Microsoft unified communications technologies use the power of software to deliver complete communications - messaging, voice, and video - across the applications and devices that people use every day.  Integrating the experiences you associate with the telephone - phone calls, voice mail, and conferencing - the work you do on a computer - documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, e-mail, and calendars - has the power to fundamentally change the way people work.

We believe unified communications will transform business in the coming decade in the same way e-mail changed the business landscape in the 1990s.  When phone services become software, are managed by a server, and are delivered to desktop applications, many interesting things happen.

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Exchange Server 2007
Office Communications Server 2007
Microsoft RoundTable

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Exchange Server 2007

For most businesses today, e-mail is the mission-critical communications tool that allows their people to produce the best results.  This greater reliance on e-mail has increased the number of messages sent and received, the variety of work getting done, and even the speed of business itself.  Amid this change, employee expectations have also evolved.  Today, employees look for rich, efficient access - to e-mail, calendars, attachments, contacts, and more - no matter where they are or what type of device they are using.

For IT professionals, delivering a messaging system that addresses these needs must be balanced against other requirements such as security and cost.  Enterprise security requirements have become more complex as the demand and use for e-mail has increased.  Today, IT departments must contend with e-mail security threats that are wide ranging: continually evolving spam and viruses, noncompliance risks, the vulnerability of e-mail to interception and tampering, in addition to the potential harmful effects of natural and man-made disasters.

While security is clearly a priority, IT is ever cognizant of the need to manage cost.  Time, money, and resource constraints are a fact of life as IT is made accountable to do more with less.  As a result, IT professionals look for a messaging system that addresses both enterprise and employee needs while also being cost-effective to deploy and manage.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been designed specifically to meet these challenges and address the needs of the different groups who have a stake in the messaging system.  The new capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 deliver the advanced protection your company demands, the anywhere access your people want, and the operational efficiency you, in IT, need.



Exchange Server 2007 Features at a Glance

Built-in Protection

Anti-spam and Antivirus
Built-in defenses against spam and phishing e-mail as well as additional integrated filtering and multi-engine scanning capabilities provide advanced protection.*

Compliance
Controls for messages in transport or requiring retention, and flexible journaling help meet organizational, legal and regulatory compliance requirements.

Business Continuity
New data replication capabilities (local and clustered) keep the system highly available while limiting the need and frequency for tape backup.

Confidential Messaging
New encryption features for both internal and Internet-based messages help protect the confidentiality of messages in transit.

*Exchange Hosted Filtering and Forefront Security for Exchange Server are both available with the Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Client Access License.

Anywhere Access



Unified Messaging
New Exchange Unified Messaging goes beyond e-mail to deliver more types of communications to the inbox, including faxes and voice mail, as well as offering new capabilities such as voice access from any standard phone.

Web-Based Messaging
A rich Outlook-like experience from any Internet connected computer with a supported browser provides encrypted access to the inbox, powerful search, and the ability to view different types of attachments.

Mobile Messaging
Exchange ActiveSync technology delivers an improved e-mail and calendaring experience on mobile devices, while offering enhanced device and security policy control.

Collaboration and Productivity
Enhanced calendaring, out-of-office, resource booking, and meeting scheduling capabilities simplify collaboration and increase productivity.

Operational Efficiency



Performance and Scalability
Improved storage efficiency can be achieved through the extended memory and larger cache of x64-based architecture even as mailbox sizes increase; more efficient routing ensures the best use of bandwidth.

Administration
New graphical and command-line interfaces offer improved manageability and increased automation while integrated tools simplify maintenance.

Deployment
Modular setup and server provisioning based on server roles, as well as capabilities to automatically discover Outlook and mobile clients simplify deployment.

Extensibility
New Web services-based application programming interface (API) and .NET integration via Exchange Management Shell tasks enable rapid development for custom and third-party applications.

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Office Communications Server 2007

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 is the first Microsoft product to combine enterprise-ready IM (instant messaging), presence, conferencing, and VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony in a fully integrated unified communications solution.  Office Communications Server 2007 provides richer presence capabilities, enhanced support for group IM, and improved deployment and management than its predecessor, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 SP1.  To existing features, such as federation and public IM connectivity, Office Communications Server 2007 includes real-time conferencing hosted on servers inside your organization’s firewall and a full-featured, software-powered VoIP solution that can stand on its own or integrate easily with an existing PBX infrastructure.

