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OCS Forum seeks nominations for:
 
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Welcome to OCS Forum
 
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Get Smart in 2010 - Join Us in Boulder
 
Fees for attendees are $795 until March 1, $995 until May 1 and $1195.00 until the event. 
 
There is an educational, nonprofit and government, SIP Forum member, SMB Nation, MS Gold discount to $795, if paid before May 1.  
 
Click here for prospectus, speaker/exhibitor/attendee information
 or contact Tom Cross cross@gocross.com or 303-594-1694. 
 
OCS Forum Expo 2010 - Boulder - June 15-16
at the St. Julien Hotel (www.stjulien.com)with keynotes from OCS MVPs, Media Gateway/SBC experts, customers, planners and others. 
 
Attendees and exhibitors will receive thousands of dollars in valuable videos, training courses and online access to a "live" OCS system. 
 
There will be sessions on OCS Planning, QoS, Security, Firewalls, Media Gateways, PBX Integration, Mobile OCS, Communicator, WAN-Bandwidth Planning, Customer Applications, Troubleshooting, Session Border Controllers and others.
 
 
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Here's some of the great OCS solutions presenting at OCS Forum Expo:
 
 
 NET presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
NET's VX Series Intelligent Voice Gateways and Switches are specifically designed to provide the enterprise-class integration, interoperability, and security with scalability required for successful adoption of VoIP and Unified Communications into new and existing voice and PBX environments. Founded in 1983, NET (Network Equipment Technologies Inc.) is headquartered in Fremont California at www.net.com. 

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 Aastra presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo

Aastra USA is the North American business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited, (TSX:"AAH"), a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communications market. With more than 50 million installed lines around the world, offers one of the most complete portfolios of unified communications solutions available today. www.aastrausa.com.

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 FaxCore presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
FaxCore is the 21st century fax solution that combines the Microsoft .NET platform, a web interface and innovative fax over IP deployment opportunities into a single solution.  A strategic partner of Dialogic, means all the advantages of the Dialogic platform are leveraged by FaxCore for leading edge deployments and unparalleled reliability.  Click her for www.faxcore.com for more information.

fax

 
GreenAppx presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
GreenAppX has assembled the industry-leading applications for corporate 1) email, 2) network security, 3) data back-up and 4) office processes. These four categories contain critical applications that are crucial to the day-to-day management of any business. The start-up and recurring expense associated with traditional software deployments addressing these four categories are beyond the budgets of most small to mid-size enterprises.  Click here for www.greenappx.com for more information.

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Uncommon Solutions presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Uncommon Solutions' OCS-certified engineers design, deploy and integrate OCS solutions. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner with the 1st Microsoft-approved OCS appliance designed to facilitate real-time communication services and improve business processes. Uncommon Solutions is uncommon in our ability to address business goals with IT solutions that measure cost against value.
  Click here www.uncommonsolutions.com for more information.
 
 
911 Enable Presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
911 Enable provides simple to deploy, easy to manage E911 solutions for IP telephony, including a solution designed to meet the unique requirements of Microsoft OCS. Its solutions include a national E911 call routing service, automated phone tracking appliance, and security desk notification system, which help organizations reduce liability concerns and meet E911 regulations.  Click here
www.911enable.com for more information.

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AudioCodes Presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
AudioCodes is a leading manufacturer of Media Gateways for Microsoft Unified Messaging & Unified Communications, including Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.  Utilizing AudioCodes Media Gateways, businesses are able to interface Microsoft communications applications to a wide range of TDM PBXs, IP-PBX, SIP Trunking and legacy PSTN trunking facilities.  With unsurpassed voice quality, reliability, flexibility and scalability, AudioCodes Media Gateways have earned many accolades and should be your first choice when deploying Microsoft Unified Communications.  Visit www.audiocodes.com/microsoft for more information.
 

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NOVUS presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Since 1983, Novus, LLC has been supporting manufacturers' reseller channels worldwide, serving over 15 countries on 4-continents. Engaged at the inception of VoIP, our thorough understanding of VAR's needs and end-user expectations has positioned Novus as the leading distributor of snom IP telephones deployed on Microsofts' OCS platform at www.novusllc.com
 

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SNOM presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
snom technology is a global manufacturer of SIP-based IP telephones for business, carrier and high-end consumer markets. Based on open standards, feature-rich and affordable, snom's products are engineered to fulfil their vision of ubiquitous, standards-based VoIP/SIP/OCS. Based in Berlin, snom's sales/distribution network extends to over 40 countries at www.snom.com

snom

Get Smart in 2010 - Get this OCS course in your budget/plan.
 
