Live Communications Server 2005 Taking Shape

Live Communications Server (LCS), which works with the Windows Messenger client to provide corporate instant messaging and person-to-person conferencing, and to serve user presence information to other applications, will be updated during 2004. According to Microsoft, LCS 2005 (code-named Vienna) will support federation, direct access by Internet users, and improved scalability and availability for high-volume and mission-critical enterprise scenarios.

Federation. Organizations will be able to build LCS 2005 systems that can trust the LCS servers of business partners and link those servers over the Internet without virtual private network (VPN) connections. Authorized users will then be able to see the presence status of people in the trusting organizations and exchange instant messages with them. The current version, LCS 2003, only supports users from a single organization’s Active Directory.

Direct Internet access. Piggy-backing on the federation support, LCS 2005 will support Internet users securely without requiring VPN connections, similar to the way the RPC-over-HTTP protocol allows Internet-based Outlook 2003 users to link to Exchange 2003 servers. With LCS 2003, Internet users must first establish a VPN connection before they can register with an LCS server inside the firewall and use its services, and if the outside user terminates his VPN connection, other users cannot communicate with him or see his status.