Lifesize have recently been working with Microsoft and have now become one of the first video conferencing products to allow interoperability with Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007. This means that customers using Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS) will be able to take advantage of the professional video conferencing services offered by Lifesize.
Yancey Smith, the director of product management for Lync at Microsoft had the following to say:
Microsoft is pleased to be working with Logitech and LifeSize as a qualified partner to offer customers more comprehensive UC solutions through interoperability with Microsoft Office Communications Server and soon, Microsoft Lync.
Compatibility
The integration of Lifesize products into Microsoft OCS 2007 is still quite new and therefore only the Lifesize Team 220™ range is supported. Similarly not all versions of Microsoft Office Communication are supported by Lifesize just yet although the major versions of are supported.
Functionality
Integration of the two products brings a number of features; most of these are geared towards simplicity and security. First of all a unified contacts list has been created which brings together all the contacts within the Lifesize and the Microsoft OCS contacts list. This will greatly reduce the time needed to find the desired contact. It will also bring a number of useful security improvements, for instance it will utilise Microsoft Edge to offer a secure Firewall and NAT traversal service and it will even have data encryption technology which will allow for secure communication to external parties.
Lifesize are well known for their high quality HD video conferencing services which is why it comes as no surprise that this system uses the H.264 video codec to bring HD video streaming services although a standard definition option is available as well.
The Future
Lifesize have mentioned on their blog that interoperability with other Lifesize products should arrive later on this year. The products that they hope to gain interoperability for are the LifeSize® Passport™, Room 220™, and the Express 220™. After this, Lifesize intend to extend the interoperability to other Microsoft products such as Microsoft Lync. Once released, customers using Lifesize products on Microsoft OCS will be able to easily upgrade their system to Microsoft Lync. Lifesize has already licenced the Microsoft RTVideo codec and is planning on releasing a server based product in the future.
This Post has been written by Guest writer Rashed Khan, who possesses a degree of M.Sc in Software Engineeringand is a specialist in the Computer/laptop area.