OCS Benefits.

As an enterprise-class instant messaging and presence solution, Microsoft OCS helps individuals be more productive without increasing their company’s IT burden. Here are some of the key benefits .

Business-class presence and instant messaging

Phone or e-mail "tag" is an all too common communications problem in today’s business world. Often the problem stems from workers lacking visibility into other people's availability or "presence." Presence information is especially important when there is a need for a critical business discussion or a time-sensitive decision has to be made. OCS helps organizations increase individual productivity by combining presence with instant messaging in a secure environment.

Real-time collaboration capabilities within Office programs

OCS adds real-time collaboration capabilities and presence to the Microsoft Office programs workers use on a regular basis, such as Microsoft Office Outlook®, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office Word. Integrating presence in these applications helps integrate collaboration into the everyday workflow.

Collaboration capabilities within SharePoint sites

OCS serves as the presence engine for hosted SharePoint, providing presence and IM access from within SharePoint sites. Hosted SharePoint is a separate service available from SyncMyMail.

Reduced travel and IT costs

Using OCS allows person-to-person communication across an organization without expensive business travel or costly long-distance or international calls. The service gives organizations the opportunity to focus IT resources on developing value instead of running IT infrastructure. Microsoft manages the risks and complexity of operational systems.

Reliability

Microsoft has extensive expertise with Office Communications Server, supporting more than 100,000 global users on the Microsoft internal network. Since 2003 when the product was introduced, Microsoft has implemented Office Communications Server client and server services in an array of environments and developed best-in-class deployment and operational practices along the way.

Timely platform upgrades

The OCS service is regularly upgraded to take advantage of new features that become available with service pack releases or new versions of Office Communications Server. Any upgrade to the service is available to customers at no additional charge. This means that companies are not burdened with the planning and execution of upgrades and their users can start working with the latest features and improvements without delay.