LCS 2005 versus OCS 2007
In most enterprises the real time communications and instant messaging (IM) became important communications tools since late 1990’s. But in many enterprises the implementation of these systems has taken place in a disorganized fashion.
It has happened because some employees in these enterprises recognized collaborative value of public instant messaging systems and adopted these systems in their organization. But from the view point of business security and integrity, adoption of public instant messaging system within the enterprise is very dangerous, as the public instant messaging systems have been developed with a goal of providing open conversation and the requirements of underlying security were often overlooked.
Microsoft realized that there was a need to develop a new secured Instant Messaging and real-time communications system. First implementation of this new thinking resulted in the development of MS Exchange Server 2000. The success of MS Exchange 2000 resulted in the development of full fledged instant messaging server.
This new product was released as Microsoft Office Live Communication Server 2003. Later on based on the feedback from market and the customers, Microsoft came out with highly enhanced version of the earlier product with enhanced security feature and called it Live Communication Server 2005 or simply LCS 2005. Microsoft continued to enhance the features of LCS 2005 and released a new system for real-time communications and instant messaging system called Office Communication Server 2007 abbreviated as OCS 2007.
As some of the latest features offered by OCS 2007 are not available in LCS 2005 there is a need for upgrading. Some of the features which are present in OCS 2007 but absent in LCS 2005 are as follows,
- Multi-media Conferencing
- Multi-media Devices
Some features which are available in OCS 2007 were available in LCS 2005 to some extent are described below
- VOIP: – OCS 2007 gets VOIP into your organization by connecting directly to PSTN. VOIP is actually available in LCS 2005 but far more work is required to practically implement it.
- Video Conferencing:- OCS 2007 is capable of adding video conferencing capability to any conference, Instant Messenger conversation or a phone call. In LCS 2005 video was limited to peer to peer, video conferencing facility was not available.
- Security:- OCS 2007 implements security standards by enforcing encryption of all IM traffic including server-server communication. Secured instant messaging is possible in LCS but it not required the way it is required in OCS 2007.
Benefits of using OCS 2007 are as follows
- Unified Communications: In addition to secured instant messaging OCS 2007 integrates voice, video and Outlook Email in a single product.
- Private & Secured: OCS 2007 allows secure IM permitting users to send messages with encryption thereby prevents unauthorized access of sensitive information.
- Integrated Status: OCS 2007 users can see if their colleagues are available, offline, busy or away.
- Saving of Conversations: OCS 2007 allows users to save and search instant messaging conversations within Outlook , like emails
- Increased Productivity: PC to PC file transferring permits instant sharing of documents increasing efficiency and productivity.
