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Follow UsBANGALORE, INDIA: In a global economy, most companies need to make persistent calls to clients, colleagues, vendors and other stakeholders on a daily basis. And when chasing business you don't mind whether it's a national or international call. However, the expenses incurred on this mammoth activity do warrant a rethink in strategy. Our organization makes 20+ international calls a day, each with a duration of more than 30 minutes.
The average cost per month incurred due to this comes to Rs 1,50,000. We decided to have VoIP in place and also a collaboration mechanism where users could exchange information at will. This would be topped with a mix of chat, conferencing and web meeting abilities. After a careful evalution of solutions available, MS Office Communicator came out trumps.
When going for a wideranging deployment across branches, it's advisable to use the best wares available. That would also ensure sustainability for at least three years even if there's a massive churn in technology. The minimum requirements are a Standard Edition Server comprising a dual processor CPU working at 3.2 GHz with HT.
We used HP ProLiant DL380 G3 server, the Intel Xeon CPU 2.80 GHz, 2GB of RAM, 3 Ultra 320 SCSI HDD of 72.8 GB (RAID5), for display we used Rage XL PCI Family (ATIES), and 2x 1HP NC 7781 Ethernet Adapter, alongwith an optical drive.
Software requirements
The minimum and recommended operating system platform requirements for all Office Communications Server 2007 server roles are 32-bit Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Standard Edition and Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition.
| You can check the availability status of a colleague. Plus, you can send messages, invitations for conference call, schedule a meeting, etc. |
A point to note here is that OCS Server Roles will only install on 32-bit Windows 2003 operating systems. 64-bit OS is not supported and this has been verified by Microsoft UC SWAT Team.
The following software must be installed on the server on which you will be installing Communicator Web Access:
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Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1
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IIS 6.0
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NET Framework 2.0, including ASP.NET 2.0
For all servers requiring SQL Server it is recommended to use SQL Server 2005 SP2.
| You can contact any of your colleagues by sending messages, through audio/ video call or via a Live Meeting. |
You can find hardware and software requirements for other editions at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572817(office.13). aspx. You can download the deployment documents, technical documents and the trial software of OCS from http://tinyurl.com/ycu3h3z. Your WAN network, which is established across different company locations worldwide, shall act as an effective communication media for these applications.
| This is how your desktop would appear to a colleague in a Live Meeting. |
Features deployed
The implementation procedure is crystal clear and easy to adapt. We had a team of two Microsoft certified engineers inhouse who implemented this project. However, we needed guidance from the local Microsoft of and on. In tune with our needs, we installed the following capabilities:
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Enterprise Voice
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Group Chat
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Audio/Video/Web Conferencing
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Instant Messaging and Presence
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Public Instant Messaging
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Connectivity
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Mobility
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Live Meeting
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Call management
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Desktop-sharing
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Web access for browser based clients.
End-user benefits
We have some 100+ users across 39 countries who regularly use OCS for chat & Internet calling. Mobile users use Windows enabled phones with the communicator client supported by Windows CE. A user just needs a thick/thin client on the notebook/PC/PDA or any handheld device. But the client hardware should be multimedia enabled. Our users find it very interactive and user friendly. It's integration with office products helps them share anything, anywhere. It's their one-stop collaborative tool for all requirements.
Through this deployment we were able to slash down telephone bills to 50 percent of original costs. The training requirements for users are almost nil, as the familiar Windows interface aids self-learning. Such collaboration tools are very useful for engineering services companies as 80 percent of the work is done offshore and thus a lot of interaction is required amongst users and their counterparts geographically separated across different continents. This tool provides one virtual room for them to interact with each other.
Prior to this deployment, our total communications cost per month for ISD and STD was Rs 3,00,000. With an initial investment of Rs 1,00,000 for server licenses (existing hardware was used) we could achieve 150 percent of ROI starting from the day one after installation.
Deepak S Karkhanis and Pramod Kumar, Taco Faurecia