ENABLING REAL-TIMEAND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS IN …...an IP communications application on top of non-Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise LAN/WLAN ... the enterprise benefits from the value offered

ENABLING REAL-TIMEAND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS IN MICROSOFT ENVIRONMENTS WITH ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE ApplicAtion note

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AbstrAct / 1

introDUction / 1

enterprises continUe to AccelerAte tHe trAnsForMAtion oF tHeir coMMUnicAtions / 2

imperative #1: 1-to-1 or many-to-many communications must be treated equally / 2

imperative #2: the system must be based on a foundation that delivers comprehensive support for mobility / 2

imperative #3: the system should support broad use of video-based communications / 2

Microsoft only approach: there are limits! / 3

the importance of openness and interoperability / 3

AlcAtel-lUcent AnD MicrosoFt: DiFFerent ApproAcHes For DiFFerent neeDs / 4

configuration #1: implementing Microsoft lync for a specific group within the company / 4

configuration #2: Utilizing Microsoft lync for instant messaging and presence / 4

configuration #3: Using a third party solution to integrate Alcatel-lucent enterprise and other vendors in a Microsoft house / 4

Microsoft lync licensing model: what to select? / 5

sip trunking / 5

Mic for lYnc / 6

third-party rcc solution / 8

conclUsion / 10

GlossArY / 10

enAblinG reAl-tiMe AnD Mobile coMMUnicAtions in MicrosoFt enVironMents WitH AlcAtel-lUcent enterpriseALCATEL-LUCENT APPLICATION NOTE

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ABSTRACTThe Enterprise Communications landscape has radically changed over the last decade, particularly since 2009-2010. Enterprise Business Units have disappeared, absorbed by other telecom vendors, or more often, private equity firms. At the same time, former niche market specialists, like video vendors and web conferencing champions, have seen their revenues boosted by increased demand.

New players from the telecom world including industry giants like Google®, IBM®, and Microsoft® have also moved into the market. These companies are particularly strong in information systems, from leading messaging platforms to valuable data collaboration tools. Within this group, the undisputed leader in enterprise desktops and information system infrastructures is Microsoft. With its ambitious Lync® program, Microsoft has demonstrated its commitment to this domain. What still limits Microsoft, however, is its credibility in real-time voice/video communications and especially mobility. Obviously, these are critical requirements in today’s business world.

This paper explores how the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise portfolio can be implemented to bring real-time voice/video and mobility capabilities to a Microsoft environment.

INTRODUCTION

The integration of real-time communications with everyday business processes is of immediate and ongoing benefit to employees in their day-to-day jobs. When it is easier for them to contact someone, or when they can connect with a project team member — wherever they are — at the click of the mouse, knowledge can be shared effectively. This in turn means the business saves time and money.

These unmistakable business and productivity benefits, along with compelling market growth, have encouraged traditional desktop application players such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle® and Google to emerge as strategic, real-time communication and collaboration players. Each of these companies has introduced some type of offering in this space.

Out of all of these players, however, Microsoft is undoubtedly the best positioned for expanding the number of tools its customers adopt. Lync is today the cornerstone of Microsoft strategy. It is positioned as a complete, unified communications platform through which “every single face-to-face communication can be better whether you’re connecting across the hall or across the world.1” Microsoft is equally committed to enhancing employees’ abilities to collaborate, in real time, throughout the enterprise, with partners, and with customers.

Today’s CIOs are extremely savvy about what is available on the market, including which vendors are strong (or weak) in any particular area. They look for companies that offer clear and credible medium-to-long-term strategies. And they look to avoid a “vendor advantage” or sole source situation in which they become tied to one particular vendor. Instead, they will choose a multi-vendor approach, so they can put together a solution that leverages the strengths of each vendor and is tailored to their enterprise’s unique requirements.

1 Chris Capossela, Microsoft CMO, in a video on www.lync.microsoft.com


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Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise understands that CIOs will make decisions regarding their enterprise communications system according to what most clearly delivers an advantage to the company and its employees. To support this “customer advantage” approach, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has developed and tested different scenarios that are based on varying levels of integration between Microsoft Lync and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise components as well as products from other vendors. Each of these configurations is designed to help enterprises maximize the value from their communications systems while they transform towards next-generation business communications.

ENTERPRISES CONTINUE TO ACCELERATE THE TRANSFORMATION OF THEIR COMMUNICATIONS The transformation of enterprise communications systems continues unabated. CIOs today look to solutions that will satisfy the three imperatives for next-generation business communications.

