Wednesday, November 30, 2011

It is cloudy (with a chance of meatballs?)

It does make a lot of sense to register the m9 in the cloud. For many small offices, most of the calls with go to an external number anyway and in all these cases, you do need a working internet connection anyway. Microsoft Lync hosted is one of the hottest topics out there right now. Many people say that Lync is primarily geared at the fortune 500 companies, but why not use it in a restaurant, a shop or in a dental practice? The technology behind Lync is complex; but the frontend to the user is actually pretty simple and users can enjoy many of the powerful features that come with Lync. So it is time to give it a test drive!

First, we made sure we are running version 9.5.6 (or higher). Old versions had problems with some DNS failover, so you have to be sure to run that version. You can check on the wiki on how to perform software upgrades (see http://wiki.snom.com/Snom_m9/Firmware/Release). You can check this on the status screen of the m9 and should see something like this:

Before you can register, you must either upload the Root CA for the certificate that SBC is using or just accept all certificates. You can do this also from the web interface of the m9:
Make sure that you select the right server type and that you want RTP encryption. In our example, we are using identity 6, but of course you can pick any other identity. Just make sure that you have a handset assigned to the identity if you pick something else than identity 1.
Then it is time set up an account for Lync. Fill in the information provided below and make sure that you activate the identity. The outbound proxy is “sip:sip.mshosted.net:5061;transport=tls”, it did not fit into the screen shot. You don’t have to fill in the mailbox, this will be automatically be filled in after the registration was successful.


You can check on the status page (registration tab) if the registration was successful. You should see “200 ok” on the page. After that, should are able to make a call.

Important disclaimer: The snom m9 has not been "officially" tested with Microsoft Lync. Use it at your own risk and fun.

1 comment:

  1. Hosted Lync definitely makes a lot of sense specially for residential and SMB users, because such a service allows users to experience the benefits of MS Lync without having to deal with the complex setup involved in getting the system up and running. Service providers like nextUC and SBC-Europe and already offering such services and this is definitely going to be next big thing.

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