Grey Convergence Russell JF Kirk

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Recent Posts

  • CS14 to support LLDP
  • Agent Communications Panel for OCS and Dynamics CRM 4
  • Microsoft UC training materials
  • UC User Group at TechEd
  • Updated release of Messenger for Mac
  • Communicator 2007 hotfix 951662
  • Messenger for Mac 7
  • Easily create a Communicator-friendly email signature
  • Interact08 and MVP Summit in review
  • Office Communicator for Mac
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Tanjay handset and layer 2 discovery protocols

The Microsoft Tanjay handset does not support layer two discovery protocols such as CDP and LLDP for VLAN allocation.

CDP is Cisco Discovery Protocol and LLDP is Link Layer Discovery Protocol. LLDP is a standard ratified as IEEE standard 802.1AB-2005, and LLDP-MED, Media Endpoint Discovery, is the specific method used by some handsets.

Mitel did much of the work in getting LLDP standardised.

CDP and LLDP are used by IPT vendors such as Cisco and Mitel to automatically assign a VLAN to a phone based upon which physical switch, and therefore portion of the network, it is connected to.

The Tanjay handset uses DHCP option settings to allocate the VLAN as shown below. This is taken from the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition Release Notes.

IT administrators can configure VLAN by following below instructions:

1. At startup, Communicator Phone Edition sends a DHCP request to the native VLAN

o Communicator Phone Edition sends Vendor ID option "60" with value "CPE-OCPhone"

o Communicator Phone Edition requests Vendor Specific Option parameter "43"

2. The DHCP server responds with a native VLAN address and standard options. It must also respond with the Vendor Specific parameters:

o Vendor Specific Option "10" should be set to the VLAN ID.

· Communicator Phone Edition will store the VLAN ID and immediately release the address lease.

 

Hopefully Microsoft will support LLDP in the future but nothing announced to date.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Tanjay, Communicator Phone Expierience, CDP, LLDP, LLDP-MED, Office Communications Server

· Communicator Phone Edition will make a new DHCP request, with the packet's VLAN ID set to the ID specified in step 2.

Wednesday, 16 January 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Communicator Mobile 2007

Technorati tags: OCS, MOC, CoMo, Mobile

I have a long outstanding post on OCS documentation to clarify what's available where and where the latest updates are. In the meantime great news that CoMo 2 has been released, links as below:

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Mobile

Release Notes

Frequently Asked Questions

Quick Reference Card - Installation and Configuration

Quick Reference Card - Instant Messaging (IM) and Presence

Planning and Deployment Guide

User Guide

Troubleshooting Guide

Friday, 28 September 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Parlano acquisition press releases and blog posts

No major updates yet but the press releases and blog posts are out as below.

Microsoft Press Release:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/aug07/08-29ParlanoPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases

Microsoft strengthens unified communications portfolio with leading enterprise group chat provider.

Parlano Press Release

http://www.parlano.com/asp/news_events/2007/press_082907.asp

Microsoft Unified Communications Team Blog

http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2007/08/29/8.aspx

Parlano blogs:

Nick Fera CEO

http://nickfera.typepad.com/they_speak/2007/08/they-have-spoke.html

Bob Serr, CTO

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/bobserr/~3/149902885/microsoft-to-ac.html

I love the excitement and honesty of Bob's opening line of "The news hit the wires today – Microsoft is buying Parlano. Whoo hoo!!".

Jeff Schultz, SVP Marketing

http://www.jeschultz.com/zone_2/2007/08/exciting-news-m.html

Sunday, 02 September 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft to acquire Parlano

I've just heard the fantastic news that Microsoft are to acquire Parlano who produce a persistent group messaging product based on LCS and OCS.

We've been working with Parlano for the last two years and formally became a partner in January of this year. You can found out more from your choice of news feed stories here.

I'll post more as soon as find out the details but bringing MindAlign to the mass market will be excellent. Congratulations to Microsoft and the Parlano teams in Chicago and London.