Imperative #1: One-to-one or many-to-many communications must be treated equally According to research by Frost & Sullivan, “Only 29 percent of Gen Y workers think meetings used to decide on a course of action are very efficient, compared to 45 percent of Boomers.2” A valuable enterprise communications system must adapt to new work styles where multi-party decisions can be made through ad-hoc quick meetings, creating a virtual business community on the fly, across locations and organizations.

Imperative #2: The system must be based on a foundation that delivers comprehensive support for mobility Most employees in almost all industries today work at the office, work from home, and work when on the move. Wherever they are, they need to stay in contact with the company, their partners and customers as if they were at their desk. A user-centric approach is a must here. All devices, including fixed voice systems, personal computers, smartphones and tablets must deliver a common functionality and a consistent user interface. Users must be able to move easily from one device to the other, and be equally productive on each. Effective support for mobility should be delivered in a way that keeps costs under control and makes the best use of the enterprise’s resources.

Imperative #3: The system should support broad use of video-based communicationsDriven by the consumer market, enterprise visual communications are no longer restricted to video meeting rooms but have disseminated to the office desktop and home PC, as well as smartphones and tablets. Video collaboration is yet another productivity tool that can deliver OPEX savings and improved group efficiency. Video is also the most compelling vehicle for delivering information to prospects, customers and partners.

2 Source: Gen-Y Finds Less Value in Meetings; This is Surprising? by Melanie Turek, Industry Director, Frost & Sullivan, November 2010


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Microsoft only approach: there are limits!The limits of Microsoft Lync are very much related to its strengths:

• It works well only in a purely Microsoft environment. Lync requires the full set of components to operate well, namely Active Directory, Exchange and Sharepoint — and the latest releases of each of these.

• It works well only in its original domains: IM, presence and data collaboration, and its original environment, namely the desktop. Things are more difficult when it comes to voice/video communications and especially services for mobile users. Because their business solutions were developed prior to the telecom era, Microsoft did not anticipate the world of voice/video communications. Consequently, in order to meet the standards of the telecom industry, gateways are invariably required to perform both signaling translation and codecs conversion to interface with the Microsoft world. For mobile communications, most users have their own preferred devices: BlackBerry®, iPhone®, iPad® or other smartphones and tablets running Android®. These brands have their own de-facto standards. Users want to be able to utilize their preferred mobile devices with a level of service that is nearly equivalent to their desktop environment — without the need for a Windows® PC to control the device!

The importance of openness and interoperability Whether a CIO chooses to invest in Microsoft’s solution or with a traditional communica-tions provider such as Alcatel-Lucent, they need to be able to integrate their existing communications infrastructure with new applications as they become available.

CIOs who choose to invest in desktop vendors’ solutions for their unified communication and collaboration requirements need to evaluate whether to take a revolutionary or an evolutionary approach to desktop convergence. In some green field sites, the CIO might be tempted to take a revolutionary approach and go for an end-to-end solution from Microsoft. Even if the CIO decides to implement communication clients from desktop application players, those clients will still need to integrate and interwork with the exist-ing business communication infrastructure.

Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in the converged enterprise market space with best-in-class IP telephony, unified communications, network infrastructure, network management solu-tions, contact center business applications, and collaborative solutions. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to offering its customers standards-based, open communication solutions that interface with their existing infrastructure.

Alcatel-Lucent has the experience and is committed to helping enterprises implement an IP communications application on top of non-Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise LAN/WLAN equipment. The Company is also extremely experienced interoperating with other vendors considered as peers. For instance, voice trunks among different vendors are a must between different entities of a corporation built through acquisitions and mergers. This is an easy undertaking between Telecom vendors, but more difficult with Microsoft, for instance, because Microsoft has not followed the industry in their implementation of SIP.


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ALCATEL-LUCENT AND MICROSOFT: DIFFERENT APPROACHES FOR DIFFERENT NEEDSAlcatel-Lucent Enterprise can add value to an enterprise’s communications system regardless of where they are in their evolution towards next-generation communications. The three configurations described below demonstrate this flexibility in scenarios that are typically encountered in businesses today.

Configuration #1Implementing Microsoft Lync for a specific group within the companyAn organization may choose to implement Microsoft Lync on an experimental basis for a specific team within the organization, such as an R&D group. An R&D team likely includes members who are very familiar with and/or used to working in a Microsoft environment. They are probably accustomed to participating in data collaboration ses-sions and they have little to no dependency on voice calls. Mobility is usually not a high priority for R&D teams.

In this configuration, Microsoft Lync is simply another node in the network. As with any other multi-vendor topologies, SIP trunking would be used to interface Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise components with Microsoft Lync.

