IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

If you're like me, when one of your internal IT guys gives you a call and asks you if you want to trial some new software, the answer is almost nearly always a resounding YES.  Last week Steve Schafer gave me a call and asked if I wanted to try out the new 2007 version of MS Communicator based on the OCS platform.  I got set up with it on Monday and wanted to share some of my experiences with it.

There are several new features that I find very attractive:

• All conversations are kept and stored in a mailbox.  This can be the text of an IM conversation, or if it's a phone call, then the number, name of person you called (if available) and the length of call is recorded.
• The IDLE status doesn't obfuscate any other status, but shares the button color so that you know if the person is idle at their keyboard while in a meeting, on the phone, or available.  You get a little bit of credit this way for behaving yourself and not multitasking while on a conference call.  It might also eliminate a few yt?'s
  
• Multi-party video calls, Ohhhh yeah!  Create a multi-person IM conversation and then fire up Video.  Whoever is talking at the time is broadcast to all other parties.  It works reasonably well for me in spite of the fact that I am a tele-worker with a lousy Internet connection.
• Quasi-FMC/UC capabilities that include a DID for your computer, simultaneous ring to another number of yours, voice-mail delivered to your inbox as a .wav file, as well as the ability to call a voice access number and access your calendar and email.  I don't suspect I'll ever use that last feature, but it is nice to know that if I was ever having trouble falling asleep that I could have a pleasant female-timbered computer voice read my email inbox to me, which I shall hence forth dub Femail.  Copyright!  :-)

And there are several things that I predict will be very evil.

• All those great mailing lists in the outlook exchange address book now come up on searches with an auto-complete function in the communicator search window.  Just when email got so crazy that you had to turn to IM for productivity gains, here come the mass IM broadcasts!  Broadcast IM's are bad, mmmkay???  Just say No!
• The new color scheme is a bit harsh.  The charcoal title bar is fine, but the new 3D shading on the buttons and the traffic-light red/yellow/green availability scheme is kind of hard on the eyes.  The other issue here is the connotation associated with red.  The previous version showed a pleasant shade of blue when someone was busy, but now it's red.  Since I tend to be booked in meetings most of the day, I am always an angry shade of red.  That's evil.

Stuff that still doesn't work quite right:

• Softphones still suck.  I have a reasonably fast laptop and a gig of RAM, but somehow I still have issues coding/decoding when my computer gets busy for a few seconds.  Give this program more priority by default.  I have a Microsoft IP phone on the way that should resolve this problem, but I'm still pretty shocked that computer telephony doesn't work better than it does.
  
• Video/audio sync in video calls.  I've noticed that I receive the video frames before the audio.  What gives?  Audio should have priority over video.  Always!  If Video is falling behind, drop the frames.  If the audio is falling a second or two behind, wipe the whole buffer and start over or something so it doesn't feel like I'm having a conversation with someone half-way to the moon.
  

All in all, the new features are pretty cool, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the company getting upgraded to this release.