Matt McGillen

(10/07/2009 – I’ve updated this issue in a newer post) I noticed something odd a while back when we deployed OCS 2007 R2 for audio conferencing: that the webpage where users go to reset their PINs always says that PIN length must be a minimum of 5 digits. Even if you have set your PIN […]

I’ve been fiddling with QoS and OCS for the past few days and have some insights to share. First important point is that OCS will support QoS via DSCP marking. But it is not enabled by default on any OCS servers or clients, but can be enabled. Microsoft has some pretty useful info on how […]

I just learned something surprising today about OCS (not R2) and normalization. Eric Gleason, a friend of mine who is the OCS guru (among other responsibilities) at a customer, pointed this out to me today. It all started when Eric and I had integrated OCS with a Dialogic and a Nortel. We originally (like 10 […]

Cisco announced a new integration with OCS this week at VoiceCon. I got a chance to take a look at the new feature – it turns out to be a combination of a customized OCS Tab and an incarnation of the new Cisco extensible client framework. It’s called CUCIMOC (Cookie Mock – that name has […]

That was Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate VP for Unfied Communications at Microsoft admonishing his competition for delivering multiple disparate products and calling them "Unified". He even made mention of competitors’ need for duct tape to unify their platforms. While that quote was a general broadside against incumbent IP Telephony leaders, it was clearly aimed at […]

There’s a showdown brewing between Microsoft and Cisco in the UC space. Both companies offer a lot of different products, some overlap and some don’t. I made a chart below to show where the products that do overlap stack up. Note: I’m not making a judgment here as to whether or not the Cisco / […]

R2 officially launches today. You can view all the PR stuff over at Microsoft & Jeff has linked to the launch site. There are some great videos about what people are doing with OCS here as well. If you do check out the videos, I highly highly recommend watching the Dassault systems video. It’s a […]

UPDATE 1/20/2009: Good comments from both Andy and Chris below about Cisco’s presence. Look for them to make a splash at VoiceCon Orlando 2009. As for Nortel, maybe their bankruptcy filing had something to do with the no-show? VoiceCon wrapped up today. Two big surprises for me: Cisco had no booth; Nortel had virtually no […]

I can finally retract my earlier statement about OCS 2007 not really being a conference bridge. This is officially resolved in OCS 2007 R2. I saw a great demo of the audio conferencing at VoiceCon. And, not to sound like too much of a fanboy, but… it rocked. I know what you’re thinking: whoopdedoo: Microsoft […]

For those that haven’t tried it, I’m happy to report that deploying OCS 2007 in a resource forest works very well. I had one little problem that I’ll address at the end, but first a few words about why you might go this route at all. There are a few reasons why people want to […]

I recently delivered a webinar on the business and technical benefits of Office Communications Server: OCS 2007 In Action Presentation As I went through my preparation for the presentation, I realized that what I was really doing was creating a presentation that addressed the most common questions and concerns I’ve heard from various people/customers. A […]

I’ve been doing a lot of research into how you can extend OCS using the SDKs that MS makes available. Before I launch into my take on it, I have a couple points about the SDKs There are lots of SDKs The SDKs are very, very good – they are the building blocks that OCS […]