Configuration #2Utilizing Microsoft Lync for instant messaging and presenceThis configuration is very common and is often the result of a “gift” from Microsoft, a strategy they use to enlarge their footprint within an enterprise. This special offering is usually provided alongside an upgrade of other components, such as Active Directory, Exchange or SharePoint.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise communications may already be in place or may be part of a net new sales configuration. In this case, a light coupling will be implemented between the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise components and Microsoft, using Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch™ 8600 My Instant Communicator: MIC for Lync.

With this approach, the enterprise benefits from the value offered by both vendors and its employees benefit from a more compelling user experience.

Configuration #3Using a third party solution to integrate Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and other vendors in a Microsoft houseThis configuration is suitable for enterprises who want to preserve as much of their former investments, in terms of information systems and Telecom infrastructures, but also in terms of desktop equipment and users’ expertise, while taking advantage of the next-generation features available from Alcatel-Lucent.

The idea here is to introduce a third-party component between Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise components (or other vendors). This approach is called Remote Call Control (RCC) and is supported by Partner Applications.


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Microsoft Lync Licensing model: what to select?There are three CAL offered with Lync Server 2010:

• Standard CAL: offers instant messaging and rich presence (IM/P) features. It provides users with real-time presence and enhanced IM along with PC-to-PC audio and video.

• Enterprise CAL: offers audio, video and web conferencing features. It provides users the ability to create, moderate and join conferences for collaboration with both internal and external users.

• Plus CAL: offers enterprise voice telephony features. It provides high-quality voice and other related features to users anywhere with an Internet connection across IP phones, PCs, and desktop applications.

Prices range from several tens of US$/Euros for the standard CAL up to 200+ US$/Euros for a complete enterprise and Plus CAL implementation.

Figure 1 shows the necessary Lync licenses to invest in, for the various configurations.

The next three sections describe each of the different configurations in more detail, giving an overview of the infrastructure components and illustrating the end-user experience.

SIP TRUNKING With this approach, the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Microsoft communication plat-forms interact as two different PBXs based on a SIP trunk interconnection.

This interconnection allows users of both Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Microsoft communication platforms to interwork with a basic level of services and keep the applications of their environments. There is no interoperability between the Microsoft (Lync) and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (OmniTouch 8600 MIC) applications.

MIC for Lync

Standard CAL

Microsoftinvestment

SIP trunkingover AudioCodes

Enterprise CALPlus CAL

MIC for Lync3rd party RCC

Enterprise CAL


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SIP trunking integration is intended for heterogeneous user environments where each group of users is attached to a different call handling system. It provides a basic level of service interconnection between the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Microsoft platforms encompassing:

• Outgoing calls

• Incoming calls

• Hold/retrieve

• Inquiry calls

• Transfer

• Conference/clear conference

SIP trunking can also be used to interface the Lync server to an existing private telephony network and the PSTN. However, while this approach is supported, it is not recom-mended. The interfacing is accomplished using a transit node to convey calls back and forth to the public network. This approach requires that the enterprise oversize the SIP trunks for nodes that do not have their own public access. This could in turn generate call billing issues for the non Alcatel-Lucent nodes of the network.

Figure 2. SIP trunking confi guration option

MIC FOR LYNCWith this approach, OmniTouch 8600 MIC and Microsoft Lync are integrated in a manner that is both transparent and complementary. The client-to-client integration takes advan-tage of the best of each application to provide end users with an enriched experience through a homogeneous interface.

In this complementary interworking, the role is split into two main functions: collabora-tion functionalities, and telephony and unifi ed messaging functionalities.

The collaboration functionalities, such as IM, data conference, web presentation and application sharing, are provided by the Microsoft application. The telephony features, such as call log, events notifi cations, advanced telephony features, and unifi ed message storage are provided by OmniTouch 8600 MIC. OmniTouch 8600 MIC also extends the user experience to the mobile device of choice, something that Lync cannot do.

Lyncsoftphone

SIP GTW

MSFT ALU-EAudiocodes


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This integration is ideal in configurations where the enterprise is looking to:

• Control Alcatel-Lucent telephony devices through tight interworking between Lync and OmniTouch 8600 MIC

• Leverage a homogeneous Alcatel-Lucent network environment

• Enrich the end user’s workplace

The main features supported with this integration are:

• Integrated softphone

• Desk phone control

• Phone presence displayed within Microsoft Lync 2010

• Drag and call

• Direct dial

• Primary device management (“current phone” for the audio media)

• Notifications

• Call session management

• Call control, call forwarding

• Call history

• Visual voicemail

• Single sign-in

• Wide-band audio (G.722.2) with SIP signaling for PC-to-PC communications

• SIP TLS/SRTP (via Reverse Proxy and SBC network elements) for PC-to-PC communications

• Configuration parameters

Figure 3. MIC for Lync configuration option

ALU-EMSFT

Userworkstation

AlU-e communication add-ons

MsFt collaboration


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THIRD-PARTY RCC SOLUTIONFor this approach, third-party software provides transparent integration of Alcatel-Lucent devices and Lync, using CSTA monitoring so the devices can be controlled by Lync. The end user’s access to telephony features is limited to the Lync application interface.

