Cisco UC Product Tour
I had an interesting trip to see our friends at Cisco HQ (UK) today. It was a multi-purposed session to discuss a multitude of UC subjects.
We’re busy embarking on a Cisco Unity Connection install, to replace our old Unity 4.X installation. We’ve made a few test builds, but that’s largely been to get comfortable with the install process. We wanted to see some of the technology in action, hear some of the marketing and also get an informed demonstration.
Unity Connection: Features like Visual Voicemail and its ability to store voicemail ‘offbox’ in Exchange are what have attracted us. It’s an interesting way to achieve Unified Messaging without incurring the expensive Microsoft licencing costs. I like that unlike Unity, Unity Connection is now a linux appliance, it’s AD integration isn’t some masked Exchange 2003 installation. The only aspect I am currently not impressed by is the personal contacts feature, it’s a manual upload of contacts, with limited fields. It’s not dynamic at all, not linked to Exchange, it’s a one time import via a web portal.
Jabber: Cisco have started to combine open standards based XMPP technology obtained through the Jabber acquisition. This is being integrated into the WebEx and CUPS and CUPC products. There are ‘Cisco Jabber’ applications available for the Android and Apple platforms, and lots of work in progress to bring in more features towards the end of the year. Blackberry solutions require MVS which is essentially some glue to get it to work under the RIM framework. It creates a SIP trunk into CM, to enable you to use your mobile to make calls via CM trunks.
Cisco Quad: A very interesting product, I’m sure there are many ways to describe it and frame what it is, but it’s essentially a fully fledged ‘corporate-facebook-intranet-in-a-box’ That somewhat undersells it, a recent piece of work has seen our company develop its own intranet with social collaboration in mind, this has met with mediocre success. The Quad product would have pretty much full-filled all the technical needs for us in a turn-key solution. I’m not saying it’s all things to all men, but I was suitable impressed. As a social collaboration suite, it tops my interested list. There are Android, iPad and iPhone applications available for Quad.
Cisco CUPS: I’ve known about CUPS for ages, but it’s always been this monstrously huge product, that was a sledge hammer to crack a nut. It always felt expensive and cumbersome. I’ve no doubt it’s still quite a challenging install, but it’s mediation/federation offering to lash together CUCM and OCS/Lync that mean I will definitely be looking it over again now. The CUPC client is also much improved and is very polished. It has become a very polished and attractive product. The product was re-written with the Jabber technology and is now open standards based. Federation will be achieved using XMPP. Version 8.5.
Show and Share: I’d describe it as corporate YouTube. It enables users to share and collaborate with video/media rich content, tagging and making video content searchable. You can record a piece via a video enabled device and with 1 click publish it as online content. Also known as Cisco Digital Media Manager.
Video Conferencing (Telepresence): Cisco has done a lot of work integrating the Tandberg end points into their product range. I was impressed with the speed that this integration seems to have happened.
Service Pack Caution
I take a lot of ribbing in the office about my over cautious attitude towards Microsoft service packs/roll ups etc. I think they are valuable enhancements to operating systems etc, they fix problems and enhance features, BUT they can also be dangerous.
There was once an LCS 2005 client patch, which then wouldn’t allow connections to the server, imagine the red face explaining that one to the boss, and the fix took a while to come out!
Very recently there was this:
The bad: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/29/potential-for-database-corruption-as-a-result-of-installing-exchange-2007-sp3-ru3.aspx
The sorry: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/30/exchange-2007-2010-rollup-3-status-update.aspx
The fix: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/31/announcing-the-re-release-of-exchange-2007-service-pack-3-update-rollup-3-v2.aspx
I’m NOT having a pop at the Exchange Dev boys and girls, far from it, they deserve kudos for holding up their hands and sorting out the problem. All credit to them for their approach and honesty.
So….. why do I stay behind the service pack bleeding edge…. 
Preparing for Office 365
I recently attended the ‘Preparing for Office 365’ held at Microsoft’s Victoria offices. There are no burning all fire reasons for me to get into this space, but nonetheless, knowledge is power etc. In essence Office 365 takes over where BPOS leaves off, it’s the hosted offering by Microsoft for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office online and Lync online. All run on the latest 2010 variants.
