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OCS Forum seeks nominations for:
- Leadership
- Technical Achievement
- Solution Innovation
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Get OCS Smart - OCS Forum Expo - Boulder - June 15-16 at the St. Julien Hotel with keynotes from OCS MVPs, Media Gateway/SBC experts, customers, planners and others.
Fees for attendees are $795 until March 1, $995 until May 1 and $1195.00 until the event.
WIN an Apple iPad 16 at OCS Forum Expo.
Topics presented will likely explore 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:
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
Gold Systems presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Gold Systems is a unified communications specialist and a Microsoft Gold Certified Managed Partner, developing voice-driven solutions using IVR and speech recognition. Offerings include phone self-service and contact center solutions built on Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and unified messaging deployment and telephony interfaces to Exchange Server 2010. www.goldsys.com Phone 303-447-2774 - email websales@goldsys.com
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
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.
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.
FaxCore presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
FaxCore is the 21 st 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. 
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.
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.
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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NEW - June 7-11 Dates in Boulder Announced
OCS Forum Presents - OCS R2-2010-Ultimate Course
5-Day Training - "Hands-on" Labs with 700+ page manual with Special SIP Essentials section - click for more on SIP section.
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.
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Click here for Free Microsoft OCS Posters
Understanding STUN in OCS
The animated tutorial on STUN can be found on the home page of OCS Forum or click here. See poster below for the OCS STUN methods. RFC-Request For Comment 3489 - STUN - Simple Traversal of UDP-User Datagram Protocol Through NAT-Network Address Translators. According to the IETF "STUN is a lightweight protocol that allows applications to discover the presence and types of NATs and firewalls between them and the public Internet. It also provides the ability for applications to determine the public IP-Internet Protocol addresses allocated to them by the NAT.
According to the IETF, "the STUN protocol does not work for UDP traversal through a Symmetric style NAT. TURN-Traversal Using Relay Network address translation provides the solution for UDP traversal of symmetric NAT. TURN is extremely similar to STUN in both syntax and operation. It provides an external address at a TURN server that will act as a relay and guarantee traffic will reach the associated internal address."
The animation illustrates the response traversal through the open pin hole using a method called a Symmetric Response. This involves an SIP-Session Initiation Protocol endpoints both sending and receiving RTP traffic from the same IP Address/Port combination. That is, the same port number is used on inbound and outbound port. Rport-Remote Port is included to described in the Symmetric response section as defined in RFC 3581.
According to experts, "It has been observed that NAT treatment of UDP varies among implementations."
The four types of STUN observed in implementations are:
Full Cone - A full cone NAT is one where all requests from the same internal IP address and port are mapped to the same external IP address and port. Furthermore, any external host can send a packet to the internal host, by sending a packet to the mapped external address.
Restricted Cone - A restricted cone NAT is one where all requests from the same internal IP address and port are mapped to the same external IP address and port. Unlike a full cone NAT, an external host (with IP address X) can send a packet to the internal host only if the internal host had previously sent a packet to IP address X.
Next week the other two types of STUN:
3) Port Restricted Cone and 4) Symmetric will be presented.
Got OCS news, customer case studies, tips and vendor-neutral white papers, send them to cross@ocsforum.com. |
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Click here for Free OCS ebooks
OCS "Better than Book Smart"
Best Practices Series
There are quite a few books on OCS available. I have read a number of them and here's one I like. One of the great aspects of this book, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit (ISBN-13-978-0-7356-2635-5) by Maximo and others is great detailed information including extra material on th CD.
Got OCS news, customer case studies, tips and vendor-neutral white papers, send them to cross@ocsforum.com. |
Review of Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007
Best Practices Analyzer
By BoJames Molai
Director of Unified Communications
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. |
| Click here for more:
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!
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Special 1.5 day SIP Training after the OCS Expo limited to 10 attendees from Thursday 0900-1600 and Friday 0800-1100 - $495 for OCS Forum attendees and $895 for all others.