This is a server-to-server integration, so there is only one client installed at the end-user PC. The CSTA monitoring can be used to interconnect devices from other telephony system providers as well, so this solution is ideal for multivendor environments.

An RCC solution is suitable for heterogeneous telephony networks, and enables the enterprise to leverage its existing infrastructure investments while providing a common user experience across the network. Multiple companies today develop RCC solutions and these usually interface with most telecom vendors. Alcatel-Lucent Application Partner Program participation is not required to deploy such solution.

The main features available with this approach are:

• Make call

¬ Click to dial

¬ Dial using Lync dial pad

¬ Smart Tags in Microsoft applications

¬ One-click to contacts

• Answer call

¬ Toast window with incoming call info

¬ Click to answer

¬ Smart transfer - deflect calls to any telephony device

¬ Offline missed call notification via email

¬ Call deflection permission control

• Clear connection

• Telephony presence

¬ On a call (when user is already on an established call)

¬ On a call (when one of a twinset is on a call)

• Put on hold

• Retrieve the call

• Transfer - single step

Figure 4. Third-party RCC configuration option

MSFT ALU-Eother vendor

SIP GTW

3rd partyvendor


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Table 1 provides an overview of the three configuration approaches, including a sum-mary of the benefits and limitations/downside of each.

Table 1. Summary of the three configuration approaches

SIP TRUNKING MIC FOR LYNC THIRD-PARTY RCC SOLUTION

configuration Microsoft implementation limited to a subset of enterprise

enterprise with a mix of Alcatel-lucent enterprise and Microsoft products

enterprise with substantial investment in Microsoft looking to add Alcatel-lucent enterprise and other vendor components through a third-party rcc solution

Key characteristics collaboration centriclow mobility levelnew buildingFull lync “experiment”

emphasis on delivering mission-critical enterprise communications

Maximize existing investments while adding strength from other vendors

benefits single vendor solution coherence of Microsoft user experience

leverages combined Alcatel-lucent and Microsoft capabilities suitable for all sizes/types of enterprises standard cAl only!

retains Microsoft-only user experience no supplementary expertise to acquire

limitations / downside provides a vendor advantage requires forklift implementation Highest price, full Microsoft cAl + sip phones not flexible for mobile population

some overlap between AlU-e and MsFt

it teams prefer 1-client solutions

three different vendors three separate managements not suitable for mobile population Unknown future for rcc within Microsoft’s strategy

www.alcatel-lucent.com Alcatel, lucent, Alcatel-lucent and the Alcatel-lucent logo are trademarks of Alcatel-lucent. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. the information presented is subject to change without notice. Alcatel-lucent assumes no responsibility for inaccuracies contained herein. copyright © 2012 Alcatel-lucent. All rights reserved. e2012074980 (August)

CONCLUSIONAlcatel-Lucent is a leader in the unified communications market. The Company’s unique offering for Enterprises is the most complete end-to-end solution set, encompassing network infrastructure, IP telephony, unified communications, visual communications and business applications openness. The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise portfolio includes both infrastructure components and user experience tools, with all-in-one desktop smartphones, software clients for workstations, smartphones and tablets from leading vendors.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise can support whatever level of involvement an enterprise wants to undertake with Microsoft Lync, from a limited experimental implementation for a small group, to integration of OmniTouch 8600 MIC and Lync, or full integration of multiple vendors, including Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent.

With Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, you are not alone. We have a dense network of business partners with expertise in both Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Microsoft products. This team of experts can provide you with the support you need to evolve or transform your business to a “customer advantage” next-generation enterprise communications system.

GLOSSARYcAl client access license

cio chief information office(r)

cMo chief marketing office(r)

cstA computer supported telecommunications Applications

ics Alcatel-lucent omnitouch 8400 instant communications suite

iM instant messaging

Mic Alcatel-lucent omnitouch 8600 My instant communicator

opeX operating expenditures

pbX private branch exchange

pstn public switched telephone network

rcc remote call control

sbc session border controller

sip session initiation protocol

srtp secure real-time transport protocol

tls transport layer security

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ENABLING REAL-TIMEAND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS IN …...an IP communications application on top of non-Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise LAN/WLAN ... the enterprise benefits from the value offered