Alcatel OmniTouch UC User manual

Alcatel-Lucent
OmniTouch Unified Communication
DID YOU KNOW ?
about UC Series...
Virtual UC
December 2006

Virtual UC
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNLIMITED SCALABILITY............................................................................................... 3
CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT ......................................................................................... 4
BENEFITS ................................................................................................................. 4
EXTERNAL &CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT................................................................................. 5
DIRECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION...................................................................................... 7
ALCATEL-LUCENT WEB SERVICES, DIRECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION........................................... 8
History
Edition 1, March 2006: creation of the document.
Edition 2, December 2006: document has been re-worked.
Abbreviations
OmniTouch UC is used in this document for Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch Unified Communication
OmniPCX Enterprise is used in this document for Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise
Disclaimer
This documentation is provided for reference purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the
completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this documentation, this documentation is
provided “as is” without any warranty whatsoever and to the maximum extent permitted.
In the interest of continued product development, Alcatel-Lucent reserves the right to make
improvements to this manual and the products it describes at any time without notice or
obligation.
Copyright
Copyright® 2006-2007 by Alcatel-Lucent. Distribution of substantively modified versions of this
document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Distribution of the work or derivative of the work in any standard (paper) book form for commercial
purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder.
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Virtual UC
The purpose of this document is to provide the reader a quick overview on how Alcatel-Lucent can help
customers to deploy Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch Unified Communication (UC) for large and very large
businesses. In such context, this document addresses following topics for explaining the “Virtual UC”
concept:
Unlimited scalability
Centralized management
Directory synchronization
Unlimited Scalability
Built on a distributed architecture that makes it highly resilient and scalable, Alcatel-Lucent
OmniTouch Unified Communication can be deployed on multiple sites, helping customers to expand
their businesses:
Centralized
management
OmniTouch UC
networking for virtually
unlimited scalability
With distributed environments, centralized management and directory synchronization capabilities (see
next sections), OmniTouch UC provides customers with virtually unlimited scalability by dividing
workload across multiple OmniTouch UC instances (one instance being composed of one or several
physical servers hosting UC applications).
One OmniTouch UC instance can scale from a single server environment to a multi-server, multi-
application environment serving up to 5,000 users today (10,000 users for My Messaging application).
Thanks to its ability to aggregate multiple instances, “Virtual UC” can serve for example up to 100,000
users distributed over a network.
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Virtual UC
Centralized Management
Managing servers, users, security policies, etc, is critical to the overall success of an organization.
Performing these tasks locally on each server, however, is inefficient and leads to higher operating
costs. In addition, inconsistent local management may introduce errors and lead to increased support
calls.
A centralized management infrastructure, which can be external, enables you to create and manage
information within your hosting environment far more efficiently than a local management
implementation.
A Web Service is a software system designed to
support interoperable machine-to-machine
interaction over a network. Software applications
written in various pro
g
rammin
g
lan
g
ua
g
es and runnin
g
on various platforms can use Web Services to
exchange data over computer networks like the
Internet in a manner similar to inter-process
communication on a single computer. This
interoperability (for example between Microsoft
Windows
™
and Linux
™
applications) is due to the use
Thanks to its Web Services, Alcatel-Lucent
offers customers the capability to integrate for
example user management within their own
business tool, like Microsoft Active Directory™,
IBM Tivoli™, HP OpenView™, etc.
These Web Services offer Move/Add/Change
capabilities, capabilities being able to be
extended to bulk provisioning.
Benefits
By centrally managing resources, your system administrators maintain information in a single central
location, applying policies to all the servers simultaneously rather than on each server. Utilizing the
centralized management as a part of your hosting solution helps to reduce operational and support
costs, and improves customer support response.
Centralized management of user accounts for example solves a major problem in distributed computing
environments: companies, as they grow, need to add people to manage all those users or they need to
look for an automated solution.
You should consider deploying the centralized management in the following situations:
Your hosting solution has many servers and your administrators manage these servers with local
user accounts and with no overall change and configuration control.
Your organization anticipates growth and needs to better manage the users to reduce cost, improve
consistency, and reduce the effort of maintaining the user accounts.
Your administrators use primarily manual processes to provision and configure the users.
Your organization is seeking a centralized approach to monitor, manage, and reduce cost and effort
of operations.
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Virtual UC
External & Centralized Management
Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch Unified Communication solution is highly scalable, thanks to its ability to
aggregate multiple instances. To manage Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch UC user accounts, you must
however manage these accounts locally on:
The system(s) hosting My Assistant, My Messaging, My Phone and My Teamwork applications.
Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise system(s).
Alcatel-Lucent offers its own management application and centralized management capabilities.
