Oliver Rist and I had a whole lot of fun with Office Communication Server when folks from the Microsoft Unified Communications group brought five different Virtual Server images to my Hawaii lab to show off OCS in all its glory.
I had it running on an AMD dual CPU dual core Opteron server with 6gig of ram, and while I wouldn't have been able to handle a lot of load, it was certainly adequate for a proof of concept setup. Keep in mind that the suite can be scaled all the way up to something in the range of 125,000 users spread across quite a few servers for HA and load balancing. The point is that if you barely use certain features, combine that server with another low usage function and save a box.
Anyway, we're both in Redmond, WA with the world press to hear about Windows Server 2008, but we played hooky for a few hours and went down the road to visit with the Microsoft Unified Communications Group to talk about their new release of the Office Communications Server client for Windows Mobile 6 officially named Communicator Mobile 2007. Nicknamed CoMo, this new client is a huge step forward on giving the mobile user as much presence functions as they would on their desktop.
(Well within limits of what is actually able to run on the mobile device.) The part I liked the most was the fact that the user interface for CoMo just felt familiar, so kudo's to the HCI (Human Computer Interface) designers for shoehorning it all onto such a tiny screen.
(here is where I start talking about both CoMo and System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008)
Some key new features:
- Considerably more control over what mobile enhancements can be used in what situation. With compliance looming over mobile devices, you can turn on/off things like: camera, wifi, bluetooth, infrared, file sharing, etc all through a policy.
- Force complex passwords on the entire device instead of just the removable storage.
- More efficient sync (they say 30% better)
- Deny consumer email to close down potential paths for unauthorized information leakage
To really illustrate how modular this system is, click here to see an architecture overview:
View image
Here's some screen shots showing off the new user interface:
Posted by Brian Chee on November 6, 2007 11:52 AM
