This illustration shows a typical high-level architecture of Microosft Unified Communications. The development and implementation of Microsoft Unified Communications aims at building a secure real-time unified communications infrastructure that leverages on the use of Microsoft technologies. The diagram above show a typical arhcitecture of Microsoft Unified Communications that consists of the implementations of the Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2, with a Front-End, Consolidated Edge, and Mediation Server roles, which will serve as the foundation of the Unified Communications infrastructure. In addition to OCS 2007 R2, voice mail will also be enabled via the implementation of Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging server. To fully implement Unified Communications, OCS 2007 R2 will be integrated to the AudioCodes Mediant Gateway 1000 which will serve as the media gateway for inbound/outbound connectivity to PSTN. This architecture will leverage on the capabilities of OCS 2007 R2-enabled applications like Office Communicator 2007 R2, Office Live Meeting 2007, Communicator Mobile 2007 R2, and Office Outlook 2007, which will allow any organization's users the ability to communicate using the Instant Messaging, Telephony, Audio/Video Conferencing, and Web Conferencing features of OCS 2007 R2, and Voice Mail of Exchange Server 2007. Other than OCS 2007 R2 and Exchange 2007, any existing firewall and reverse proxy servers or appliance can serve as the HTTP Reverse Proxy and security gateway for the organization’s communications infrastructure and network, although it is ideal to use Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 (or Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010). This will protect their IT environment against Internet-based threats while providing their users fast and reliable access to data and the Unified Communications system across the Internet--whether the user is inside or outside the corporate's network. Also, Active Directory with a Forest and Domain Functional Levels of at least Windows 2003 are required.
More details on the architecture and procedures on how to install OCS 2007 R2 will be in my next posts... :)
