Enabling Technologies Blog

[Glen Arm, Maryland], [US] — June 23, 2010 — Today, Enabling Technologies Corp. proudly announced it is a Microsoft Partner Awards winner as Unified Communications Solutions, Instant Messaging/Presence/ Conferencing/Voice Partner of the Year.  This is the second year in the award’s two-year history that Enabling has been honored with a top UC award.  The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.

“As President of Enabling Technologies Corp we are honored to be the back-to-back of the UC Partner of the Year award,” states Bill Vollerthum, President of Enabling Technologies.  “This award validates our total commitment and dedication as an organization to deliver successful UC implementations for our global customer base.   Microsoft’s recognition of our accomplishments, hard work of our employees, and commitment to advancing Exchange/OCS adoption confirms our strategic business plan is successful and on course.” 

Awards will be presented in a number of categories, with winners chosen from a pool of almost 3,000 entrants worldwide. Enabling Technologies Corp. was recognized for superior technology and innovation in Unified Communications Solutions, Instant Messaging/Presence/ Conferencing/Voice Partner of the Year. The Unified Communications Solutions, Instant Messaging/Presence/Conferencing/Voice Partner of the Year Award honors partners with proven expertise in the planning, implementation, and management of Microsoft Office Communications Server and solution partners who have leveraged the Office Communications Server platform. This award recognizes Enabling Technologies Corp. for helping streamline communications for users, giving IT organizations the flexibility and control they need to manage their communications infrastructure efficiently, and providing an extensible platform for communications-enabled business processes.

“Enabling Technologies’ innovative solution has earned them the Microsoft Unified Communications Solutions, Instant Messaging/Presence/Conference/Voice Partner of the Year Award,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Office Business Productivity Group, Microsoft Corp. “Enabling Technologies has helped customers upgrade from traditional telephony and seamlessly connect their geographically dispersed workforce. Enabling Technologies delivers custom applications that deploy and extend existing communications investments while producing valuable savings and improving productivity and processes.”

The Microsoft Partner Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the last year.

Enabling Technologies provides the necessary expert Unified Communications planning advice and implementations but goes one step further by creating add-on applications.  These Communications Enable Business Process (CEBP) applications incorporate the business process into either Office Communications Server or Exchange.  In this particular case the application was developed for Higher Education. The Blackboard Learn Platform integrates with Office Communications Server to enable students, teachers, and administrators to dynamically connect, share and communicate.  Both the students and professors can see who is present to get real time answers.  The courses tab automatically populates with the teachers and student in their particular courses. Enabling is developing more add-on applications as we see the need in the marketplace.

As I have been designing Exchange solutions for our customers one of the really great features I enjoy discussing is Exchange 2010 High Availability (HA) and how it can significantly reduce costs compared to previous versions of Exchange. HA in Exchange 2010 has made some significant improvements since the days of Exchange 2003 and even 2007. To go back just a bit, in Exchange 2003 you had the notion of Windows and Exchange clustering where 2 or more cluster server nodes shared access to Exchange database and log files through a shared storage technology like a SAN. The major downside to this solution was that although you had server hardware redundancy you were still vulnerable to a single point of failure with the logs a database files and also shared storage solutions can be pretty expensive especially for SMB customers.

 In Exchange 2007 Microsoft successfully addressed these issues by first enabling a new clustering model that utilized log shipping technologies to make exact copies of the logs and databases across local cluster nodes (Cluster Continuous Replication or CCR) and even for remote Exchange mailbox servers (Standby Continuous Replication or SCR) across the WAN in an alternate datacenter.

The next solution to help reduce costs and the shared storage model came along with Exchange reducing the storage performance requirements from 2003 by 70% whereby I am talking about the reduction of the average user IOPs from .75 to .3. These changes allowed customers to successfully deploy Exchange on direct attached storage solutions and start thinking about the use of lower cost SATA class drives. These were significant improvements but there were caveats like for a complete Exchange local HA solution the minimum server requirement was 4 servers because you could no co-locate any other Exchange server roles (like the Client Access or Hub Transport) with the mailbox server role in a CCR configuration.

Well my friends Microsoft took this feedback pretty seriously and took the best solutions of Exchange 2007 HA features including CCR and SCR and combining them into one technology along with allowing for the co-location of other Exchange roles. So what does this mean to the average customer and SMB clients…? You can now have a complete Exchange 2010 HA solution with only 2 servers providing all the required roles! Also since the newer technology combines CCR and SCR failovers, you can even put one of the nodes across your WAN in an alternate datacenter thereby providing a site resiliency option.