There were 2 presenters, a guy from ICS, Robert Thorpe (who was a dead ringer for Smithy from Gavin and Stacey imho) and a Technical Specialist from Microsoft, Daryl Gwyn.
It was a morning only event, roughly broken into 2 sessions.
I’ve decided to offer up what I took as the points of interest:
Office 365 headlines:
- Online service is very WAN speed dependent and also Internet connectivity.
- Office 365 for EMEA is Dublin based with failover to Holland. Dedicated options are available for sensitive service organisations.
- No backup data retention options- if you want to recover data from previous months, you can’t. Microsoft only supports a 30 day recycle bin and 14 day DR backup to tape- Full backups every 12 hours and stored for 14 days.
- Geo redundancy is less about backup and restore and more just failover.
- Both Presenters were anxious to push the security aspect right down to the physical level, as in biometrics, 2 tier entry, multiple perimeter etc.
- Wan acceleration isn’t supported to/from the data centre – Also no plans to offer it.
- A few folk asked performance related questions about bandwidth and contention ratios. All surrounds just how good your Internet connection is, latency/bandwidth etc. Lots of people saying its (BPOS) rubbish when contention is high, and it is useless on dsl etc. There are no Microsoft collaborations with any Telco to improve the situation. There are no plans.
- The archive repository cannot be cached to outlook ost; it’s purely for online or connected to the server – though online mode in outlook isn’t recommended.
- Exchange online has a mobile device limitation of 5 devices -though there was no clear clarification of what was considered a mobile device (presume that anything that uses activesync will hit the count)
- Active directory upgrades required for the more detailed integration.
- Costs/pricing – various price E-plans are Enterprise and K-plans are Kiosk (factory floor folk) However there are more options for pure service based like exchange online etc. This is called the standalone pricing.
- Plain exchange online has 2plans one with voicemail one with out. Without is $5 with is $10. Lync is $2 with an extra plan, which would include virtual meetings etc. (live meeting) that’s $6.50.
- Payment options are weird, there is no direct debit option, only standing order – more pricing options for yearly and 3 yearly.
- BPOS single sign on client has gone.
- Once you buy into the platform, it means if they upgrade to the next version of the online service like ‘office366’ you will have a 12 month period once updates are announced -otherwise you WILL be migrated and older browser support for example will die- Big issue for people tied into older browsers for legacy systems!
- Small business server licensing includes all the stuff in plan 2 for share point licensing.
- Public beta is available circa April time.
- Office365 service descriptions currently in beta, but is public ally available. Office365advantage.com has these.
Office Professional Suite Online:
- It’s based on the Office Professional stack – Outlook includes Business Content Manager.
- All office 365 software is downloaded via portal, still requires install process like any other software. In essence it’s Office with an alternate licensing arrangement.
- Local PC runs an OSA office subscription agent. You get up to 5 activations, so you get to install it at home or wherever (users can do this from their portal!) then OSA goes dormant for 30 days then checks licensing, if it fails it warns for 30 days then for another 30 days with reduced functionality, then on next check-in it’s deactivated.
- All offered on a per user/ per month basis
- No IE6 support.
Exchange Online
- Outlook 2003 will no longer work.
- Limits to 500 recipients/day ; 30messages/minute.
- No catch-all mailboxes.
- Exchange online now offers advanced routing for mail, whereas BPOS never offered
- Online for enterprise plan offers 25gb mailbox.
- Online cals also provide on-premise cal, on-premise cal is only for that, not online.
- Hosted BES service isn’t available. BES has limitations mainly subnet issues, I.e. it needs to be on be same subnet as exchange, not possible in the cloud. Work is ongoing to integrate BES with EWS, but there are no current timescales.
- Exchange online doesn’t support AD IMS except that it will talk back to on premises AD IMS. In online there is no AD IMS.
- Exchange online has no advanced filtering options except if you also have on premises then it can direct it back to an internal HT before sending. So you can’t do journaling for instance in online.
- Office 365 gives you licensing to have a gateway Exchange 2010 server to let you serve free busy info to your 2007 users. This means you have host a 2010 on-premises server until you have no more 2007 users.
