Polycom Announces New Strategic Relationship with Microsoft for End-to-End Unified Communications.

See the Polycom Press Release http://www.polycom.com/company/news_room/press_releases/2010/20100809.html

And this video this video

Product Development

The roadmap entails Polycom developing a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” and beyond, including:

· New and next-generation Polycom CX series endpoints optimized for Microsoft UC, featuring Polycom’s market-leading HD video and voice technologies

· New, innovative room-based video systems designed specifically for enabling direct integration with Microsoft Communications Server “14”

· Additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions

CS 14 Public Instant Messaging Connectivity (Voice and Video)

In CS 14 and the new not yet released Live Messenger IM between O”CS” and MSN / Live is like today, but Audio and Video will be supported as well between Live messenger and OCS.

Then the user experience will be like a full Unified solution, this will be a great add on to Microsoft Unified Communication because there is x million MSN/Live users out there all ready, and a lot of minor company’s is using Live messenger as there Presence and IM tool.

I am on the CS 14 and the new Live messenger “dog food” internally in Microsoft, it’s very nice and it’s working the live messenger will come with a lot of new stuff!

Get more information here

New Communications Server14 site

Here

CS 14 UI-to-PowerShell Mapping

On this page you can see the mapping between the CS 14 UI mapping to the PowerShell , that’s perfect!

example:

The User Search Dialog

To access the User Search dialog in the Communications Server Control Panel, click the Users tab.

The Results pane of the User Search dialog corresponds to the properties and parameters of the following cmdlet:

· Get-CsAdUser, which is used to retrieve information about all your Active Directory user accounts:
Get-CsAdUser

· Get-CsUser, which is used to retrieve information about only those Active Directory user accounts that have been enabled for Microsoft Communications Server “14”:
Get-CsUser

The User Search dialog (and the Results pane) is shown below, along with the corresponding parameter names found in Get-CsAdUser and Get-CsUser

CS 14 is PowerShell

If you need to manage a Microsoft Communications Server “14” deployment, at some point you’re likely to find yourself in need of the Communications Server implementation of PowerShell. Whether you’re new to Windows PowerShell, Communications Server, or simply Communication Server’s version of PowerShell, this is the place to get started.

more information here

RCC in CS 14

RCC (Remote call control) will be supported in CS 14, for old and new customers.

So if you believe that RCC is what you need when deploying CS 14 this is supported.

No it’s not the best users experience, because users can’t fully control the Voice part/media stream and when you are in different mode of communications, it’s could be a clumsy user experience, but if you just need click to call it’s working.

This blog from Jamie:  http://www.simonleyland.com/news/?p=1800  State it clearly that RCC is and will be supported.

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Customers who simply want to give some users the ability to control their existing PBX or IP PBX phones from Office Communicator may do so through our Click-to-Call feature (based on traditional CTI using what we’ve typically called Remote Call Control or RCC). Both new and upgrading customers will be supported for click-to-call with Communications Server “14” (CS “14”). The functionality remains the same as with previous releases, so it’s important to remember that Click-to-call users lose other Communicator capabilities including mobile voice. Finally, the integrations to the popular third party gateways like Corebridge, Estos and Genesys are still available, allowing companies to deploy Click-to-call solutions without needing to spend potentially significant amounts of money upgrading their IP-PBX.

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I would go for that, if I for some reason that I can’t think of , and not would go for OCS enterprise Voice,

From my point of view, this is way better than CUCIMOC (softphone on softphone), and when I look at the new CS 14 client, and if there will be a CUCIMOC for that, it could be a very clumsy user experience!

Good link to BJ Haberkorn blog on CUCIMOC