Deploying Office Communicator 2007

In a global economy, most companies need to make persistent calls to clients,
colleagues, vendors and other stakeholders on a daily basis. And when chasing
business you don't mind whether it's a national or international call. However,
the expenses incurred on this mammoth activity do warrant a rethink in strategy.
Our organization makes 20+ international calls a day, each with a duration of
more than 30 minutes. The average cost per month incurred due to this comes to
Rs 1,50,000. We decided to have VoIP in place and also a collaboration mechanism
where users could exchange information at will. This would be topped with a mix
of chat, conferencing and web meeting abilities. After a careful evalution of
solutions available, MS Office Communicator came out trumps.

Hardware requirements

When going for a wideranging deployment across branches, it's advisable to
use the best wares available. That would also ensure sustainability for at least
three years even if there's a massive churn in technology. The minimum
requirements are a Standard Edition Server comprising a dual processor CPU
working at 3.2 GHz with HT. Then attach two 18 GB hards disks for storage. In
addition, you would need two 36 GB 15k rpm SCSI disks running on the collocated
SE Server. A 1 MB cache, 2 GB memory and Gbit NIC card would complete the list
of hardware requirements.

We used HP ProLiant DL380 G3 server, the Intel Xeon CPU 2.80 GHz, 2GB of RAM,
3 Ultra 320 SCSI HDD of 72.8 GB (RAID5), for display we used Rage XL PCI Family
(ATIES), and 2x 1HP NC 7781 Ethernet Adapter, alongwith an optical drive.

Software requirements

The minimum and recommended operating system platform requirements for all
Office Communications Server 2007 server roles are 32-bit Windows Server 2003
R2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Standard Edition and Windows Server 2003
R2 Standard Edition.

You can check the availability status of a colleague. Plus, you can send messages, invitations for conference call, schedule a meeting, etc.

A point to note here is that OCS Server Roles will only install on 32-bit
Windows 2003 operating systems. 64-bit OS is not supported and this has been
verified by Microsoft UC SWAT Team.

The following software must be installed on the server on which you will be
installing Communicator Web Access:

• Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1
• IIS 6.0
• NET Framework 2.0, including ASP.NET 2.0

For all servers requiring SQL Server it is recommended to
use SQL Server 2005 SP2.

You can contact any of your colleagues by sending messages, through audio/ video call or via a Live Meeting.

You can find hardware and software requirements for other
editions at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572817(office.13). aspx.
You can download the deployment documents, technical documents and the trial
software of OCS from http://tinyurl.com/ycu3h3z.  Your WAN network, which is
established across different company locations worldwide, shall act as an
effective communication media for these applications.

This is how your desktop would appear to a colleague in a Live Meeting.

Features deployed

The implementation procedure is crystal clear and easy to adapt. We had a
team of two Microsoft certified engineers inhouse who implemented this project.
However, we needed guidance from the local Microsoft of and on. In tune with our
needs, we installed the following capabilities:

• Enterprise Voice

• Group Chat

• Audio/Video/Web Conferencing

• Instant Messaging and Presence

• Public Instant Messaging

• Connectivity

• Mobility

• Live Meeting

• Call management

• Desktop-sharing

• Web access for browser based clients.

End-user benefits

We have some 100+ users across 39  countries who regularly use OCS for chat
& Internet calling. Mobile users use Windows enabled phones with the
communicator client supported by Windows CE. A user just needs a thick/thin
client on the notebook/PC/PDA or any handheld device. But the client hardware
should be multimedia enabled. Our users find it very interactive and user
friendly. It's integration with office products helps them  share anything,
anywhere. It's their one-stop collaborative tool for all requirements. Through
this deployment we were able to slash down telephone bills to 50% of original
costs. The training requirements for users are almost nil, as the familiar
Windows interface aids self-learning. Such collaboration tools are very useful
for engineering services companies as 80% of the work is done offshore and thus
a lot of interaction is required amongst users and their counterparts
geographically separated across different continents. This tool provides one
virtual room for them to interact with each other. Prior to this deployment, our
total communications cost per month for ISD and STD was Rs 3,00,000. With an
initial investment of Rs 1,00,000 for server licenses (existing hardware was
used) we could achieve 150% of ROI starting from the day one after installation.

Deepak S Karkhanis and Pramod Kumar, Taco Faurecia