Click here for outline (please note all topics may not be covered due to timeframe)
"The SIP/VoIP courses are more than a superb primer on VoIP/SIP technology; they are an indepth business plan for a VoIP/SIP implementation. In addition, the VoIP/SIP diagnostic and troubleshooting guide is the most thorough approach to VoIP QoS available. I need information that informs but does not overwhelm. Information that guides but not drives you away. The courses provide insights and actionable information that has helped me get the technology we need sooner but saved me a considerable amount in understanding what we didn't need. The SIP course especially is a valuable one which provides much needed information in a readily understandable format." Paul Daubitz - President - ATI-TeleManagement |
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Keynote Speeches
From Teleconferencing to Telepresence
Making Virtual Meetings Work For You
Hal Josephson is President of MediaSense
· A brief history -- thirty years of tele-meetings - what will meetings be like 30 years from now
· Best practices -- developing valuable tele-skills - enhancing human communications with tele/presence · Creative techniques applied: lessons learned - what has failed and what will it take to succeed
Understanding and Troubleshooting Video Conferencing Networks
Presented by Gary Thom, President, Delta Information Systems &
Thomas Smith, Program Director, University of Wisconsin
· The bulk of installed systems are H.323 compliant, how can H.323 work with SIP and other standards and protocols
· How does the ITU H.323 and SIP standards support advanced audio and video features
· What are the common problems in videoconferencing networks
"The Future of Inter-Company Visual Collaboration. . . Today!"
- Building a Business Case and Modeling ROI for Tele/Presence
- The rising hard, soft, and opportunity cost of Tele/Presence
- Balancing Physical Travel Versus Tele/Presence
- Utilizing Tele/Presence for Economic Development and Global Expansion
- Enhancing and Accelerating Revenue Growth via Tele/Presence
- Integrating Tele/Presence into the Supply Chain for Improvement Channel Partner Communications
Howard S. Lichtman is a productivity-focused technology futurist, author, publisher and consultant with specialties in telepresence and visual collaboration to improve organizational and personal productivity. He is the founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design telepresence strategies and deploy telepresence solutions. He is the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the Internet covering the telepresence revolution and editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, the world's most widely read publication covering telepresence technologies.
Tele-Presence Forum provides learning and educational services on audio, video - tele/presence, web conferencing and other aspects of tele/presence and is the sponsor of Tele/Presence Forum Expo. More information can be found at http://www.tele-presenceforum.com or http://www.presenceforum.com
For information on exhibiting and corporate presentations, click here. |
| From MS Team OCS - helpful OCS TechTips
Click here for NextHop
Whether you're new to Office Communications Server and Unified Communications, simply looking for some helpful hints, or trying to get some serious information, we'll help you find what you need. |
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OCS "Crash Course" Hands-On Half Day
Getting OCS up in 3 hours - Coming fall 2010
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THE GRAPEFRUIT DIET Approach to Tech Implementation
What Computer Engineer Barbie(r) would do
Part 2 of 7 Steps to Successful Technical Implementation
Implementing any new technology requires an enormous amount of time and energy. The following steps are suggested for the organization that integrates any technical solution.
2 - Think small-like dieting, begin with smaller portions and bites. With technology, take small steps. Find pockets of people who are interested in getting started in the technology. Work with them for a while, and then find another group, using the first as a model and determine what and if the concept will scale to the size of organization. Just like dieting, determine if the diet plan will "scale" up or down (especially in a tough economy/industry). |
| The GotUC.net developer sandbox is open for registration
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 |
| 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. |
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CrossTalk Named One of the Top-10 Telecommunications Blogs
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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.
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OCS Training in the New York-New Jersey Area and Live Online:
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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Boulder
Happiest City in U.S.
Come to OCS Forum Expo and see why.
The St. Julien Hotel in Boulder is an extraordinary hotel. For a 30-second Flash tour of Boulder and Hotel Reservation information click here. Please make your reservations early.
Info on Rocky Mountain National Park - Elk, deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks and scores of smaller animals - chipmonks galore delight wildlife-watchers of all ages. Wildflower-lovers are never disappointed in June and July when the meadows and hillsides are splashed with botanical color.
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A view from Boulder on 2/24. We look forward to you coming here in June.
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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.
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