Gartner 2008 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

Yesterday i reviewed Gartner report on UC and found it very informative and interesting. following is the link;

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article1/article1.html

LCS 2005 End point Issue

Recently I faced an issue in LCS 2005, the users were reporting that they are unable to login on LCS and getting Server not found issue. Some users were complaining that they are unable to send messages. After viewing events in server I found following error;

Event Type: Error

Event Source: Live Communications User Services

Event Category: (1006)

Event ID: 30903

Date: 3/30/2008

Time: 11:49:08 AM

User: N/A

Computer: XXXXX

Description:

The Endpoint expiration stored procedure failed. It will be retried, but if this error continues to occur, the Live Communications Server service will need to be restarted.

Error code: 0×80004005

Cause: Possible issues with backend database.

Resolution:

Ensure the backend is functioning correctly.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

after googling I found 1 KB article on this issue explaining the cause and fix of this issue

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904951

As per MS KB “This problem occurs because of a deadlock condition on the back-end Microsoft SQL Server database. When there is a deadlock condition, SQL Server automatically selects one of the set presence calls as the deadlock victim”

I have checked my back-end SQL server and found some process in deadlock state. I have checked with my backup guy and found that there was an unscheduled backup running on LCS database at that time. I requested to stop this backup and tried to restart LCS services but it didn’t work. Then I ran following command mentioned in the KB as a workaround of this issue.

OSQL.EXE -S local\<instance name> -d rtc -E -Q “exec sp_MSforeachtable ‘dbcc dbreindex(”?”)’”

Apparently this command was succeeded and showing some messages. One of the messages was informing about a deadlock process and a returning transaction. After this I have restarted the LCS service and checked event viewer once again, but the problem remained same. Then I stopped the LCS service and then re-ran the above command which was succeeded without any issue. Then i restarted the LCS service and checked the event viewer and all were normal.

It seemed to have some indexing issues with the LCS database; I will further investigate on it and try to find out the core cause. Meanwhile I have already initiated a request to Microsoft for this hotfix.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

MS Office Communications Server 2007 protocols

Following are the protocols with thier descriptions which are using in Office Communications Server 2007.

SIP
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard signaling protocol. Office Communications Server 2007 uses SIP to initiate, manage, and terminate interactive sessions between one or more participants during instant messaging, data collaboration, on-premise audio/video conferencing, or telephony on an IP-based network.

HTTP
HTTP is a standard request/response protocol used for communication between clients and servers. In Office Communications Server 2007, HTTP is used for communication between the Focus and conferencing servers, download of Address Book Server updates to Office Communicator clients, and download of meeting content on users’ computers.

CCCP
Centralized Conference Control Protocol (CCCP) is a custom protocol in Office Communications Server 2007. CCCP is used for the exchange of the conference creation information and the control commands between Office Communicator clients and Office Communications Server 2007.

PSOM
Persistent Shared Object Model Protocol (PSOM) is a custom protocol in Office Communications Server 2007 that is used for transporting on-premise Web conferencing content such as conference ID, associated security keys, expiration time, and user roles and privileges.

SRTP
Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) is an IETF standard protocol that provides encryption, message authentication, integrity, and replay protection to the relayed Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) data. In Office Communications Server 2007, SRTP is used for the secure transport of audio and video content to various media devices such as microphones and speakers.

RTCP
Real-Time Control Protocol (RTCP) is an IETF standard protocol. Office Communications Server 2007 uses RTCP in conjunction with SRTP to convey information about the signal quality of an on-premise audio/video conferencing session among the various media devices.

More on Unified Communication platform

Today we had a very good session with Danie Odendaal Microsoft solution specialist-portals & Collaboration for Middle East and Africa. He was presenting us the vision of Microsoft in terms of Unified Communication platform. He gave us a demo in which he dialed to MS exchange and listened voice mails, calendar entries and contacts. It is very good to see that now Microsoft speech technology is so much improved, we were able to give our commands easily without having accent problem. Also Ms is supporting number of languages but Arabic is not yet supported and it will be available in the second quarter of 2007. We got to know that office communication server (OCS) will be available in two versions, standard and enterprise. Standard will be the same as live communication server 2005 with some major enhancement. OCS enterprise will include MS live meeting bundled for live meeting and video conferencing. We also saw couple of IP phone models created by Microsoft partners. One of which has OCS client built in (not remember exact models) and one is connected to PC by USB. OCS client model can show you all the details such as dialed calls, missed calls, OCS users list with their status, conferencing facility and many other feature of OCS. USB phone don’t have any interface, it will connect with OCS client installed on PC and one can control it from there. If PC is off your calls will redirected to the exchange voice mail. We will be getting more information from Microsoft on unified communication.

Unified Communications Platform

Microsoft has released its new unified communication platform. Microsoft joined hand with Nortel and other VoIP giants in 2006 to create a platform based on Microsoft technologies for providing users a single interface for meeting collaboration challenges. Microsoft vision is to provide its customers a platform to communicate with their team member, partners and vendors without geographical limitation.

Major components of this platform are Microsoft live communication server 2007, Microsoft office communicator 2007, Microsoft Speech server, Microsoft Live meeting, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft SharePoint portal 2007 and other partner products for different functions.

A user using this platform is able to place call or initiate a video conference with their partners or peers connecting from any communication device and from any geographic location.

Now if you don’t have PC but have phone, you can still check your email by dialing Microsoft exchange server and hear your emails. People can leave voice messages for you while you are offline or away and you can get these voice messages directly in your inbox.

Microsoft partners had already created some powerful applications based on this platform focusing on specific business needs such as managing human capital, Customer service excellence, Collaboration between remote offices in real-time manner and many other needs.

For further details, following is the link
http://www.microsoft.com/uc/default.mspx