- Questions were asked about the use of the ‘GoodSync’ product (which is used on mainly iPhones/iPads for fencing off work email from personal in a secure manner) Nobody presenting knew about it. It’s a product that Vodafone are offering with their data packages for stuff like iPhones and iPads.
- You also can’t use something like Websense, Messagelabs or Postini, without sending the mail back to a routing box YOU host to then forward onto the 3rd party.
SharePoint Online
- Sharepoint online – sandbox options, intranet and extranet sites offered.
- Share point 2010 allows document sharing within the document to allow bits and pieces of the document to be locked. It’s an add-on to make check in and check out more granular.
- SharePoint online licensing seems a bit mad, if you share a document outside your organisation via the extranet and they use the web app to edit text on your ppt say (a ppt that you shared with them via the extranet) then that is breaking then law as they have no licence. It needs more thought. It also generates billing to you based on who does access on a per user per month basis. It’s haphazard imho.
- Share point FIS is For Internet Sites. Which covers anon access, currently not on roadmap but is destined for 12 months.
- There are 3 options for identity federation
- Local I’d with Microsoft ids (So separate from your AD)
- Dirsync (A pull from your in-house AD)
- Federation + dirsync. ADFS 2.0
- There is No federation on XP home or media centre (as it can’t be added to a domain) This limits what home users have as OS. -Potential issues requiring further investment.
- High availability of your own dmz/firewall/Connectivity is stressed all the time. If your have poor WAN links and only small Internet connectivity then don’t bother.
- Insights- Visio services which can tie icons or drawings back to actual data.
Lync Online:
- Lync online has no PSTN breakout in the cloud but is expected late 2011, once they work out how to bill it probably!
- Lync online offers no PBX integration and there are no plans.
So far, I’ve found these links useful:
- The Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions
- The IPD document. It’s still aimed at BPOS really, and needs a 365 update, but if you’re having the cloud/on premises debate, it helps cement a few things. All the documentation is here.
- Join the IPD Beta program to get a copy of the Beta IPD documents.
Communicator 2011 Mac connect via Edge? Yes!
I honestly haven’t found a straight answer to this question. Does it connect via Edge or not?
Well, the short answer is yes! When I first installed Office it was almost a surprise when it installed a mac version of Communicator, pleasantly surprised too. I installed it, got it working on the lan and then jumped on a train armed with my 3G dongle. I fired it all up got Outlook connected without vpn and duly then expected Communicator to work. It didn’t.
I know that the Windows version was working fine, so I was confident I had no SRV funnies. I went to the forums/technet/support/google and found no answer, only some other folk asking similar questions. I loaded my vpn tunnel and presto, communicator connected. I tried again and again, on various internet connections, plain dsl etc, it didn’t work. I came to the conclusion it wasn’t in the feature set. Most answers in forums were to offer vpn, this just seemed a backward step and unnecessary admin overhead
Last week I installed the latest patch for Communicator 2011 (13.1.0 (101123)) and nosed around the desktop sharing feature and wrote my article on it here. I encouraged my colleagues and team to install the patch also. The following day, Nick in my team was working at home and left me a message to say he’d signed in via Edge!
Being the unbelieving pessimist I am, I had to see it for myself, I fired up 3G and presto, it took a little time, but it signed in over Edge on 443.
So, yes, it works, but only on the latest patch.
Cisco Cucimoc download location
I had occasion to download the latest cucimoc version today, but cisco have recently revamped their entire site. I cheerfully put cucimoc into their search engine under product downloads, as I have done many times before… no results found. Then followed 5 minutes of putting every permutation of Cisco Unified I could think of. Again no results.
This is daft, I always found the download this way. I started going through the menu’s under Download Software, this took near on 30 mins of going down each avenue, only to not find it! Eventually I find it. So to save you all the incredulous searching here’s where it is! Cisco Unified Communications for Microsoft Office Communicator download
Here’s a pic to illustrate the menu layer
Hope it saves you a few minutess, oh and Cisco, fix that search engine, it’s pointless!
Luke Darby
Technology Infrastructure | Media | Communication | Broadcasting
United Kingdom
