Global Computing Platform..

A good quote from Jungle Dave -

While the media is focused on the “social” revolution changing the face of the web through sites like MySpace and Facebook, the real revolution is happening behind the scenes as the Internet changes from being a global communication platform to a global computing platform

With challengers appearing in the market JungleDisk may support multiple backing stores.

Read it all here.

HMC 4.0 Migration toolkit

Microsoft has released the HMC 4.0 Migration toolkit.

This migration kit is a collection of tools and white paper to guide system integrator and service provider through migrating to Microsoft® Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.0 from previous Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5. This migration is mainly about upgrading Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services version 2.0 to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. It also includes provisioning data migration from Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) to Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.0 MPS.

So hopefully they can start on working on HMC 4.5 now (Which includes Office Communications Server 2007 ;-)

HMC 4.0 RTW'ed

HMC 4.0 has been Released To Web here and you can find the documentation here (UPDATE The documentation file works now).

Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.0 offers hosting service providers with tools, tested best practices, scripts, and code samples designed to efficiently deploy messaging and collaboration services on multi tenant servers. The solution provides both automated and manual procedures for deploying, running and operating a hosted environment.

Most notably it now includes Exchange Server 2007 and WSS 3.0 hosting. If you are not familiar with the product you can read more about the solution here (Or better yet contact us at Inceptio A/S for an introduction / Architectural Design Session ;-)

Nortel and Microsoft to Deliver Carrier-Hosted Unified Communications

As I wrote about in my post More details on Office Communicator 2007 Microsoft is planning to offer their Hosted Messaging and Collaboration solution in a version that includes OCS and offers possibilities for Hosters/SP's to provide VoIP and PSTN break-out services through OCS and third-party gateways.

Nortel and Microsoft has now released more information on the offerings it are going to provide as part of their Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA) -

Nortel and Microsoft’s alliance will allow carriers to host unified business communication and collaboration services for their business customers, including e-mail, instant messaging, VoIP, click-to-call, video conferencing and other multimedia services. This will enable carriers to derive greater value from their existing network investments and resources, while allowing SMBs and enterprises to benefit from unified communications without bearing the burden of purchasing, installing and managing additional network infrastructure.

Building on their existing Innovative Communications Alliance, Nortel will integrate its Communication Server 2000 (CS 2000) softswitch with the Microsoft® Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration, which incorporates hosted versions of Microsoft’s familiar, world-class enterprise products Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server and Windows® SharePoint® Services.

Look for more details at Nortel and Microsoft to Deliver Carrier-Hosted Unified Communications and in CIO India that quotes from the presentation that -

"First, you'll get smart unified clients," which ties together Microsoft messaging, Nortel softphone and hardphone technology. "After that, we'll deliver transformed backend. "Over the next two to three years, Ballmer said, customers of Nortel and Microsoft "can expect to go from a separate, PBX and separate server software [environments], to one where [OCS] ... and Nortel [VOIP] servers deliver the full telephony experience, with both platforms running on standard Intel architecture with common Windows software, development and management tools."

and Network World in the article Nortel, Microsoft lay ground for hosted services says ...

... the initiative has been expanded toward service providers, allowing the carriers to provide a richer equivalent of the Centrex services that small and midsize businesses often use instead of buying their own phone switch. By crafting systems for carriers, the alliance for the first time is going after the market Nortel traditionally knows best.

Really interesting news for many of my customers ;-)

HMC 4.0 information (mostly sales)

Just stumbled across a set of (sales/business) presentations on the new Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.0 solution (We are actively working with customers on this release, but all information is under NDA until the final release in April).

The Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.0 event, held by Microsoft’s UK Software as a Service team, covered the new release of HMC version 4, which is based on the release of Exchange and Sharepoint 2007.

Download Marketing Best Practices
Download Hosting Unified Communications
Download SharePoint Products and Technologies
Download Launching Your Hosted CRM Business
Download Partnering With Microsoft
Download Service Provider Licence Programme Update
Download Hosted Exchange Sales Toolkit (Nice zip file that includes logos, sales pitches, objection handling etc.)

You can find a bit more information on the Microsoft Global Hosting Summit 2007 (Held last week) and in the two videos in the press release from the summit -

Hosted Messaging and Collaboration v4.0 - Announced by David Thompson, Corp. VP, Information Worker Enterprise Group, Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting v4.5 - Announced by John Zanni, Director of Worldwide Hosting, Microsoft Corp.

Personally I think it's a very interesting release, but I look even more forward to the release where Office Communicator Server 2007 is included (Enabling a full Unified Communications experience).

WBH 4.5 and WBH for Applications 1.5 released

Just a quick note (I have more posts on the way in the following weeks, but I've just come back from almost 3 weeks of "downtime" so my backlog is huge)

As announced earlier WBH 4.5 and WBH for Applications 1.5 was in beta, but they are now released. You can find further info on what's new in the earlier post.

