VoiceCon day 3: Microsoft Communications Server “14” Announced

Well it has been officially announced. Wave 14 is now public knowledge with some key new features being talked about publicly for the first time. I am not going to try to cover all that was announced but it was certainly interesting. From a high level in no particular order:E911 location tracking, Call Admission Control, Expert Search using Sharepoint to name a few. Probably the thing I saw as the most telling way the industry was heading was when Gurdeep presented the map of the show floor and highlighted every partner that Microsoft have either interoperability or platform integration with for OCS. Well over half of the companies on the showroom floor. Interoprability was also highlighted during IBM's keynote as well.

With the VoiceCon IP-PBX RFP results released today there was another boost in the arm for Microsoft. OCS was the most economical solution based on Wave 14 responses. This included a subset of devices that where the new standalone IP phones and not jsut PC endpoints. I will post a link to the material when they become available.

I took some more shoots today. These are the two new phones that are going to be released for Wave 14 from Aastra and Polycom.

Aastra Information Worker Model...



Polycom's Information Worker model...



IBM are giving away copies of Windows now as their keynote presentation slide said “Windows Free”. JK. Photo from the IBM keynote...



Opps sorry about that, this is the view at the Disney Animal Kingdom from the rooms:- )

This will be the last post from the show as I head home tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

VoIPNorm