1. Microsoft® Office Communications Online1 delivers robust instant messaging (IM) and presence functionality that enables real-time person-to-person communication across an organization. Through presence awareness, workers can quickly detect a colleague’s availability for a time-sensitive consult or business-critical decision – and then connect rapidly using a reliable, security-enhanced IM solution.  Whether team members are in the next room or on the next continent, the powerful combination of presence awareness and IM can help improve productivity, drive business efficiencies and build a more agile organization.
   

2. How It Works
   

3. Office Communications Online is a core offering of Microsoft Online Services, the integrated suite of Internet-based software plus services that also includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint® Online, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.  Like these other offerings the Office Communications Online service leverages redundant and geographically dispersed data centers operated by Microsoft around the world.  Each data center houses a reliable infrastructure to support the service and best-in-class security practices. As a result, Office Communications Online helps simplify IT management by removing the customer's need to deploy, configure, monitor and update/upgrade a communications and collaboration solution on premises.  The customer’s service administrator has access to an easy-to-use online Administration Center console for managing user accounts and services. Office Communications Online also includes upgrades to new release versions at no additional charge, which shifts the burden for upgrade planning and execution from the customer to Microsoft.
   

4. Microsoft offers this convenient communication and collaboration service with a simple per-user monthly fee. Office Communications Online service access requires separate purchase and installation Microsoft® Office Communicator 2007 R2.2
   

5. Key features include:
   

6. Ability to display and detect presence availability of  other users on the network
   

7. Instant messaging over the Internet or a corporate network, with IM text encrypted
   

8. Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook®, Microsoft Office Excel® and Microsoft Office Word for presence awareness and collaboration
   

9. Presence integration with SharePoint sites
   

10. Users can add distribution lists to their Contact Lists and IM with individuals or the entire list
    

11. Person-to-person (1:1) audio and video inside a company LAN (between firewalls) environment
    

12. Remote access to the service over the Internet
    

13. Built on the proven capabilities of  Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2
    

14. Increased network security with the Intelligent Instant Message Filter program
    

15. Sign In application installed on users’ computers to provide a single sign-in point
    

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