The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting version 4.5

The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting for Applications version 1.5

SCOM 2007 Services Provider Management Pack

Interesting (For many of my customers anyway) ...

... this Management Pack lets you "manage" a downstream System Center Essentials environment at a customer site from an upstream Operations Manager 2007 environment at a NOC. This solution is being developed for Managed Services Providers who want to deliver their customers a "hosted" monitoring offering.

Read more at source

Microsoft Hosting Days

Microsoft are once again at a "World" tour (Except for Denmark and Iceland where I'm currently delivering four HMC Architectural Design Sessions). It's called Microsoft Hosting Days and the agenda is primarily around Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the new capabilities in upcoming versions of WBH/HMC -

.. learn how to capitalize on the growing demand for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This multi-track seminar will give you the knowledge and tools you need to expand your business whether you are a pure Hoster, Telco, Independent Software Vendor (ISV), Reseller (VAR), or System Integrator.

• The latest news about the growing opportunities for SaaS on Windows technology.
• A wide range of business opportunities available with Microsoft Hosting solutions, including Windows-based Hosting for Applications, Hosted Messaging and Collaboration, and Hosted CRM.
• Aligning your business with Microsoft’s product roadmap – so you can maximize benefits from the planned testing, release and availability of Microsoft products and services, especially with SharePoint 3.0 and IIIS 7.0.
• Using best practices to sell SaaS offers or business-class e-mail to small and medium-sized businesses.

Description of the different hosting solutions from Microsft

FYI - here's a short description of the current offerings from Microsoft -

Windows-based Hosting
The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting version 4.0 provides a highly efficient operating platform for service providers of all sizes. The solution includes tools and partner applications that Web hosters can take advantage of to develop and deploy in-demand customer site features such as blogs, forums, and photo galleries.

Hosted Messaging and Collaboration
The Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 enables service providers to host enterprise level e-mail and collaboration services for small and medium-sized businesses. Service providers can deploy value-added services such as team site hosting, instant messaging, and hosted mobile messaging for mobile device users - along with Exchange-based mail services.

Windows-based Hosting for Applications
The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting for Applications version 1.0 takes advantage of the Windows infrastructure and operations platform to enable ISV application hosting. This solution is focused on helping ISVs expand revenues and markets by taking their on-premise applications online as a hosted service.

Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Solution
The Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Solution is a Windows-based solution that enables service providers to capitalize on the growing business demand for customer relationship management (CRM) services. This solution enables service providers to host the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 application - a full-featured CRM product that is beyond the abilities and resources of many smaller businesses to deploy and operate.

Source - Windows Based Hosting 4.5 beta documentation.

WBH for Applications 1.5 and WBH 4.5 Beta

Microsoft has released the beta documentation for both of the following products that are currently under development.

Windows Based Hosting for Applications 1.5 is for ISV's that want's to enable their solutions for Hosting (Download).

Windows Based Hosting 4.5 (Download) contains the following updates to WBH 4.0

Windows Server 2003 R2
The infrastructure components of the solution now run on Windows Server 2003 R2, which extends the Windows Server 2003 operating system in important ways. Web platform features include support for .NET framework 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications as well as 64-bit support for Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0.
A new licensing model that allows customers to get more value out of server virtualization.

SQL Server 2005
The solution incorporates fundamental advancements in database technology and security with SQL Server 2005. When compared with SQL Server 2000, the latest version of the comprehensive database platform of the solution provides:New features to easily support service offerings differentiated by additional capabilities rather than just database size and quantity.Support for 64-bit platforms so service providers can scale servers to any client's needs.

SQL Server Hosting Toolkit
This tool enables hosters to more easily deploy SQL Server databases for customers.

ASP.NET 2.0 support
ASP.NET 2.0 encapsulates common Web tasks into application services and controls that you can easily reuse across Web sites. With these basic building blocks, ASP.NET 2.0 allows developers to write up to 70 percent less code for faster development of rich Web sites and applications.

ASP.NET AJAX framework support
Hosters can now offer developers a richer environment on which to build interaction-rich, cross-browser Web applications.

Support for 64-bit computing
As the majority of new server shipments today contain 64-bit processing power, the solution has also moved forward with 64-bit computing support. The solution has been tested with and supports 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 R2 and SQL Server 2005.

Support for Windows SharePoint Service version 3.0
This version introduces improved administrative tools including a server farm-based Central Administration user interface. Also new in this release are the availability of 40 new application templates which hosters can use to enhance service offerings for small to medium business customers.

Source - Windows Based Hosting 4.5 beta documentation.

LCS, Audio/video, file transfers and firewalls

I was responding to a question on the ASP.NET forums and thought it would be a good contribution to msgoodies (Almost unedited so maybe I will update it some day to be more thorough ;-)

The question was

What happens when a LCS solution sits behind a firewall/nat?

