IM is certainly one of the most popular applications in use today. With Microsoft Office® OCS, IM can be extended enterprise-to-enterprise securely and safely via Federations. OCS-Office Communications Server supports both 1-1 and 1-X messaging internally and Federation IM-Instant Messaging. With one-to-one instant messaging, two users can exchange IM-instant messages. With I-X-group instant messaging, three or more users can exchange instant messages. Federation IM is IM allows communications of IM, exchange notification and presence (SIP) with users of another organization. OCS extends “presence” throughout the Federation and other applications, reducing "info lag" (office jet lag) finding the right person, dialing the right number and using the right communication (audio, video, animation, group) in the right context (1-1, 1-X, X-1, X-X) at the right time (real-time, shifted, archived).
Even though there are considerable security and compliance risks associated with IM its growth company-to-company is growing significantly even though many users use consumer-grade IM applications. SPIM-SPam over IM and other vulnerabilities are also protected through via OCS. OCS also offers an increasing series of developer tools and API-Applications Programming Interfaces to provide enhanced SIP presence controls. Voice will treated like data elements like data in a database with multi-media presence components accelerating voice-enabled business processes.
Bottom-Line - "Strategically, the faster you can communicate, the faster you can change, and those corporations that change the fastest will be the most successful."
Thomas B. Cross
Looking “inside” OCS-IM - “Parts” to Rich Presence - Categories, Containers and Watchers
Here are the key elements in OCS-IM:
- Categories
- Decompose the presence document into smaller pieces (“categories)
- Identifies type of data being published
- Collection of data elements {Category name, value} – based on pre-agreed XML schema
- Containers – Membership Lists
- Combination of publications and watchers– different watchers get different categories such as personal, team, workplace, public
- Membership definition (ACLs-Access Control Lists)
- Watchers assigned to one or more containers
Allow multiple instances of categories to be published for different containers
- Watchers
- Watchers receive notification of any category instance published to their container
Apply ACL-Access Control Lists in many ways:
- URI List (per user)
- Same Enterprise
- Domain List
- Federated Users
- Public Cloud Users
- Clients free to connect without server handshaking
This presentation is part of SIP Essentials 2.0c available in the onsite and online courses. The online version is $299 for SIP 2.0c and for $499 as part of OCS-101 Office Communications Server online version per person or less with discounts. For more information go to http://www.techtionary.com or please call Tom Cross at 303-594-1694 or cross@gocross.com Discounts are also available to members of the SIP Forum. For a complete detailed course outline go to: http://www.techtionary.com/ocs/sip-essentials.htm
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