One other great improvement that I can’t forget to mention is that by essentially rewriting the Exchange ESE database architecture, Microsoft was somehow again able to reduce user IOPs by 70% to average about .1 IOPs! So now it almost makes no sense to use anything but SATA class drives (unless you have company policies and requirements for using SAS or SCSI drives).

So in summary, with Exchange 2010 you should seriously ponder why you would not deploy HA when you can now have a fully redundant solution using just 2 servers with local low cost storage solutions. There are many other features and details that relate to these Exchange solutions including some further enhancements to HA coming in Exchange 2010.

Cool (free) tool!  Allows you to highlight a phone # in Word, Excel, Outlook, web page, hit F8, and your MOC makes the call.

Download directly: http://www.estos.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/PhoneToolsCommunicator2.0.0.556uk.zip

Learn more: http://www.estos.com/unified-communications-amp-classic-cti/phonetoolsnbspfornbspcommunicator.html

PBX killer, Voice CAL coming to OCS in 2010

Here's what it includes:

The next release of Office Communications Server and Communicator together with Exchange 2010 is currently referred to as UC “Wave 14″ (code-name). The latest publicly available release date is in “late 2010”.

1) A new version of Office Communications Server (likely to be called Microsoft Communications Server 2010).  Here are the highlights:

• A full software powered communications stack, including capabilities intended to make a PBX unnecessary.
• Enhancements to the resiliency and reliability capabilities of OCS 2007 R2.
  • More branch office survivability options.
  • There will likely be re-routing capabilities depending on the network or PSTN outage.
• Remote Call Control (RCC) will still be supported in Wave 14, though the future beyond that is uncertain and Microsoft generally recommends other integration options.
• Location Awareness:
  • The ability to provide location information via a new server role: the Integrated Location Information Server (ILS).
  • Location information can be sent on the SIP channel and used in the E.911 scenario.
  • Location information will be integrated into the next release (W14) version of Communicator.
• Call Admission Control:
  • The ability to use bandwidth information and policies to allow or disallow if a video call can be initiated.

2) A new version Office Communicator (code-named “14” right-now).

• Will likely be called Office Communicator 2010.
• The Communicator Tabs extensions will likely be deprecated.
• SharePoint Integration:
  • New Communicator “skill search” functionality built into the next release of Communicator that searches SharePoint profiles to find people with the skills you are looking for.
  • Initiate audio and video communication directly from SharePoint search results.
  • Phonetic based search in Communicator to locate associated SharePoint information.
• Voicemail Features:
  • Visual voicemail capabilities directly integrated into Communicator 14.
  • Multi-language translation capabilities (with Exchange 2010 voicemail integration).
  • Ability to jump to a specific point in voicemail.
• Test Calls: the abilility to place a test call directly from the Communicator client will likely be added.
• Music On Hold (MoH): this functionality will likely move to the client.

3) New OCS Server and Client Development SDK’s:

• A set of fully supported (not just samples) Communicator controls in WPF and Silverlight.
• UCMA 3.0 will be a server-side API with workflow activities.
• Much more information is available in Chris Mayo’s PDC session (see below).
• An Early Adopter Program is available if you are interested in getting an early look at the SDKs (see the UC 14 Metro link below).

In terms of licensing:

Microsoft is launching a promotion through its Software Assurance (SA) maintenance program to offer users up to two years free access to the new Voice CAL coming in OCS 2010.

The new Voice CAL includes, all the current voice functionality in the Enterprise 2007 R2 CAL plus something entitled “enterprise ready voice – PBX Replace Voice,” Branch Survivability, E-911, PSTN Failover and Analog Device Support.

The promotion will provide free access rights to the 2010 and 2011+ versions of the Voice CAL to any company that has SA coverage as of June 30, 2009 on their OCS Enterprise CAL or their Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite.

Users will have to stay current on SA through the two releases of OCS.

The promotion offer also has the option of free access to only the 2010 version of the Voice CAL to those that purchase after July 1, 2009 an SA contract for their OCS Enterprise CAL or their Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite.

Users who already have SA on OCS Enterprise CALs or their Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite only have to keep their contracts current to get the new Voice CAL at no additional charge.