Hi my old friend. Ok, Darcy, I'm going to digress a bit for the list (sort of like old times) and see what kind of responses it generates. Let's see if anything has changed in the past two years.
VoIP is or will be interesting, depending on where one is. I think we are not ready for it. Back in February 1996 I was invited to an all hands meeting of the Exchange team (their Friday stand-up) back when they were still in building 16. The occasion was an opportunity to have a customer representative come in and say some words of encouragement about how important the work they were doing was. In the remarks I mentioned that from where I stood, what Microsoft was building was a telephone system. Most did not understand why I said that. Over the next few years Microsoft passed up several opportunities to build or acquire the missing Exchange telephony components, but oddly, they did build an MCU. I think that was a knee-jerk reaction to the IBM-Lotus acquisition of DataBeam, and its integration into the Notes product line. Cisco did not miss a beat however, and has been off building a very credible system, with their two cornerstone pieces coming from their acquisitions of Selsius and Active Voice. I understand that Microsoft has made some noise about building an IP/PBX as a part of the Exchange family, but they are way late to the party. Also, I and think more on point to the problems that the Exchange community faces in becoming the core players in a world of converged systems, is that we now have a five year legacy of Exchange operations being architected and installed as though it's primary function was e-mail and group calendaring, as opposed to being core communications infrastructure equipment. Perhaps the difference is subtle, but it is hugely significant. This operational culture will not be easily changed. So what is Exchange? Is it an application service that is a creature of traditional file servers and server rooms? Or is it something more akin to the network itself, and as such is primarily a creature of switch rooms and data closets? What is Exchange's primary bread and butter client? Is it the currently shipping versions of Windows running on the old x86 architecture? Or is it an embedded system real time communications client that also does web and thin client stuff natively? I think we have to get on track with the right answers to these two questions before we even have a chance of doing Exchnage VoIP integration well. Of this I am certain, one cannot successfully navigate the "Road Ahead" (apologies to Bill, :-) ), by looking in the rear view mirror. That is a strategy for causing a bad accident. -----Original Message----- From: Darcy Adams [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 9:45 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Hi I will be doing integration with VoIP as soon as we get upgraded to 5.5 sp4. Darcy -----Original Message----- From: Dupler, Craig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 9:07 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Hi The last I heard, Elaine had been joined by a daughter named Eppie and they were backing the UK together, But I haven't heard from her in two years. Hi Chris. For years I was one of the most active on this list, which was still considerably less than Ed Crowley, but about two years ago when one of those routine swynk messages announced a service interruption, I let it sit, and sit and well it finally got deleted. I'm not sure I'm back now, but I thought it might be nice to drop in. Is anyone here working on Exchange integration with VoIP or looking at interesting VoIP clients or Windows CE? By the way, Elaine founded the forerunner to this list, called Bravehearts (she like Mel), and then Peter took it over a few months before 4.0 went RTM, and well the rest is history. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
