A while ago, I posted some thoughts about OCS as a conference bridge and commented on some shortcomings. In the months in between I’ve had a lot of conversation with people about the topic and figured it was about time to revisit the subject.
First off, I should state that OCS 2007 itself, in its current form, still doesn’t have a mechanism to let outside callers dial into a bridge number, enter a passcode, and join a conference in progress. So no change there, then.
Now for the update:
- I realized that you could actually write a Speech Server app to do the bridging functionality. It hasn’t been done by anyone, to the best of my knowledge, but from the looks of the Speech Server and OCS SDKs, it looks viable.
- Aside from the service providers who do integrate with OCS, you can also actually integrate this with an on-premise Nortel MultiMedia conferencing solution
- I will be extremely shocked if this isn’t addressed in the next release of OCS.
- With the recent PolyCom and Tandberg partnerships announced, I am seeing this as a real opportunity to integrate existing audio/video conferencing with LiveMeeting and OCS. I’m following those stories closely and will post when I hear official word on the integration to OCS/LM.
Regarding the last point – everyone that I have talked to at MS about the whole "OCS as a conference bridge" has told me that it’s an important feature and is critical to address. I’m not reading that as a promise or a ship date but I feel pretty good that we can look forward to a more native solution in the near future. Point number 3 might also be partially why you don’t see anyone jumping to do point number 1.
We should be seeing a roadmap from MS soon and I am feeling good about the chances that it includes a dial-in bridge.
