Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications

Reveals Microsoft's new VoIP strategies: plans backed with multi-billion-dollar investments and worldwide partnerships- Offers detailed guidance for everyone evaluating Microsoft VoIP systems .- Covers enterprise and small-to-midsize business solutions, as well as security and other key issues.- Shares knowledge typically available only through costly consulting or analyst relationships.- By a leading expert who has consulted extensively with Microsoft and many of its top customers. Microsoft is aggressively pursuing leadership in the fast-growing Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) marketplace. Author Joe Schurman is one of the world's top VoIP consultants, and has worked closely with Microsoft and many of its largest partners and customers. Drawing on his experience, Schurman explains how VoIP technology works, introduces each of Microsoft's offerings, and shows how they fit together. Readers will learn how Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 delivers VoIP, video, instant messaging, and conferencing that integrates with Microsoft Office; how the Communicator 2007 client application brings together telephony, instant messaging, and video communications on PCs, mobile phones, and Web browsers; how Live Meeting services and Microsoft RoundTable hardware provide advanced videoconferencing solutions; and how Microsoft Response Point offers a complete VoIP solution for small businesses. Schurman covers VoIP security in depth; reviews Microsoft's enterprise and small business competitors; previews VoIP's future; and introduces the resources available through the worldwide Microsoft VoIP community.

Joe Schurman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Evangelyze Communications, a Microsoft Certified Voice Specialized Partner (VSP). Joe has provided consulting and research within the Information Technology industry and with Microsoft for the past 15 years, holding senior roles at IBM Global Services, Hewlett-Packard, and Accenture. Joe has founded several successful organizations focusing on the research and development of voice and unified communications technologies with Nortel, Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft. Joe was involved in the early stages of Microsoft's Unified Communications strategy in 2002 with the release of Microsoft Live Communications Server 2003 and has provided internationally recognized research, publications, and training seminars in each region of the world. In 2006, Joe began working with Microsoft Research on the initial launch of Microsoft's Small Business voice product, Microsoft's Response Point, and has travelled throughout the US and Canada providing training and readiness to Microsoft's partners and customers. Joe is an award-winning speaker through the Microsoft TechNet program, having spoken for thousands of attendees at Microsoft events and IT industry-focused seminars and webcasts worldwide, and is a 5-time award winner of the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for his community involvement and contributions to Microsoft's voice and unified communications products and services internationally. Joe is married with three children and resides in Houston, Texas, where he began his career at Compaq Computer Corporation.

Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications ForewordThe evolution of communications is a fascinating subject. From the primordial event where two people at the same place exchanged a single piece of semantically significant information to Gene Roddenberry's resplendent "Transporter" vision you have to wonder what were the incremental and disruptive steps--what endured and what did not. Like historians then, we use that thesis to predict what will work in the journey into the future of communications, and what will not.In our lifetime the world has evolved from analog phone calls and telegraphs to PC-based communications. We have watched the PC and the Internet grow to reach more than a billion people in a span of 15 years or so. We have witnessed how the union of software and the Internet has become the jet fuel for the evolution of communications--creating an amalgamated medium for innovation and adoption unprecedented in the history of communications.What we call Unified Communications (UC) is really the Renaissance of communications, in the same way the Renaissance period was for culture from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century. UC is transforming the fundamentals--user experience, programmability, accessibility, reuse of components, and infrastructure. Everything is being and will continue to be challenged. The only thing sacred is the principle of empowering the end user with new capabilities offered within a cognitive model that is intuitive and practical.Joe Schurman captures the essence of Microsoft's vision and implementation in the areas of voice and Unified Communications. This is an important book for those interested in connecting the dots between the present and the future in human communications and understanding why things are evolving in that way. Above all, this is a thorough and practical book, useful for those evaluating and planning the next step with Microsoft's Unified Communications offerings. PrefaceThe telecommunications industry is changing in ways not thought possible. We, as a human race, are seeing a complete transformation in how human communication can be used throughout applications and devices, truly connecting people and processes, regardless of geography, at a speed of innovation that is incomprehensible. The future of these successful innovations will lie within how human and machine-based communication will interact with tools that we use on a daily basis, liberating us from specific hardware and devices through the power of software. The purpose of this book is to introduce you to a company who is truly a leader in this strategy and vision and who is equipping the creative developers of tomorrow with the tools necessary to transform the world of Voice and Unified Communications forever. This company is Microsoft Corporation, and the content within this book will help you understand what Microsoft is providing today and the vision for tomorrow throughout consumer, small business, and enterprise organizations on a global scale through the power of software. Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.