OCS Forum Presents - OCS R2-2010-Ultimate Course
5-Day Training - "Hands-on" Labs with 700+ page manual
 
Critical Course for Planning OCS Design & Certification Study for Exam 70-638, Exam 70-262 and other tests
 
OCS Forum (http://www.ocsforum.com) announced its new OCSR2-2010 Ultimate course.  "R2 and Wave 14 coming in 2010 confirms Microsoft place in the new telecommunications networking business," noted Tom Cross OCS Forum CEO.  "R2 is having a significant impact on corporate voice telecommunications strategies indicating the end of the TDM-time division multiplexed PBX-Private Branch eXchange systems is now insight.  Microsoft is also driving companies like Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, NEC, Mitel, ShoreTel to rethink their featuresets and capabilities because while R2 is a new game when Wave 14 is released in 2010, their days are numbered," Cross commented.
 
This five -day (5-day) "hands-on" lab course with 700+ page manual focuses on the core components of OCS 2007 R2, including:
- Instant Messaging (IM) between everyone in the organization in the office or remote
- Application and Desktop sharing for true collaboration
- Audio/Video Conferencing including internally hosted audio conference calls and Live Meetings
- Integration with Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging
- Securing the environment to protect communications
 
The course provides many hands-on labs to practice and reinforce learning of many new concepts. After completing this course, students should be able to design, install, configure, maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot the core components of OCS 2007 R2. 
 
 
   Call Tom Cross at 303-594-1694 or cross@gocross.com for details.
Click here for the Flash animated tutorial.  
 
Part 2 of 2 - Understanding VPLS-VPN-MPLS
 
BOD-Bandwidth on Demand before the RGE-ELE
 

When a VIP customer complains to the CEO or a C-Level has a bad telephone call and calls the CIO/IT VP and your manager ask WTF happened, you better have a really good answer.  Otherwise it is a RGE-Resume Generating Event,  ELE-Extinction Level Event. 

 
 Hi, my name is:

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 Courtesy movie "DEEP IMPACT"

 

That is, it's your extinction and you're fired for cause or incompetence.  If you are not fired, you will be on the list of "under performers" and laid-off, downsized or transferred to an undesirable location. In other words, learn everything about bandwidth and the little understood but vital theories of Poisson and Erlang.  Understand all the pieces to the puzzle, not just a few.

 
Like the weather planning and forecasting bandwidth, security and . . . 
 
is now even more critical as disaster awaits us every day. 
 
According to a senior consultant,
 
"it is always worse when the business is affected"
 
Here is a ROM-Rough Order of Magnitude Approach to Bandwidth Requirements for OCS/SIP.  Understand that voice/video is delay-intolerant or in management terms - unforgiving.  That is, individual user bandwidth requirements may vary widely.  Here is just one approach.  Your bandwidth like gas mileage "may vary" significantly. 
 
Where QoS fails is, among other things, not understanding the bandwidth on the LAN and WAN.  New services like VPLS-Virtual Private LAN Service and VPNS-Virtual Private Network Service are both critical is QoS.  Here are the key differences between VPLS and VPNS.  There are many other others including training, availability, diversity, DR-Disaster recovery, application such as hub-spoke versus mesh networking, clouds and others.  Check with your provider as YMMV-your mileage may vary.

   vpls

Switching Versus Routing

In LAN switching all packets are "flooded" to all locations until they find their destination.  Nice idea if you have only a few sites.  802.1q is a 4-byte packet called TCI which is inserted (added) to Ethernet frames that includes VLAN - 12 bits assignment and the 802.1p QoS.  802.1p consists of 3 bits within an 802.1Q header, and the resulting 8 possible QoS values (0-7) signal the type of traffic that the Ethernet frame contains - from background to network critical.

 

Reasons for VPLS-Virtual Private LAN Service:

- Easy-to-implement

- Switches are cheap

- Very flexible BOD-Bandwidth On Demand options

- Great for same-city multi-location entity.

Reasons against:

- Doesn't grow or scale well to more than tens of sites and hundreds and thousands of users

- Faster bandwidth doesn't provide QoS or solve flooding of packets due to large applications.

 

In routing, only the packets that are destined for the other location are sent.  That is, packets are routed based on the destination IP address.

Reasons for routing:

- Scales infinitely for global locations

- Supports all kinds of IT systems

- Higher security.

Reasons against:

- High cost

- Complex management

- Very technical staff requirements. 

