NET UX2000 gateway tested by Miercom, certified secure

The NET UX2000, or Unified Exchange 2000 gateway, was recently tested by Miercom under the Certified Secure program. The UX2000 gateway is already a qualified Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) for Microsoft Lync. The UX2000 successfully pasted a battery of vulnerability analyses and scans with a complex set of exploits designed to challenge the capabilities of the product. The report can be found here: http://www.miercom.com/?url=reports/&v=114&tf=0&st=v

 

 

Weekend skydiving and Tennis

On Saturday, I was off for indoor skydiving.

Wow, that was an adeneline rush. The air speed in the wind tunnel was about 190+ km/h. For me personally - the wind speed was 196kmph and I was in the tunnel in the "box position". Box meaning forming of a box with your hands and feet. That is the position a person is in when skydiving. I learnt to turn and steer. It is really amazing to think that with winds that speed, a slight hand or leg movement will cause you to change position and do something different. What was funny is that if you stretched your legs out - then you actually went forward and when you bent your legs, then you went backwards.

It was really fun and will definitely do that again!

On Sunday, I played some tennis outside on clay courts. Normally I am used to harder tennis courts and the game is much faster however on the weekend, the game seemed slow because of the clay. The balls seemed like then did not want to bounce at times and that at times challenged my judgement.

Nothing is funnier than being surprised by a bouncing tennis ball. My tennis serve still needs a lot of working however I think the rest of my game is fairly OK. Just have tad bits of body pain however nothing serious. Definitely need to do these activities more often :)

Cricket world cup surprises..... and on with the semi's

Hi,

Had a wonderful weekend, the weather was great and also got the time for some sport. Not only watching but also doing myself - although that was fun too especially with the cricket world cup going on in India. The games were shocking.......

The first quarter final game Pakistan battered the Windies by 10 wickets. 10 wickets and 175 balls to spare!!!! That is like playing only half the game. With the Windies only making 112 - it was always going to be an easy score to chase.

The second quarter was a humdinger with India on home grounds against the favourites, the Aussies.  The Aussies hit a fairly good score of 260 however India got to that total fairly easily with 14 balls to spare. The third was with SA and NZ. Disappointing!! SA made an early exit - totally unexpected and shocking!!! Beaten by NZ and you bet that "CHOKED" was in the headlines. Was really sad however the boys did not play well at all.

The last one was with another surprise was with Sri Lanka and England. I expected England to win however Sri Lanka stream rolled them. I noticed on one blogpost that the guy called it "the mother of all spankings". England sent home and Sir Lanka played an outstanding game. Both openers made their 100's as they walked away with a brilliant win.

This sets up the stage of 2 great semi-final games. Sri Lanka will take on NZ and India will play Pakistan. Nail biting games and I get the feeling that it’s going to be India and Sri Lanka in the finals. Wednesday we will know who with world cup winners are...

Facebook buys Beluga

Hi,

I was interested to see that Facebook, king of social networks, has acquired Beluga. Beluga offers mobile apps and services that enable instant messaging across mobile devices.
This is an exciting time because from this it is clear that the realm of social computing is going across to the mobile devices. Smart move considering that the most teenages prefer sending sms's than calling. With millios of people having facebook accounts and even more having mobile phones - this is gonna extend the reach of Facebook to be everywhere.  

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Protocol Workloads Poster

Get the Lync Server 2010 Protocol Workloads Poster from here: Download

Telecom Expo 2011

This year the telecom expo takes place in Jaarbeurs Utrecht on the 8th and 9th December 2010. This will be the 7^thyear of this event.

 

The Telecom Expo is a dedicated trade fair in Benelux. This trade show is for telecom managers, ICT managers and other decision makers with a management responsibility for networking and infrastructure equipment and services in medium sized and corporate enterprises and other large organizations in the Benelux market. TelecomExpo focuses on fixed, mobile and wireless communications and emphasizes on companies that integrate these products and services in present and future corporate voice and data services and solutions.

See here for more information: http://www.telecomexpo.nl/

 

Lync FAQ

Hi,

I came acorss the post from Network world on a Lync frequently asked questions and I thought it would bo good to post here. Some of the questions I have placed below:

According to the post Lync is Microsoft's replacement for Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2. However I feel that its much more - this release is a software based PBX solution and has loads of nifty collaboration . More details on this further in this post.

