Microsoft’s Communications Server “14″ heralds a new period in the evolution of enterprise Unified Communications. Announced this March at the VoiceCon conference in Orlando, the latest iteration of CS promises an even more robust Enterprise Voice feature set, branch office survivability features, E911 support, and improved manageability through both a Silverlight- enabled Web interface and through a Powershell- based CLI. From the standpoint of the client, CS “14″ boasts a dramatically reworked version of Communicator. Here’s a quick look at highlights of CS “14″:
- Location- based presence awareness
- E911 support
- Branch office survivability via dedicated appliances (SBA) from partners such as Dialogic, HP (Think hybrid media gateway)
- New endpoint devices (both USB and Communicator Phone Edition) from Polycom, others
- Improved management interfaces (Silverlight Web interface, Powershell- based CLI)
- Matt
