Getting Unified...

uc launch

roundtableNovember 2007 marks the launch of our Unified Communications platform and Kleefy and myself will be presenting at both the business launch events in Sydney and Melbourne as well as the TechNet Update Events that will be going to other cities around Australia. So what are we going to be talking about?

Mobile and Anywhere Access

This presentation will demonstrate the benefits of remote access and mobility features for Communicator and Exchange. The scenario will focus on how users stay connected and can work without interruption while travelling and on the go. Users continue to have access to presence and contact information and choice of communication options including mail, instant messaging, voice and multi-party conferencing. They can view documents and access SharePoint sites remotely. All these features increase productivity for the organization and are easy to set up by IT Pros. We will talk about implicit benefits of cost saving and lower help-desk calls. 

So that's the official abstract but we wanted to really think about what the title; "Mobile and Anywhere Access" really means to a typical office worker. To me it means access anywhere but not just access. It means that experience has to be good enough to justify being able to work from any location. So during the month of November I'm going to do my best to not go into the office and really live the life of working remotely.

So last week Kleefy and I went through a laundry list of things we would need to really make this happen. I work from home all the time now anyway for the basics like email and Internet access but we had to think about all the tools we would use and make sure everything was going to work and work well. So we came up with this list.

Broadband obviously need to have a good broadband connection because with out it you're dead! So luckily I'm okay with this

Hardware

Here's what we are using:

tanjay lifechat lifecam6000 

So we have one of Tanjay phones in the office that runs the Phone Edition of Office Communicator 2007 and is part of our internal rollout of the entire Unified Communications Platform. I also use the Microsoft LifeChat ZX-6000 while I'm travelling because it's small and lightweight and works well with both Communicator and Windows Live Messenger. For Video Calls I use the Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 which again is small and works very well with my instant messaging tools. 

The other main tool is my mobile phone which is a Dopod C730. I've had this phone for awhile now and it's a great phone! It runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard and I have Office Communicator Mobile 2007 installed along with Office Mobile and some other applications. The main thing is I can use Communicator Mobile and get the same rich data that I get on the desktop version. We'll be showing this during our session so make sure you attend!

dopod

Then of course there is Microsoft Office Roundtable. These are the Star Trek looking devices that are used for conferencing and I have to say they are awesome! We are deploying these internally and they work so much better than our previous video teleconferencing devices. I was in a meeting the other day an capture the different views.

roundtable1

First is the Video Panorama view which is a 360 degree view of everyone in the room attending the meeting. This is awesome for those attending the meeting remotely because they can see everyone in the room.

roundtable2

Then we have the main Video view of the person talking which changes depending on who is talking at the time. So the capture above is my Director Norbert who was talking when I captured the image. When someone else talks then the camera detects that and switches to that person. Again a great experience for the person attending the meeting remotely. 

We are going to be getting our internal IT Manager here are Microsoft to help us out during our demo's to show us the Roundtable experience. Should be cool!

So with all this in place it makes my experience of working anywhere is pretty darn good. We'll see how it goes during November anyway!

So how do you get to see all this cool stuff? Please see below for registration details to each of the events.

Unified Communications 2007 Business Launch Sydney and Melbourne

Technet Update Events for other cities

Registration Details
Canberra Friday 16th November
Adelaide Thursday 22nd November
Brisbane Monday 26th November
Perth Wednesday 28th November

Technorati Tags: Unified Communications,Mobile,Anywhere,Access

Cheers, Jeffa