Roadmap for the future
Most people know that Microsoft Speech Server will be a part of Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS). With that in mind I’ve been mapping out my strategies for adopting this technology and laying out a roadmap for how to get from MSS 2004 to OCS and Speech Server 2007. Microsoft is making a bug push towards Unified Communications and in order to keep up with that push we need to be laying the groundwork now.
The first thing we need to do is make sure that we are proficient in the current technologies that will evolve into OCS. As for me, I have a good working knowledge of the current version of Speech Server as well as the 2007 version which is in private beta. I’ve been using MSS 2007 for a year now and I’ve watched it grow and evolve into a great product. So when it comes to the current technologies I’m concentrating my efforts on Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS). To meet my goals I’ve obtained the Enterprise Deployment Labs and Tools CDs for LCS from Microsoft. To be honest MS sent me those and in so many words told me to get myself certified so I’ll be working through those over the next month or so.
The next thing on my list will be to setup a lab environment and start messing with the OCS beta bits. I haven’t downloaded them yet but I have been participating in the beta conversations and reading everything I can get my hands on. I’ve added all of the blogs dealing with LCS/OCS/UC that I can find to my reading list. I also plan on meeting with the OCS group when I’m in Redmond for the MVP Summit next March. The biggest hurdle here for me is not learning something new but rather the hardware costs involved to setup a working environment. I suspect I’ll be relying heavily on Virtual PCs for this.
We only have about 7 months or so until OCS is released (that’s a guess because no date has been announced). The short time frame will demand an aggressive schedule but I (we) have to be ready. This means that I’ll have to put some other projects on the back burner for now but it will be worth it. I’ll be talking about this subject more over the coming weeks and months.
What are you doing to prepare yourself for the road ahead?