Lync includes Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Lync 2010 client, Lync Web App client and Lync Online, which is a hosted UC service. It would be interesting to see how Lync evolves on the cloud especially with Office 365 be launched.

How is the compatibility between OCS and Lync? Important for migration and tranition scenarios for existing customers. The Lync Server 2010 can talk to OCS 2007 clients however Lync clients cannot talk to the OCS Server 2007 R2. This means that customers during their transition could adopt Lync Server 2010 and continue to use OCS 2007 clients. But if they try to use the new clients with the older OCS 2007 R2 server, they won't interoperate.

What are the major management differences in features between Lync and OCS?
Lync introduces a new management server for Microsoft's UC and collaboration platform. The server is called Central Management Server, and it removes settings for Live Communications Server and Office Communications Server from Active Directory so customers don't have to change the AD schema. The new server is meant to make deployment less daunting.

How does Lync improve on 911 capabilities? Lync supports E911 so emergency responders can fix the location of callers using Lync. OCS did not support E911. This feature is beneficial to those in North America.

What is a Survivable Branch Appliance? Lync Server 2010 has the capability to switch the WAN links used to carry communications among branches of a business. If the primary IP link fails, the Survivable Branch Appliance reconnects the branch with the outer world via the traditional public switched phone network. These gateways are made by third parties such as Audiocodes, Dialogic, NET, to name a few.
And lastly, What are the alternatives? Microsoft competes with the likes of Avaya, Cisco and IBM in unified communications. Lets be honest here - when it comes to collaboration - Microsoft out performs the other vendors and the PBX vendors are mainly focused on.....well the PBX itself.

Microsoft Lync Launch

Hi,

Microsoft have renamed Microsoft OCS to Lync. Microsoft Lync is the new family brand name for the products previously known as Communications Server, Communications Online and Communicator, and now it also includes Lync Web App, and Lync Online.
The Lync platform promises to change the way businesses do business by integrating a range of existing communications and collaboration technologies and Microsoft have shown some innovating scenarios on the virtual launch of Lync. The worldwide virtual launch was on the 17th November.
At launch time there was certainly probably millions of people wanting to be part of the launch. I experienced some difficulties and whenever I tried to chat to a specialist (that online customer service application), I always go an error message saying the service is not available and to try again later. 
However problems aside, I did manage to view the content a couple of hours later. It was nice to see Bill Gates himself part of the launch and I think its great to have him part of it because we all know some 7 years ago it was his vision.
I also found it quite interesteing to hear Gurdeep talk about this evolution of the workplace and communication. Personally I like the surface devices with their touch screens as endpoints for users. Microsoft state that this will replace the PBXes out there.
I personally believe that this is the technology and way forwrd for bussinesses and I am curious as to the next move from the PBX vendors. Time will tell......

Kinect to make its way in households soon

I have seen the cool ads and information that Kinect promises to deliver and hopefully by the end this year I will actually be able to have it in my living room. Microsoft’s Kinect is a body movement game controller that I expect will make its way into loads of living rooms across the world. Kinect promises to be great fun.

Kinect is supposed to allow people to play games with their whole body and without needing remote controls. The technology uses motion sensors, skeletal tracking, facial recognition, and voice recognition. It has are two depth perception and light source 3D cameras and a regular Web camera to track and identify people. It also has facial recognition capabilities, artificial intelligence, and four microphones for voice commands that know the difference between chatter of other people in the room or sound coming from the TV. During game play, Kinect takes photos of gamers and then offers them for viewing or sharing. All of this sounds like the new gen for gaming….. I wonder what it would be like for first person shooter games….

Macbook Air

Yesterday Apple launched the all-new MacBook Air. Apparently this is the first of the next generation of notebooks that will replace mechanical hard disks and optical drives with Internet services and solid-state flash storage. They will be made available in 11 and 13-inch models and is super light. As yes - it really is this thin!!

The MacBook Air is Apple’s lightest, most mobile notebook ever. MacBook Air uses the same solid-state storage technology as iPad to deliver instant-on responsiveness, up to seven hours of battery life, and up to 30 days of standby time. See the vid (requires quicktime): http://www.apple.com/macbookair/#macbook-air-video