Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Launched

A Burton Group perspective on the latest OCS release

Microsoft launched OCS 2007 R2 today. Check out the launch site for more information. While some are indicating that this release might be the beginning of the death of the IP-PBX, I will leave that discussion to my colleagues in our Network and Telecom group.

R2 has many new features - What's new in OCS 2007 R2 provides the details.

Of all the features, I think the persistent group chat is one of the most interesting. Through setting up topic-based, persistent discussions, teams can work together regardless of location or time zone. Users are provided with a list of all available chat rooms and topics. Discussions can be archived in an XML format and the discussions are searchable. Alerts are also available to notify users of new posts.

It’s interesting to think about scenarios for which persistent group chat may be more effective than traditional discussion forums (in async collab tools such as Notes, Groove, and SharePoint).

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Launched