 

Ethernet Access Topologies

Shown in the animated tutorial are the three key access topologies e-line for two sites, e-LAN for three or more sites and e-access for VPN/internet:

- Ethernet-Line - two sites

- Ethernet-LAN - three+ sites

- Ethernet-Access - VPN-internet

 

WHY VPLS - Summary

Here are a few business reasons:

- Extends LAN infrastructure easily

- Expands metro-net to global-net

- Migrates Frame Relay to MPLS-Multi-Protocol Label Switching

- Utilizes "pseudowire" approach

- Needs "mesh' connections

- Connect call centers via SIP

- Provides DR-Disaster Recovery for data centers

- Wants greater customer (less carrier) control

- Has multi- and broadcast traffic

- Platform for building a CDN-Content Delivery Net

- Platform for building an overlay multi-carrier network

 

NEXT Week - SIP/VoIP Attacks

Understand your opponent has more time, is more focused and is more eager to attack you. 

 
Got OCS news, customer case studies, tips and vendor-neutral white papers, send them to cross@ocsforum.com.
 
Click here for more: 

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A focused intensive workshop where leading industry practioneers and sponsors assist attendees in capitalizing immediately on the SMB VoIP opportunity. This is your opportunity to learn how to own the entire SMB stack at your sites. VoIP SMB workshop, March 1-3, 2010, Las Vegas! 

 
The GotUC.net developer sandbox is open for registration  
 

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We are a group of  Microsoft Office Communications Server  developers working together through a web-community to promote Office Communications Server development, to increase our skills and assist others. The founders of this site are firm believers in the potential of OCS and are committed to doing our part to make this community grow. On this site you will find many Microsoft MVPs for OCS who are willing to share their expertise with others.We are big evangelists for OCS and seek every available opportunity to speak out about it.  
 Special Notes
 
- Read new book "Facebook Marketing for Dummies -
click here
 
- Cool Microsoft Blog on OCS for Edu -
click here
Review of Microsoft - Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer
Thanks to:  BoJames Molai - Director of Unified Communications
Gold Systems - click here for website
 

At Gold Systems, we have found that the OCS Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)

At Gold Systems, we have found that the OCS Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) tool is extremely helpful both pre-deploy for assessment and troubleshooting, as well as post-deploy for ongoing maintenance and environmental monitoring.  When working on a new OCS deployment the tool has proven to be very useful in generating a list of potentially troublesome configuration settings, as well as areas where a configuration may fall outside of what is supported and recommended by Microsoft.  This feedback allows deployers and administrators to make configuration changes very early  in the roll-out and minimize subsequent problems - which is significant because  even subtle configuration changes can have a large impact.  If  issues do arise within the environment, the BPA tool also provides easy access and direction to relevant troubleshooting documentation -- a great time saver.

 

For existing OCS deployments, the BPA tool continues to prove its usefulness  as a centralized update checking mechanism.  While there are tools that will allow you to check for updates on each server, the OCS BPA tool will actually check for updates for all roles on all OCS servers in the environment, thus giving you a quick view of the updates you need to  roll out to your OCS deployment.  Another great feature of the OCS BPA tool is the ability to export and capture a snapshot of an OCS configuration for later review or for disaster recovery.  The OCS Best Practices Analyzer is worthy of a spot in any OCS administrator's toolkit.

Interview - Craig Schlagbaum says, "WTF - What The FOC!"

Craig is the Vice President for Indirect Channels at Level 3 (http://www.level3.com).  This interview focused on channel strategies, agents and trends.
 

Part 2 of 2

Cross - Where is the channel going in the future?

Schlagbaum - There are only about 5,000 telecom agents but about 223,000 IT solutions providers, VARs, MSPs, dealers and channel partners.  $480 billion of the IT channel is driven indirectly but only $10-12 billion in telecom is driven indirectly.  With regard to the channel, Cisco, Microsoft and others do more than 90% of their business through indirect channels; in the telecom space, partners represent about 30% of the total business sold at most.  However, these two channels of agent partners and IT VARs are starting to collide and will be viewed as one channel over time.  Yes, there will be pure bandwidth experts that are at the high-end and really get it.  However, partners who are just selling PRI [Primary Rate Interface] and integrated access circuits on the low end may have a lot of challenges with that model in the coming years if they don't evolve.

We also think carriers also will become MSPs over time and start selling their own managed services.  Already the world's largest channels for Cisco are the ILECs, so why wouldn't they also act as an MSP for their own customers?  That is, the carriers will have their own "silos" of an MSP business.  In fact, they already are doing to this.  The result is that both VARs and carriers will be selling MSP services to clients. 

In relation to cloud computing versus managed services, it depends on who is providing the service.  There is a murkiness to the term "cloud computing" but from the partner model standpoint the term means "we the partner are giving you Mr. Customer a managed service that you are paying a recurring fee for as opposed to paying a one-time fee for all this gear and everything else you need to deliver your services."  You effectively rent it and pay every month like you do for your telecom services. One of the interesting marketing trends is that when services are provided in the "cloud" suddenly the brand name of the hardware and software behind it becomes less consequential because the customer doesn't know which technology providers in partner's data center are driving their solution.

