Messenging/Chat facility within Outlook and/or Exchange

[ranj]

Hi

 

I have been asked to look into integrating a chat facility into our outlook system and just wanted to know how this would be possible and if its possible with most of our staff using Outlook Web access..

 

We have an exchange 2007 server and my understanding is I could purchase Office communications manager and marry the 2 together and this would give us the functionality for a chat feature which is logged and can be integrated into Outlook.

 

Schools who have Office communications server does it need to be installed on seperate server or can it be integrated onto the exchange server?

 

We have a Microsoft Schools agreement so not sure how if we purchased the communication manager package how would this affect licensing as I believe this product isn't currently licensed with our agreement, but I may be wrong.

 

If anyone know a supplier who specialises in this I would appreciate this so I can begin investigating the viability into it.

 

I believe the chat feature is available with the hosted live edu systems???

 

Thanks

[Domino]

Schools who have Office communications server does it need to be installed on seperate server or can it be integrated onto the exchange server?

 

Definitely not.

 

OCS is a fairly large undertaking, you're talking purchasing of servers, CALs and certificates.

 

Its also massivly overfeatured for what you're looking your - I'd recommend OpenFire messaging server for your needs.

 

However if you're looking at also deploying VOIP and conferencing then OCS would be the way to go.

[Ric_]

Lync... the new version of OCS is much lighter IMHO. Server licensing is cheap on Schools Agreement but you will either need Lync CALs in addition to the core CAL pack or you will need the Enterprise CAL pack.