The answer is -

It is possible to do file transfers and audio/video in a hosted or enterprise LCS environment, where LCS sits behinds a NAT/firewall but it all depends on your configuration of LCS and/or Office Communicator and/or your firewall.

For a start LCS is basically a SIP Server and SIP is of course Session Initiation Protocol. In SIP you use what we refer to as a triangle. User A will initally communicate with User B through the LCS server and SIP, but when a user decides to start a session with e.g. audio/video or file transfers, the server will help the client negotiate the right protocols etc. and when this is in place the clients will communicate directly with each other (Thereby creating the SIP triangle between both User A, User B talking with each other and both talking with the LCS server). So only SIP is passed through the server and the rest is usually done peer to peer.

So why is it not working for you? A lot of reasons for this might apply, which I try to explain in the following -

Office Communicator
Well for one you need to check or set the relevant Group Policies. You can do this by importing the Communicator.adm file in to the Administrative Templates in the Computer Configuration part of the GPO (Or by setting the relevant registry keys manually). The interesting parts here are SIP Security mode, where High Security mode will require encrypted SIP communication but still allow P2P filetransfers and audio/video, but it disables the use of uPnP, which sometimes is necessary if one of the parties involved in the communication is sitting behind e.g. a Wireless ADSL Router/Packet filtering firewall. The other interesting policy is obviously the policy called "Prevent File Transfer".

Server
On the server side IMFilter.am is enabled by default on the Access Proxy and it disables file transfers and URLs in IM's, so instead I would deploy the LCS Intelligent IM Filter which is more configurable in terms of allowing certain file types.
Furthermore if you implement e.g. Sybari Antivirus on the server all file transfers are forced to go through the server (Thereby needing to open the ports used for TFTP through the Service Providers firewall).

Firewall
In the case of file transfers the protocol used is TFTP over TCP and it runs over port 6891-6900 (Allowing for 10 concurrent file transfers). For application sharing T.120 through Port 1503 is used and for audio/video a combination of RTP / RTCP is used. You can find more info in KB 903056 and in the article Windows Messenger in Windows XP (Note that Office Communicator uses the underlying technologies of Windows Messenger and thereby have the same restrictions).

Conclusion
The sum is that in a hosted or enterprise LCS scenario, all audio/video, file transfers and application sharing can work perfectly internally between desktops and mobile devices (Communicator Mobile) at the customer (Assuming they are not firewalling between internal network segments). But when a client needs to communicate with users outside their firewall, the same restrictions apply that apply for companies deploying their own LCS solution. NetMeeting is an old product and just doesn't handle traversing firewalls and NATs very well (even though some workarounds can be made) and this is probably why it is deprecated in Windows Vista (See RTC Client API's and Vista). The next version of LCS called Live Server and Office Communicator will supposedly handle this "in another way" but we will have to wait a couple of months until Microsoft will go public with more info in this product (Launching just after Office 2007).

HMC 3.5 Feature Pack 1 released

HMC 3.5 Feature Pack One includes additional resource management feature capabilities and some partner-requested solution fixes for the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 solution. It is strongly recommended that any service provider deploying Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 download and install this feature pack, once they have installed HMC version 3.5.

Microsoft just released Feature Pack 1 for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 3.5. The "most wanted" feature of Feature Pack 1 must be the new more flexible resource allocation for Mailboxes / Organizations. Prior to this release we we're required to allocate mailbox space at the organization level, but now it can be allocated at the time you provision mailbox users (Which fits most serviceproviders plans/packaging better).

Find the Feature Pack 1 ISO here.

New whitepaper on HMC use of privileged users, security groups and permission

Conrad Agramont has written an interesting whitepaper that tries to accomplish the following -

The HMC solution includes documentation and deployment tools that will provide instructions for or will automate the creation of user accounts, security groups, and permissions. However, there isn’t a single view for all of the accounts and their "final” implementation. The purpose of this document is to provide such a view.

For anyone new to HMC it gives a good overview of the solutions use of accounts and security groups. It is based on HMC 3.0 - but so far that I can se it will also be applicable for the upcoming HMC 3.5 release (I'm in Redmond on HMC 3.5 training but we have been explicitly asked not to blog about the new features in HMC 3.5).

Two new public patches for MPS

According to Conrad there are two new patches released for MPS (Microsoft Provisioning System) -

FIX: Event ID 5896 is logged every 15 to 60 seconds on a server that is running the Provisioning Audit and Recovery Service component in Microsoft Provisioning System 2.0

FIX: You receive a "The parameter is incorrect" error message, and the CreateMailbox procedure does not succeed in Microsoft Provisioning System

Thanks to Conrad for telling us about these ;-)

Warning about importing Exchange MPs in MOM 2005

I came across a Microsoft KB about a bug in the import management pack process. It seems like only packs sharing common rule groups have the problem. The Exchange MPs are such a case.

