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Q1: Simply List the TOP 10 benefits of using Live Communications Server 2005?
1) Instantly find and communicate with people.
2) Add real-time collaboration capabilities to core Microsoft Office programs.
3) Collaborate from within Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server.
4) Reduce communication and travel costs.
5) Connect quickly and easily from remote locations.
6) Connect and communicate instantly with other organizations.
7) Take advantage of enterprise-ready features.
8) Get higher availability and data recovery through SQL Server integration.
9) Connect securely through public IM Networks.
10) Build on an extensible platform.
Q2: Benefit #1 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
1) Instantly find and communicate with people.
Knowing a person's presence is especially important when there is a time-sensitive decision or business discussion to be made. Live Communications Server helps your organization increase individual productivity using presence, Instant Messaging (IM) and real-time communication capabilities such as voice, video, and data collaboration.
For example, Live Communications Server enables users to display their status (away, idle, busy, etc.), to other users. You can also determine who is offline or unavailable. By right-clicking on the name of user who is offline, users will see if that user is available via other forms of communication such as e-mail or telephone (if the organization has taken advantage of telephony integration).
Q3: Benefit #2 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
2) Add real-time collaboration capabilities to core Microsoft Office programs.
Collaborating with others can be challenging—even in the same geographic office location. Employees are often overloaded with information and e-mail as they constantly switch between business productivity applications. With Live Communications Server 2005, you can add real-time collaboration capabilities and presence, enabling higher productivity from users' favorite Microsoft Office programs such as Outlook, Excel, and Word. Presence information from the server can also be integrated into productivity applications and enterprise line-of-business (LOB) applications.
Q4: Benefit #3 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
3) Collaborate from within Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server.
Live Communications Server 2005 is a valuable part of the Microsoft Office System because it also serves as the presence engine for team sites and portals, providing presence and IM access from within Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server sites. For example, you can enable the Members Web Part to see the presence of anyone associated with a SharePoint site, allowing information workers to spend more productive time in their business productivity applications.
Q5: Benefit #4 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
4) Reduce communication and travel costs.
Allow person-to-person communication across your organization without expensive business travel or costly phone bills. Live Communications Server can help you dramatically reduce your operating costs by using presence and IM to replace some travel and long distance or international calls.
When IM does not provide enough collaborative discussion, users can immediately initiate an audio conversation, using a regular computer microphone and speakers or a headset device. Users can also make PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC audio calls through the standard public switched telephone network (PSTN) with an appropriate gateway deployment. Video conferencing adds another dimension: in a video conference, users can see and hear each other in real time.
Q6: Benefit #5 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
5) Connect quickly and easily from remote locations.
Live Communications Server 2005 enables the ability to communicate and collaborate with remote users, via the Remote User option, which provides security enhanced IM and presence for users outside the corporate firewall—without requiring a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The IT manager now can offer seamless access to remote and home workers without the need for VPN. When someone wants to send a quick IM, requiring them to log on to a VPN is often time-prohibitive.
Workers can also log in to their IM interface from remote locations using a simple Internet connection and their Live Communications Server-compatible instant messaging client. These specific real-time communications capabilities immediately increase the productivity of team members regardless of their physical location.
Q7: Benefit #6 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
6) Connect and communicate instantly with other organizations.
Federation—the ability of one organization to connect its LCS deployment to the LCS deployment of another organization—is perhaps the most compelling new feature of Live Communications Server 2005.
With the new federation feature, different organizations can share authenticated, encrypted instant messaging and presence information between work contacts. This enables collaboration to take place between suppliers, partners and different divisions of the same organization. Simplified, extended user access is also at the heart of the new 'federation' feature, whereby different organizations can communicate with each other through IM across firewalls. The IT manager enables approved users using familiar administration tools, and communication may ensue. This is especially useful for acquisitions, companies with more than one geographic center, or those companies that have multiple partner contacts.
Q8: Benefit #7 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
7) Take advantage of enterprise-ready features.
Whether your enterprise organization is challenged to improve existing methods of information security, regulatory compliance, or server performance, Live Communications Server has an extensive list of features designed to support large organizations. Features such as IM encryption, logging and archiving, and server-side contact lists provide enhanced security for sensitive business information and reduce exposure to SPIM or IP breaches that plague public IM networks. Additionally, Live Communication Server supports new United States government regulations for electronic communication required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
With the new management tools built into Live Communications Server 2005, IT managers can, at a glance, get more of the info they need about their server environment. They save time and reduce training costs by using familiar Windows GUI-based administration tools, including Windows Management Interface (WMI), Management Console (MMC) and Operations Manager (MOM) to manage users, servers and global settings, plus monitor the entire real-time collaboration system.
Q9: Benefit #8 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
8) Get higher availability and data recovery through SQL Server integration.
For those enterprises with tens of thousands of employees, or those wanting to take advantage of a clustered architecture, Live Communications Server 2005 Enterprise Edition is ideal. Live Communications Server 2005 Enterprise Edition consists of a pool of servers connected to a separate, shared SQL Server database. This two-tier architecture enables Enterprise Edition to deliver substantial improvements in availability, scalability, performance and data recovery such as:
• SQL Server-based logging.
• Two-tier architecture
• Data recovery
• Availability
• Scalability
Q10: Benefit #9 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
9) Connect securely through public IM Networks.
A key benefit for IT managers using Live Communications Server 2005 is the control of sensitive corporate information. When users have public IM clients at work (such as those from MSN, AOL, and Yahoo), conversations are exposed rather than encrypted. These public IM services do not provide logging or archiving capabilities, making it impossible to comply with any applicable regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (financial services) and HIPAA.
Live Communications Server 2005 will allow security enhanced IM and presence information between public IM networks (MSN, AOL, and Yahoo), which will provide enterprises a safe way to collaborate with business partners as easily as co-workers, while keeping sensitive business information encrypted and logged."
Q11: Benefit #10 of 10 of Live Communications Server 2005?
10) Build on an extensible platform.
Live Communications Server is based on industry standards with client and server Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that enable innovative applications and customized solutions using presence and other real-time capabilities.
The architecture of Live Communications Server uses the industry-standard protocols Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE), and includes a rich set of application programming interfaces (APIs). Because SIP and SIMPLE are industry standard protocols, a developer can create presence, IM, audio, video and data collaboration, conferencing, and telephony solutions, or even integrate presence and real time capabilities into your existing applications."
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