Thursday, 30 August 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Steve Ballmer and John Chambers to Discuss Future of Technology

Title says it all, original article here but details as below. I'm sure this going to require some careful scripting, around their collaboration around NAC and NAP and competition around UC. Hopefully will be fascinating, lets hope it live up to the potential.

 

Media Alert: Steve Ballmer and John Chambers to Discuss Future of Technology

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco Systems Inc. Chairman and CEO John Chambers will discuss the future of the technology industry and their shared vision for addressing today’s customer requirements.

What: Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco Systems Inc. Chairman and CEO John Chambers will discuss the future of the technology industry and their shared vision for addressing today’s customer requirements.

Who: Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems
Charlie Rose, moderator
When: Monday, Aug. 20, 2007
7–8:30 a.m. PDT

How to View: Visit http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/MSFTCisco to watch the live webcast. An on-demand version will be posted shortly after the event concludes.

Following the event, broadcast-quality video clips will also be posted to the Microsoft® PressPass Broadcast Newsroom at http://www.thenewsmarket.com/microsoft and Cisco’s online news site at http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Cisco, please visit the Cisco online news site at http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Friday, 17 August 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft UC and OCS Virtual Labs

To compliment the evaluation downloads, Microsoft have also announced free virtual labs for OCS so you can get familiar without having to do any of the installation locally.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/unifiedcommunications.aspx?tab=virtuallabs

Links to our newest Virtual Labs are

Exchange Server 2007: Configuring the Unified Messaging Server  

Deploying and Configuring Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 , 

Enabling Users and Installing Office Communicator 2007  ,  

Configuring and Using Conferencing in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 

Using the Management and Troubleshooting Tools in Office Communications Server 2007

Compliance and Archiving in Office Communications Server 2007 .

Monday, 06 August 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) RTMs and evaluation software

Great news from Redmond at the end of July that Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and the client Office Communicator 2007 have RTM'ed. Further information on Microsoft PressPass.

Now that's almost old news now and I'd been holding off this post until now when there's something available to 'play' with. Evaluation software is now downloadable at the below links:

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Trial Download

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Trial Download

More posts to follow on labs, documentation, licensing and general availability.

Sunday, 05 August 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog changes

I've made a few changes to this blog in the last couple of weeks. There's a new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/GreyConvergenceRussellJFKirk. If you subscribe or link to this blog I'd greatly appreciate it if you could update any links or subscriptions. Thanks in advance, or contact me so I can contact the site owner. I can be reach at russ D O T kirk A T GreyConvergence D O T com

I've also made some format changes to better match the corporate site which has meant that previous posts have been republished. If you subscribe and have received a bunch of new posts please note that the content hasn't changed, just the format. APologies for any inconvenience.

Sunday, 05 August 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft Unveil UC end-points

News from Mark Deakin (UC product manager in the UK) that Microsoft have today launched their range of UC end-points. Details here and photos here.

I'm impressed and surprised at the range of devices they've announced given the secrecy surrounding the availability of end-points. But good news indeed. Now to find out on orderability and delivery timescale's. Mark makes reference that they are available now so here's hoping.

The launch includes two versions of the Tanjay device which is built-on Communicator Phone Experience. The LG-NorTel on the left and the Polycom on the right. Spot the difference if you can, logo aside :).

  LG-Nortel IP Phone 8540 Tanjay Polycom CX700 IP Phone Tanjay

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSFT, end-points, tanjay, OCS

Monday, 14 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft User Groups

There are now a growing number of user groups in the UK for various Microsoft products and technologies. I've listed them below and we are all coming together for a repeat of the hugely popular EVO (Exchange Vista Office) Community Day we held in January.

The event is being held on 21st June at Microsoft in Reading. Our homepage for the event is here and a  full agenda is here where you can also book for this free event. The January event was hugely over-subscribed so I'd recommend booking early.

Groove

Live Meeting

Messaging and Mobility includes Exchange.

SharePoint

Office

Power Shell

Unified Communications includes LCS and OCS.

Virtualisation - launching soon.

Windows 'Longhorn'  - launching soon.

Windows Vista

Monday, 14 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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