Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Rumors

I've heard from various sources about Office Communications Server 2007 R2 coming soon. I'm a member of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 MVP team, so I'm privy to information that I cannot divulge at this moment due to NDA requirements. In fact, I hadn't planned on blogging this at all had I not come across a few posts online talking about OCS 2007 R2. Other sources outside the Microsoft MVP community were also asking me if I knew anything about R2.

There are several rumors milling about what features OCS 2007 R2 would contain, including this link on Network World. Another website, the IT-Pro Knowledge blog claims, "The R2 release is going to contain contain a lot of the features that we have been waiting for. especially about telephony handeling and routing. I saw some screenshoots of the new telephony switchboard, and another interface for group IM." He then posts a follow-up blog post claiming to know the OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2, and even OCS 2009 roadmap. The site claims "OCS 2007 R2 is not officially announced yet, so there is no official release date of the product. My sources do say that its second half of 2008, and targeted for october-november release." and adds that OCS 2009 will come out the second half of 2009.

Alex Lewis at Network World speculates that OCS 2007 R2, "might also include the more standard SIP over UDP as an option." As I wrote in my OCS 2007 review, there is a lack of integration of OCS 2007 and Exchange 2007 UM with all the various flavors of Asterisk, a popular open source phone system. Unfortunately, Asterisk only supports SIP over UDP and Exchange 2007 UM requires SIP over TCP. I did write about some workarounds, but nevertheless, SIP over UDP would be big news for the Asterisk community if indeed OCS 2007 R2 adds this.

So does Office Communications Server 2007 R2 exist? I cannot comment. Will it launch this year. Can't comment. Will it add 64-bit support and continue to support 32-bit? Can't comment. Will it support SIP over UDP and easier Asterisk integration? Can't comment. Is there a OCS 2009 coming? Can't comment.

I can say that a new version of OCS is coming, but so is a new version of Office, Vista, Windows 2008, etc. etc. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm such a tease.