Clients for Office Communications Server

I’ve been doing a bit of work recently to figure out what would be needed to move from current Live Communications Server (LCS) setup to Office Communications Server (OCS).  Part of this has been to think about what clients are available for the various platforms people might be using.

I thought it might be useful to post up a quick summary of what I’ve found.

Windows

Windows is obviously the primary platform that OCS is designed to work with.  To that end it has the most feature rich clients.

Office Communicator 2007 R2
Office Communicator 2007 is the main client for OCS.  It is the most feature rich client available and includes support for the full range of OCS’s capabilities:

Instant Messaging
Presence
Enhanced Presence
Assess Levels
PIC Connectivity
File Transfer
1:1 Voice and Video
Multiparty Voice and Video
Live Meeting sessions
Call Management Features
Remote Call Control
VoIP
Office Integration
Calendar Free/Busy
Conversation History

Office Communicator 2005
Office Communicator 2005 is the original client for LCS.  Whilst most people will move to MOC 2007, if you’re migrating from LCS during the rollout it might be necessary to have some people using the older client. 

Whist MOC 2005 will work with OCS and OCS R2, there are some limitations.  If you enable Enhanced Presence for the MOC 2005 users in OCS then they won’t be able to connect – as I understand it this is also something that can’t be undone once the user has also logged into MOC 2007.  Also if you’re running OCS R2 you’ll also need to install the December 2008 hotfix package.

Once you have it working, you have access to most of OCS functionality, but updated features like enhanced presence aren’t available.

Apple Mac

Messenger for Mac 7.0.2
If you’re a Mac user, MS provide a pretty decent OCS client in the form of Messenger for Mac.  As well as supporting Live Messenger, this support various flavours of LCS and OCS, with the recent 7.0.2 version and later supporting OCS 2007 R2.

Messenger for Mac supports the majority of OCS and Office Communicator features, including things that were missing from previous versions such as audio and video conferencing, Enhanced Presence, GAL search, and support for federated users.  In fact the only major items not available are support for LiveMeeting sessions, VoIP support and Access Levels for presence.

One thing to note, is that once a user has been enabled for enhanced presence and has logged in using Messenger for Mac 7, they won’t then be able to use version 6 or earlier.

Macs can also use the Web Client described below.

Messenger for Mac can be found here:

Messenger for Mac site

and the product team have provided some good documentation for it here:

Messenger for Mac Deployment Guide

Web Client

Office Communicator Web Access
Communicator Web Access provides a web based interface into OCS for remote workers.  It provides the core functionality of IM and Presence, but OCS R2 extends that functionality significantly.

With R2, web users can use Desktop Sharing sessions.  If you are on a Windows computer then you can launch, view and control sessions, if you’re on a Mac or Linux based box then you’ll only be able to view and take control of a session.

What’s more, if you have telephony configured within your OCS environment, web users can also initiate, receive and control audio conferences.  By providing a the number of a telephone they can use, OCS dials in that phone and connects it to a conference hosted on the A/V Conferencing server.  If an incoming call is received whilst a users is connected to the web client they can use it to redirect the call to an alternative phone.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to provide a Web Client to people who aren’t part of your organisation so that they can join conferences/conversations.  There’s an ‘invite using email’ function that will send them a specific URL that will launch a web client session and join them into the converation.

There are a few other additions with R2 such as the ability to use distribution groups for messages, and support for customising the logon pages with company logos etc.

Windows Mobile

Communicator Mobile (CoMo)
For Windows Mobile MS is provided a pretty decent communicator client, and then improved it further with the R2 release.

CoMo supports all the usual IM and presence functionality, including communication with PIC contacts and distribution groups.  It provides access to the corporate address book, and lets the user initial phone calls to numbers held within it.

The R2 version has a number of improvements to the client, as well as some improvements in interaction with an R2 backend.

On the client side there are a few usability improvements like access to recent contacts and expanding distribution lists.  The R2 version is also a lot more efficient in terms of network usage which contributes to vastly improved battery life over the previous version.

One big advance is the on the voice integration with OCS.  When using the CoMo client to make calls, the client uses the OCS infrastructure to make calls, potentially saving call costs.  It also allows for single number reach, with calls to an OCS desk phone will ring the mobile and will be answerable on the mobile.

When working with an R2 backend presence is also a lot smarter for people using more than one client – for example people with a CoMo phone and OC on their computer.  OCS will determine the most recent activity and use the presence from that device.

