Lync Ignite with Polycom Lync certified Devices

For those who are aware of Lync one of the new really cool features is the release by Polycom and Aastra of Lync certified devices. Normally getting hold of these devices to test and show off is diffcult, but the nice people over at Poly have come to the rescue,and........

Yesterday I received a delivery of some really cool Polycom kit. Specifically the Lync certified devices. The plan is to include them in my deliveries of Lync Ignite. We will be making devices available to delegates as well to test, setup and generally play around with.

Devices that we have to show off are as follows: A roundtable, CX 600 - knowledge worker device, CX 500 Common Area phone, CX 300 USB phone, CX 3000 conference phone, CX 700 "Tanjay" and lastly the CX 100 USB desktop phone.
We will shortly add the CX 4000 and HDX 8000 as well.

So deleagtes who attend a Global Knowledge course will have the opportunity to see and test these devices.

On YouTube there is a video which demonstrates the devices very well and is available here:

Lync Server 2010 - More Powershell Links (Lync's?) for Lync Server 2010

I might have posted this before, but even so its worth doing again. This is the Lync 2020 Powershell blog and is available here and below.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/

Lync Server 2010 - Powershell

Well I thought it would never happen!! I am starting to get hooked on Powershell!
Scripting? AAAARGH I hear you say! Actually its pretty cool stuff.
As I have an interest in these things now i got reminded here at Teched that Ilsa has a really blog, so here it is! Check it out here

And for those who would like the link instead http://blogs.technet.com/b/ilvancri/

Lync Server 2010

So, apologies for not posting for a Long time. Holidays and a spot of illness got in the way.

Lync Server 2010 REALLY rocks. I have been delivering the Lync Server Ignite course!
5 days of really cool labs and good material.

I am at Teched 2010 in Berlin and I dont think that the penny has dropped yet on how much nicer and haw many more features there are in Lync Server compared to 2010 to a lot the lovely people here.

They will find out. I'll post some more in a short while but

RTM is in 2 weeks!!!

OCS and PBX from Toshiba

Well I learnt something new this week!! I was talking in my OCS class about supported PBX's and mentioned the normal suspects, but Neil from Toshiba told me that Toshiba also had a family of communication platforms. Called the Strata family and which unsurpisingly are in use at Toshiba. So I had to check them out!
You can check them out as well here

OCS Gateway Sizing using Erlang B equation

In OCS it is important that we calculate the size of our Gateways correctly when provisioning Enterprise Voice.
We can use Erlang B equation to to this. So, if you go to http://www.erlang.com/calculator/exeb/ then you can use a free online tool to assist you in calulating the Gateway size.
We can use this tool to establish the probability of a port being open. For loads of more information see the website. For more information on OCS see the Microsoft website.

Mini-Microsoft blog

I found this fascinating! I had never heard of KIN, I suppose it was due to be released in Europe at some point. Looks like it will never make it.
 You can read the blog here

SCCM v.Next Bootable Media enhancements

Hi,

SCCM v.Next is something I am interested in as you know, so when I found this like I was very chuffed.
What is cool about v.Next and bootable media is the way in which it handles the suppression of screens during the boot process. Enough of me prattling on about it! Read it for yourself here or for those who like the whole link here it is http://blogs.technet.com/b/inside_osd/archive/2010/06/30/v-next-beta-1-feature-bootable-media-improvements-part-2.aspx

Make sure you have a read of the other parts as well!

Cheers

Service Manager 2010 Ramp Up

Getting up to speed on new technologies is always a challenge for the busy IT Pro!   Those kind folks over at Technet have done the business again!

They have provided a ramp up learning resource. There are 8 steps which include videos and documentation. Check it out.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ff776316.aspx

TechNet Edge and the Cloud

The Cloud means different things to many people. Personally I think that its a great idea.
What I find interesting is is how are IT Pros going to provision The Cloud for their companies? How are they going to adopt the change in the way we look at managing our servers and desktops?

Intune is one really interesting topic as is BPOS, but for the moment I wanted to point out that there is some collateral available on Technet from Edge.

Have a look at http://edge.technet.com/cloud/

OCS R2 Download Page from Microsoft

Suddenly realised that I needed a file for OCS R2 and couldn't remember where I had stored it! Then I remembered that there is a list on the Technet website..

Here it is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ocs/bb629431.aspx