OCS Journal: Features and Required Roles

I've downloaded a copy of the Office Communications Server 2007 planning guide from the Microsoft website.

If you are trying to wrap your head around just what an OCS server does, then you need to read this document, specifically the introduction section to this document. There are 12 steps that you need to work your way through to build an OCS server.

Step 1: Determine Key Planning Considerations has a short discussion about the various features that are in OCS 2007 and what other server roles are required to support them. I have to say that I'm glad that I don't see "Exchange Server" anywhere on the list of things that I'll need. I don't have one on my network (physical or virtual) and I wasn't looking forward to having to set one up just to get things like web conferencing and IM services going.

You can take a look at the Communications Server functionality mapped to server roles and clients table on the Microsoft TechNet website.