CoMo can be downloaded from a Windows Mobile device here.

Apple iPhone

For while now I’ve been keeping an eye out for an OCS client for the Apple iPhone.  As yet I’ve not managed to find an equivalent to Windows Mobiles CoMo, but does appear to be a solution out there if you really have to have one.

WebMessenger seems to provide an iPhone version of their client, though it does looks like you need to install their WebMessenger Server Platform alongside OCS/LCS in order to use it.  So ultimately it’s not that useful.

It looks like the client supports IM, Presence and contact lists, but the information on the website doesn’t go into any detail.

Update:  Since originally writing this post, Modality Systems have released a full iPhone client for OCS.  I’ve written some more on this client here.

RIM Blackberry

Blackberry Client for OCS
If you use Blackberry’s in your organisation RIM has provided a client for OCS.  It provides presence and IM capabilities, though does not support any audio or video conferencing.  It does however integrate into the other Blackberry applications, so you can set your presence from the Home screen, and will show the presence of contract directly from the phones address book.  The client also used the phones spellchecker in IM messages and allows links and phone numbers in messages to be clicked and followed/dialled.

There is also an application that supports the older Live Communications Server.

The application is available here.

Mobile Phones

Office Communicator Mobile for Java
To provide OCS to a wider range of mobile devices the OCS team have now released a Java version of the CoMo client which supports the Nokia S40 and S60 and the Motorola RAZR V3 (though others may work).

The client provides much of the same functionality as the Windows Mobile client, including IM, Presence address book access and single number reach.

Further details can be found here and here, and you can download it onto you phone from getcomo.com.

So what is a diffuser and what does it do for an F1 car?

Since the 2009 F1 season started in Australia, there’s been a new order on the grid.  This year the sports technical regulations were changed, particularly those dealing with aerodynamics.  A few teams have got the march on the others by interpreting the rules in a different way, and have developed faster, better cars.  The old guard of McLaren and Ferrari are on their back foot, whilst teams like Brawn find themselves leading the championship.

If you believe the press this change of form has been down to the cars diffusers.  But what are they?  Most reports simply say that diffusers generate downforce, but strictly speaking that’s not really what they’re for.

Having had a few conversations about this recently I thought I’d attempt to write an explanation of what a diffuser does.  I’m not exactly an aerodynamicist, but hopefully this will make sense!  Right… so a few basics… sorry if they’re obvious! 

Ultimately a cars performance is dictated by it’s tyres.  The more friction or grip they have with the road, the faster a car can corner, accelerate and brake.  There are many weird and wonderful ways to get the tyres themselves to grip better, from compounds of rubber to their internal construction.  One simple way to increase grip though is just to push them onto the road more.  Sounds obvious eh?  Of course you could do this by adding weight, but that would compromise other aspects of the car’s performance.  The more mass a car has the more energy that is needed to accelerate it and keep it on the road, so really you want a way to push the car down, but without adding mass.  That’s where downforce comes in, using the airflow passing over – and under – the car to push it down into the road.

An important idea to understand when thinking about downforce is the Bernouilli Principle for fluid dynamics.  In short all this says is that the faster a fluid flows the lower its pressure.  In our case, the fast that air is flowing over the surface of a car, the lower it’s pressure.  (This is a vast simplification, but in general true.)

An example of this in practice is an aeroplane wing. 

VenturiTube

As the air passes through the tube it meets a narrow throat through which it must pass.  The amount of air that enters through the inlet must be the same as the amount that exits at the end, so to pass through the throat the airflow must accelerate, and by increasing in velocity it reduces in pressure.  Once through the throat the diffuser increases the diameter of the tube back to that of the inlet, and therefore slows the airflow back to its original velocity.

A practical example of a venturi tube in use is a carburettor choke, where the low pressure is used to suck fuel into the airflow and then into the engine cylinders.

So what has this got to do with downforce?  Well imagine that half of the tube was flat (as below).

VenturiTubeHalf 

The same still applies, the air in the throat accelerates and slows.  So if the flat surface was a road and the throat the underside of a car you would get low pressure under the car – just what we want.

For this to work the car has to have a flat underside, any interference in the airflow will slow it down. 