Now in this new model, the brand delivering the solution will be the MSP and that brand name really matters because you as the buyer of the service want to know the quality behind the service provider - for instance, are they a certified partner and what are their references?  Instead of there being physical equipment on the customer's premise, all the customer sees is the computer and a screen but they don't necessarily know the technology behind it

This has all kinds of implications for the high-tech industry.  By 2012, according to Gartner, 25% of all IT will be sold as a service - a transition from on-premise to on-demand.  For example, I know several of our partners who run their entire business off Google applications because they are cheap and easy to deploy and are paid for monthly. Salesforce.com is another example and their entire business is sold as a recurring service.

Cross - Ten years ago we has ASP [Applications Services Providers], 20 years ago we had CENTREX [Central Office Exchange]; if you had to look 10 years in the future what do you see?

Schlagbaum - I think we will evolve from selling commodities to selling more value-added services and it already is happening.  I don't know that we will be directly involved with everything; however tele-presence would be an example of a future service.  We may not offer it directly but, rather, with a partner.  Virtualization capabilities in the data center are another example.  Instead of raw bandwidth, raw voice, raw private lines and raw waves [optical fiber], it will become the applications that are provided over those transmission mediums such as storage and a variety of products and services you can access on-demand. 

We are, as you know, in a recurring revenue business.  This is a foreign notion to many companies used to selling one-time sale products and services.  I will tell you that all the high-tech companies are deeply, intimately learning the inner workings of recurring revenue models and how that will impact them based on the notion of cloud computing.  They see 3-5 years from now what the difference is going to be and they are positioning to capitalize on it. 

For example, Cisco has their own channel strategy for MSPs.  I am speaking on Channel Focus North America in La Jolla, CA in April.  The first panel after the keynote discusses the cloud and what impact it will have on their business and how a smart vendor should respond to this change in models.  Cloud computing and MSPs will be a growing entity as new services continue to proliferate.  People will pay more for value.  If you look backward, 386sx-Intel-based PCs of the late '80s wouldn't even power the smart phones we have today.   Look at what an IPhone and a Blackberry can do today.

What else is there?  What the telecom industry has not provided is what IBM, Cisco and others have demanded from their partners - certified channel partners.  To sell their products you must have a Cisco Internet engineer, IBM certified engineer and possess certain credentials and be tested.  The certification for selling carriers today needs to mature to levels like that as solutions get more complex. There have been attempts at creating a certification and there currently is a group that actually is trying to do it called the Technology Channel Association.  They are trying to institute a peer-based requirement of everyone who is selling telecom to get a baseline certification to demonstrate core competency to sell telecom services.  This eliminates the non-qualified partners selling carrier services, which gives a bad rap to other professionals.  Should a certification be developed, I think that's going to be a requisite just like it is in the VAR channel today.  That is something I think will be a standard over the next 3-5 years.

Cross - Thank you for time today.

 
Next Week - Part 2 - The Channel Partner of the Future
  New OCS Forum Job Board - click here  
 
-- New Jobs from Gold Systems & Level3
 
Post your UC, UM, LCS, OCS, PBX, Integration and related jobs on OCS Forum Job Board at no charge. 
 
Premium advertising available.  
 
Send your positions to
cross@gocross.com. 
CrossTalk Named One of the Top-10 Telecommunications Blogs
 
 
All videos are FREE to OCS Forum 2010 Expo attendees and exhibitors. 
 
Previous Videos
- OCS Front End Server
- OCS Planning Tool
- Edge Planning Tool
- Getting To Know Microsoft Office Communicator
- OCS User Creation
- Mediation Server
- Edge Server

 

Free Technical "Just Enough Just-in-Time" Knowledge from:

 
The World's First and Largest Animated Library on Technology with more than 3,000 animated tutorials. 
Go now to www.techtionary.com
 
OCS Training in the New York-New Jersey Area and Live Online:

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If you are looking to implement Microsoft OCS 2007 solution and need some training help, Solartech might be the trainer provider you can check out.  They are the Microsoft 2009 Partner of the Year finalist and provide OCS R2 training for Microsoft clients.  They are based in New York City but you can attend their live training right online if you prefer not to travel.  Interested, you can contact Christian Fortes at cfortes@solartechnj.com (201.807.9889, ext. 106).  
 
Mention you saw this in OCS Forum newsletter and get a $200 discount on the first student.

 

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     The St. Julien Hotel is an extraordinary conference for a 30-second Flash tour of Boulder and Hotel Reservation information click here.
 Please make your reservations early. 
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OCS Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production environment for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or time.  This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, review logs, break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network access.  OCS Forum is also designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCSR2 without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the time, resources or knowledge to develop one.  OCS Forum Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review.
 
About OCS Forum
 
OCS Forum is a vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live" services.  OCS Forum provides planning, project management, consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other services.