Microsoft WPC Roadtrip – Home Before the Postcards

I used to send postcards to people when I’d go on trips with pictures of monuments, sculptures and landmarks from whatever city I was in.

But my trips were usually short and I’d be home, unpacked and subjecting everyone to my photo slideshow before the postcards even made it to the mailbox.

In recent years, things have changed with the ease of social media and blogs; you can post a photo and before you have taken 25 steps away from it, someone has commented.

As the trips get more hectic and meetings start to pile up, not everything goes up on the internet and there are still things to show and write about when I get home.

Here are my last few observations from the 2012 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

Sangoma (Booth #256)

On display in the Sangoma booth was the Sangoma Lync Express, the all in one Lync appliance.

The Lync Express is pre-installed with all of the software for a Lync deployment and doubles as a Lync Gateway with PRI and FXS connectivity.

It is targeted towards the SMB user and branch offices. During my time in the Sangoma booth the overall reaction towards the Lync express was, “We’ve been looking for something like this” from installs up through employees at Microsoft.

LifeSize (Booth #1629) and Logitech (Booth #1626)

LifeSize was displaying their range of video conferencing solutions for connecting the desktop to the conference room with live feeds between their cameras and their offices.

Across the aisle, Logitech had their Logitech BCC950 on display.

I’ve had a chance to use the BCC950 a little before and for personal desktop and small office video conferencing there really isn’t a more

feature rich product for the price.

Patton (Booth #131)

A booth getting a lot of buzz at the Microsoft WPC was Patton.

Patton carries a line of FXS/FXO, BRI and T1/E1/PRI gateways that have been certified for Lync.

What was creating the most buzz was their gateways that allow non-compliant devices to be used with Lync. This allows existing equipment such as SIP phones and paging systems to be used with a new Lync deployment.

Final Thoughts

Having never been to Microsoft WPC before it really was a good trip and nice to meet with so many different people from end users, to integrators, to manufacturers.

But for all the sales pitches and product endorsements I heard over the four days, the most memorable line from a manufacture was, “Do I look like a lady who doesn’t carry a flask of vodka?”