Previous page: Can I trust Microsoft with VoIP?
Reliability: Microsoft and the fifth 9
Then there's the reliability issue. For years, VoIP vendors have moved away from Microsoft's Windows Server as a platform for hosting IP PBX applications.
Avaya, Siemens and Mitel run their call servers on Linux. Nortel's Communication Server 1000 runs on the real-time VXWorks operating system (used in military and NASA applications). 3Com's VCX platform runs on Sun Solaris.
Industry observers and vendors say the move away from Windows to other platforms to host VoIP was based on customer concerns about the stability of Windows systems, and the frequent software patching and updating required on the servers.
Cisco's CallManager IP PBX, long based on a Microsoft server, was ported last year to Linux as an "appliance-like" system, requiring minimal patching and operating system tinkering, the company says. (Cisco still sells and supports CallManager, now called Unified Communications Manager, on Windows.)
With all this as background, some views on Microsoft's ambitions in enterprise VoIP are skeptical.
"I can see it now," wrote one Network World reader in an online forum about Microsoft OCS 2007. "'Everyone, please get off the phone, we have to apply a bug fix'."
A major move Microsoft made a year ago to convince enterprises that Microsoft can handle corporate VoIP is the company's partnership with Nortel. The two vendors' Innovative Communications Alliance involves shared R&D, marketing, sales and support resources over a four-year span.
"We're dedicated to earning the confidence of all customers" when it comes to OCS reliability, said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, during a presentation earlier this year.
He equates Microsoft's entry into enterprise VoIP with the company's emergence in mission-critical data centre serving. "We're not new to this position in the area of critical communications."
He pointed out that the Nasdaq stock market runs on Windows and SQL Server, and in upwards of 10 million Cisco IP phones are tied into Windows servers running Cisco's CallManager platform.
"We want to work closely with partners such as Nortel to help power telephony in our software."
Users of both Microsoft and Nortel technologies say this is a good development. "From what I've seen, it should be positive," says Joanne Kossuth, CIO at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Mass., which runs a Nortel-based VoIP network, and Microsoft Exchange messaging servers.
The college is beta testing OCS 2007 and could roll out services to the school next year. Kossuth says integration of presence, federated instant messaging and conferencing into Microsoft Outlook, with Nortel call control systems on the backend, will be easier to roll out and manage.
"Now you're going to be able to add capabilities without having to add new staff and skill sets to handle that capability," she says. This has been a concern to Kossuth as she has explored such applications in the past.
As for system reliability, OCS 2007 could only gain from closer integration with Nortel technology. "In my work with Nortel, I've seen them as a company that engineers products at 150 per cent," says Kossuth. "They don't go to market with something unless it's more than ready.
"Microsoft doesn't necessarily have the same reputation. So I'm thinking there will be some complementary things there...Maybe together, they'll deliver products that are 100 per cent."
Continued: What really happens when I dial 911?
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