspx. We have been trying it out in our labs so watch this space for updates on Exchange 2010.

In terms of OCS 2010, is planned for the second half of the year in 2010. In March 2010, beta testing will begin for OCS R2 ready partners. From what I have heard, the new version will have the following features:

• Capable of being a full PBX replacement
• New “Branch Survivability” features for branch office locations
• Emergency 911 support which I get the feeling will suit the US market (I don't feel that the E911 support will be beneficial to EU customers as the E911 notification works slightly different in Europe)
• PSTN Failover mechanism and
• Analog Device Support to support legacy devices in common areas such as reception areas

In a joint statement, Microsoft did announce the depreciation of RCC (remote call control). More information on the new OCS version will follow soon.

In a seperate post on networkworld, John Fontana calls it the PBX killer. The link to that can be seen here: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/041509-microsoft-ocs-voice-cal.html.

Cisco and Microsoft Interoperability Statement

After a long wait finally Cisco and Microsoft heard the cries from partners and customers and jointly release an interoperability statement.

Both vendors have different UC approaches and many customers are interested and how they work together and what is supported and what not.
The joint statement can be downloaded or seen from these websites: download that statement on the Microsoft site and the same document from the Cisco site.

The scenarios discussed are direct SIP conenction and RCC scenarios. It is always handy to regularly check the inter-operability site for OCS which can be found here: Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program (UCOIP).

Thanks