The closer the car is to the road the faster the air will have to travel, hence the desire to run cars as low as possible.  One thing to consider here though is that whilst the airflow will go faster the lower the car, air still has to be able to get under it.  At some point the car will be so low that not enough air will pass under the front lip and the effect will stall, leading to a drop in downforce.  This is a particular problem under braking when the front of the car will dip towards the road.  If it drops too far the floor will stall and the driver will experience a sudden drop in grip just when he needs it.  This was what the active suspension of a few years ago was intended to avoid, it actively managed the suspension to keep the ride height at an optimum level.

Another effect of having lower than ambient pressure under the car is that air will leak in from the sides reducing it’s effect.  This is a real problem and one that on the old Lotus 78 and 79 race cars was solved by running skirts along the side of the car to stop air getting in.  Skirts are now banned, but other techniques have been adopted over the years such as creating vortex’s along the sides – but that’s all a bit off topic.

So if the flat floor generates downforce why have the diffuser at the rear of the car?  After all the more flat area you have the more downforce you’ll get. 

The diffusers purpose is to control the way the airflow at the back of the car decelerates back to its normal velocity.  So it less about creating downforce, it’s actually an essential part of the venturi whose purpose is to slow the airflow by increasing the space between the road and the underside of the car.  This allows the pressure to rise back up to ambient so that the airflow leaves the underside of the car as smoothly as possible decreasing drag that would slow the car down.  Having said that, the pressure in the diffuser will on average be lower than ambient, so it will create some downforce, but as a side effect.

A common misconception, and one that I made before I read a book about aerodynamics, is that the diffuser expands the air to produce low pressure.  This isn’t the case as it would require the airs density to change, and in an open system like the underside of a car a diffuser wouldn’t be able to do.

So how are Brawn and the other teams getting such an advantage?  Well by interpreting the aero rules differently they have been able to build diffusers that are much more efficient than their rivals.  By being able to start their diffusers earlier they are able to run them up closer to the upper bodywork of the car, and importantly closer to the rear wing elements.  The low pressures of the underside of the rear wing and diffuser interact and increase the effectiveness of each other.  There’s some really good information on the specific differences between the Brawn/Toyota/Williams cars and the others in the FIA’s explanation of their appeal ruling here.

A good book on this subject is Competition Car Aerodynamics: A Practical Handbook by Simon McBeath.  

Smartphone and iPhone polices in Exchange

There’s a lot of well deserved buzz about the Exchange 2010 announcements today, but unfortunately this post is more about the present day versions!

I’ve had a few conversations over the past few weeks about managing mobile devices like smartphones and iPhones.  Many companies now have a lot of phones and PDA’s being used to access email, calendars and contacts.  Now I think this is great news, having consistent access to my calendar and contacts from all my phones is fantastic.  From a company perspective though it can pose some challenges. 

With all those devices wandering around the countryside with copies of mailboxes, attachments, address books etc on them, the risk of loosing something important increases.  So how do you go about managing the things?

Fortunately there are quite a few people out there who can help.  There are a number of products out there that will manage phones, PDA’s smartphones etc.  Some will manage just specific devices and others will look after anything that’s even slightly intelligent.  Depending on your size, you can probably also get these as a managed service from people like Brightpoint, so no need to buy kit of your own. 

These dedicated solutions offer a fantastic amount of control over remote devices, including software distribution even remote control.  But the costs do add up. 

If you’re using Microsoft Exchange and Activesync, another option is to look at the management options that they provide out the box.  Since Exchange 2003 you’ve been able to apply polices to devices that connect to Exchange for mail.  This has the advantage that you can apply policies to all devices that connect to Exchange, including those that might be personal phones (of course you’d need to warn people!).

Whilst Exchange doesn’t offer quite the same level of control as something like Mobile Device Manager or mProdigy, for some it will offer enough for free that the dedicated solutions aren’t necessary.

When this subject first came up at work last year I put this table together that shows what options are available from Exchange 2003 through to Exchange 2007 SP1, and on Windows Mobile and iPhone.  The info came from quite a few places, but I can’t remember exactly where so sorry if anyone recognises a bit of it as theirs! 

Unfortunately the table is too big too wide post here directly, but here’s  a copy of the spreadsheet with the info:

I really want one of these…

I spotted this in Wired UK just now:

WireframeLamboghiniCountach 

Looks like a CGI 3D wireframe of a Lamborghini Countach?

Or not…

WireframeLamboghiniCountach2

An artist call Benedict Radcliffe created a full scale wireframe replica of a Lamborghini Countach.  He’s also done a few other cars and bikes like a Subaru Impreza and Honda Goldwing.  Check out his site, he’s done some very cool work.