However, for companies using their own business tool, and therefore their own management tools,
what solution Alcatel-Lucent proposes to manage for example user accounts in order to reduce
operational and support costs ?
`Answer is: Alcatel-Lucent User Management Web Services, as illustrated below:
Local
management of
the system
External &
Centralized user
management in
business tool
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniTouch UC
applications
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniPCX
Enterprise/4400
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniVista 4760
Move/Add/Change operations thanks to
Alcatel-Lucent Web Services
Move/Add/Change operations thanks to
Alcatel-Lucent Web Services
Local
management of
the system
Daily
synchronization
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Virtual UC
Previous infrastructure can be extended to very large installations when having a network of Alcatel-
Lucent OmniTouch Unified Communication systems.
Example below illustrates how several UC instances can be managed trough a single central location,
thanks to the Alcatel-Lucent User Management Web Services:
OmniPCX
Enterprise OmniVista 4760
OmniTouch UC
applications
OmniPCX
Enterprise
OmniVista 4760
OmniTouch UC
applications
OmniPCX
Enterprise OmniVista 4760
OmniTouch UC
applications
Area 2 Area 3
Area 1
External & Centralized
management
Alcatel-Lucent
Web Services
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Virtual UC
Directory synchronization
Enterprises are faced with maintenance of multiple directories with similar information: directory
synchronization technologies become essential building blocks for the deployment of an identity
management strategy.
A directory synchronization solution automatically consolidates and updates directories. This includes
synchronization from multiple sources to a single source, streamlines operations through enabling
centralized directory management.
For large and very large OmniTouch UC businesses, Alcatel-Lucent is able to provide you directory
synchronization services built around Web Services and dedicated connectors. Benefits are as follows:
Maintain and update directory contents from multiple sources.
Optimize system and network performances.
Simplify administration.
To illustrate directory synchronization, let’s consider following basic example based on a single
OmniTouch UC instance (can be applied for multiple instances):
Local
management of
the system
Local
management of
the system
Daily
synchronization
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniTouch UC
applications
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniPCX
Enterprise/4400
Alcatel-Lucent
OmniVista 4760
Other
data source
External &
Centralized user
management in
business tool
For any reason, some users are manually created either in OmniPCX Enterprise system (through
OmniVista 4760) or OmniTouch UC system. In such case, customer’s business tool for user management
must automatically be synchronized to handle homogeneous information within the system. To do that,
Alcatel-Lucent is able to provide dedicated synchronization connectors based on Web Services. For
example, Alcatel-Lucent offers today a connector synchronizing the OmniVista 4760 database with
Microsoft Active Directory, and in general, the OmniVista 4760 database with any LDAP database.
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Virtual UC
Alcatel-Lucent Web Services, Directory
Synchronization
Alcatel-Lucent provides today following Web Services, based on XML/SOAP, for integrating User
Management services in any business application:
Framework Management provides OmniTouch UC subscribers (*) management facilities.
My Management provides OmniPCX Enterprise/4400 subscribers management facilities.
(*) Only for My Assistant, My Messaging and My Phone applications. Management facilities for My
Teamwork will come in 2007.
User Management Web Services allow you to centrally deploy, modify and delete user accounts:
Basic Move/Add/Change operations can be performed.
Pre-define user account parameters (like templates) can be defined and applied to users or
groups.
Bulk provisioning can be implemented to add or modify a large number of users or a large
number of phones/device profiles (and the corresponding configuration settings).
`For more details about our user management capabilities, please consult the Alcatel-Lucent Business
Partner Web Site (https://www.businesspartner.alcatel.com) or Alcatel-Lucent Applications Partner
Program (AAPP) Web Site at http://www.applicationspartner.alcatel.com.
`AAPP Web Site provides lots of documents (e.g. white papers, FAQs, tutorials, developer guides,
application examples, etc) to start developing applications around Alcatel-Lucent XML Web Services
and Alcatel-Lucent platforms.
LOmniPCX subscribers management facilities through My Management Web Services require
dedicated licenses.
ALCATEL-LUCENT WEB SERVICES,
JUST USE THEM !
Web Services
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Virtual UC
`This paper, as well as other UC Series subjects, is
available on the Alcatel-Lucent Business Partner
Web Site in section Our Offer/Products/OmniTouch
Unified Communication.
Alcatel-Lucent and the Alcatel-Lucent logo are registered trademarks of Alcatel-
Lucent. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Alcatel-
Lucent assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of the information presented, which
is subject to change without notice.
© 2006
-
2007 Alcatel
-
Lucent. All rights reserved.
BROADEN YOUR LIFE
Edition 2, Ref. 8AL020043265ZZASA - © Alcatel-Lucent 2006-2007 9