Nokia and Exchange Server ActiveSync

According to this press release (and a lot of blogs - too many to mention) Nokia has licensed EAS for their Nokia 60 and 80 Series. This is interesting news especially for Service Providers offering Hosting based on Exchange 2003 as one the advantages of this platform is the integrated mobile features (Be it ActiveSync or OMA) - the problem is that the penetration rate of Windows Mobile Devices was and probably still is very low compared to that of e.g. Nokia Mobiles (In Scandinavia anyway).
And IMHO Nokia Mobiles is still a better choice than the Windows Mobile powered devices I’ve used so far (Qtek 2020 and lately iPAQ 6340) and even though the battery lifetime and impressing feature set of the latter is very attractive – I’d prefer a stable PDA/Phone (I've had my Wireless repaired 2 times and its broke again; furthermore I've had issues with bluetooth and stability problems). According to a Danish news source there should be an update on the way to fix the Wireless/Bluetooth problems with the iPAQ 6340 – when/if that comes and if it fixes the problems I’d probably change my mind as the iPAQ 6340 is very close to be the perfect Mobile/PDA device for me (I love the Wireless features and my TomTom Navigator 3 with Bluetooth GPS).

Hosted Messaging And Collaboration 3.0

The next version of Hosted Exchange 2003 (HE2003), Krakatoa, now renamed to Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 3.0 (HMC 3.0) has been released. It continues the evolution from HE2003 and adds "true" support for Sharepoint Services and Live Communications Server 2005. Furthermore the reference architecture has been updated significantly with -

Support for running on MPS on Windows Server 2003 (As opposed to HE2003)
SQL Reporting Services
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
Migration tools from to migrate users from other platforms
ISA 2004
Intelligent Message Filtering
Resource Manager Rebuilder Tool (Used when AD and MPS is out of sync)
OAB Migration Tool (Used when moving from "standard" Exchange OAB implementation to dedicated OAB servers)

And much more - I will be back with further info when I've had the time to test and use the product. Until then you can check links to the press release here and what the press has to say about it here.

Windows Based Hosting 3.0 & Webcast Series

Tahoma a.k.a. Windows Based Hosting (WBH) 3.0 was released in November and is available for download; so while waiting for the final bits on the Krakatoa release (Hosted Exchange) you can start by looking at the WBH 3.0 solution and the extensive information in the excellent new Documentation Viewer (Although the massive amount of documentation is a bit "scary" at first glance).

Furthermore Microsoft is kicking off a series of Windows Based Hosting Webcasts with the Experts from the Hosting Solutions Unit at Microsoft -

See live demonstrations of technical best practices on the full range of Windows-based Hosting topics, including interactive presentations, product overviews, and question-and-answer sessions. Each Webcast session will be hosted by one of the Windows-based Hosting Solutions program managers discussing how-to technical best practices and thought-provoking business perspectives.

Especially the "Active Directory Guidance for Hosting Service Providers" webcast looks interesting and this time they done something really friendly to us Europeans with 3 timeslots (Based on timezones) for each webcasts (Thanks MS - maybe I'll finally manage to see one of these webcasts ;-)

Best practice guide for Offline Address Books

I just noticed that a new best practice guide for Exchange has been released. This one discusses "all you need to know" about the Offline Address Books used by Outlook 2003. It's primarily of interest for administrators of enterprise and/or complex Exchange environments - such as Hosted Exchange deployments that in the official HE2003 solution uses separate servers for generation of OAB's.
It also explains how to use the new SP1 OAB network bandwidth throttling option and how SP1 better handles mismatched SMTP addresses (Causing full instead of partial download on Pre-SP1 systems). Check it out here and don't miss out the add'l resources section in the appendix.

TechNet WebCast: Welcome to Hosted Exchange 2003

Interesting WebCast for those of you new to Hosted Exchange 2003 and/or those of you who have already created your own hosting solution based on Exchange 200x -

This Support WebCast discusses Windows-based Hosting, including Hosted Exchange 2003 ... Hosted Exchange 2003 enables service providers to offer flexible and scalable rich e-mail, messaging, and collaboration services to consumers, and to both small and medium businesses. Hosted Exchange is a tested, pre-engineered solution that is based on standard Microsoft server products ... The Support WebCast also reviews the important components of the solution and addresses common challenges in the hosting world. This includes multi-tenancy (address isolation between customers), automation and provisioning (creating new customers by using automation and without the RUS), client auto-configuration for Outlook by using RPC over HTTP, active user reporting, three-year CALs versus Service Provider Licensing Agreement, multiple services per hosted organization, and user namespace per organization.