Like Live Communications Server 2005, Office Communications Server 2007 is available in two editions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition:

Standard Edition
Hosts all server components, as well as the database for storing user and conference information, on a single computer. Standard Edition provides full functionality for small organisations.

Enterprise Edition
Separates server functionality from data storage to achieve higher capacity and availability.  An Enterprise Edition pool typically consists of two or more Front End Servers, which are fronted by a hardware load balancer and connected to a Back-End Database.  (It is also possible to deploy a single Front End Server without a load balancer.)  Optionally, certain conferencing components can be deployed on separate computers for higher capacity and availability.  Enterprise Edition is appropriate for medium, large, and very large organisations.

Both editions support the full suite of IM, presence, conferencing, and VoIP features.

The principal new features of Office Communications Server 2007 include the following:

On-premise Web conferencing
Group IM
Audio and video
Enterprise Voice
Microsoft RoundTable communications and archival system
Enhanced presence
Federation enhancements
Client applications
Simplified deployment and management

Office Communicator 2007

Office Communicator 2007 is a unified communications client that helps people be more productive by enabling them to communicate easily with others in different locations or time zones using a range of different communication options, including instant messaging (IM), voice, and video.  Integration with programs across the 2007 Microsoft Office system - including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove, and SharePoint Server - gives information workers many different ways to communicate with each other via a consistent and simple user experience.



Connect with others

Office Communicator 2007 provides easy access to rich presence, IM, and other real-time communications capabilities to enable information workers to communicate with each other more easily and quickly.

Integration with existing address books and corporate directories means that it's not necessary to maintain separate and disconnected contact lists just for real-time communications.  You can find anyone in your contact lists, see information about their availability, and communicate with them right away.  Rich presence capabilities enable you to share information about your availability with other contacts, and to view their availability.  Office Communicator 2007 integrates presence information from multiple sources - including your calendar and out of office message - to provide better information so people know if you're available to communicate, and if so, which method would be best.



Consistent experience

Office Communicator 2007 helps to keep things simple by integrating varying modes of communication into a single user experience, centered on the person who the communication is being conducted with.

A communication might start with a simple IM.  With Office Communicator 2007 you can add other modes of communication.  If voice or video would be more effective, you can add those modes without opening new windows or starting another program.

Office Communicator 2007 focuses on the people in a conversation and provides a consistent experience regardless of whether the conversation is using IM, voice, video, or other modes.

Communicate contextually

Office Communicator 2007 is part of the Microsoft Office system and is closely integrated with other Microsoft Office programs.  This integration helps ensure that communications can occur in the context of the program being used, without having to switch to a different program for a different form of communication.

From an e-mail message received in Office Outlook 2007, users can view presence information about other users and initiate real-time communication from within the message, avoiding the need to switch applications and search for users.  When working on a document in Office Word 2007, users can see a list of the people associated with the document along with availability information for those users.  From this contextual list and based on this availability information, users can initiate a conversation directly with the appropriate people.

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Microsoft RoundTable



Microsoft RoundTable is an advanced collaboration and conferencing device that delivers an engaging, immersive meeting experience with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 or Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007. Microsoft RoundTable extends meeting environments across multiple locations, giving remote participants a 360-degree view of the conference room, enhanced audio, and video that tracks the flow of conversation.



Microsoft RoundTable enables companies to:

Fully engage remote participants in meetings by enabling them to immediately see who is in the conference room and who is currently speaking

Make remote collaboration easy and affordable

Transform meeting content into reusable corporate assets

Fully Engage All Participants



Microsoft RoundTable delivers a unique and immersive meeting experience in which participants in different locations can easily converse and share information as if they were physically in the room with one another.  Meetings become more productive, collaborative and engaging, as Microsoft RoundTable provides:

360-degree panoramic video of everyone in the conference room

High-resolution video of the active speaker, using advanced technology that automatically focuses the view on the current speaker and tracks the flow of conversation

Full integration of the panoramic and active speaker video with Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Live Meeting 2007

Become greener and save money

By using conferencing throughout your organisation you reduce the amount of journeys employees make saving travel direct costs as well as reducing your carbon footprint and employee downtime.

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