OCS Tanjay, Catalina…??
Posted by Chad McGreanor on November 29, 2008
Here are the differences…
Tanjay, Catalina, and Orca. Tanjay runs WinCE and has a “lightweight” Microsoft Office Communicator client inside of it, allowing it to incorporate a user’s presence information and take advantage of Communicator’s capabilities.
Tanjay operates like a regular phone, with a keypad, handset, built-in speaker phone, and a combination of hard keys and a touch-sensitive display, but offers much more functionality, such as presence awareness, message and calendar displays, call handling rules, etc.
The Catalina is a USB phone that makes me scratch my head for one main reason:
While it has no display , it also has no keypad. I question how long it will take for people to give up dialing a number on a phone’s keypad to make a call
Several factors influenced Microsoft’s design decision. I applaud Microsoft’s philosophy that we should connect to a person, not simply dial a number and hope someone answers at the other end. This is consistent with Microsoft’s whole approach to UC-check the presence of the person you want to communicate with and act accordingly. This is key for gaining the improved productivity and ROI that investments in UC require.
In addition to the philosophical rationale, Catalina is a USB device and is dependent on the PC to operate; the phone won’t work if the PC is turned off or locked-up. Microsoft doesn’t want users to try to make a call from a device connected to a PC that isn’t turned on or operating, and then blame the phone for not working. Moreover, the current release of Office Communicator doesn’t support DTMF signals from the phone-remember, the phone was specifically designed without this capability so users can connect to a person, rather than just dialing a number. Microsoft is expected to add DTMF support in the next release of Office Communicator and OCS.
Microsoft has been demo’ing a USB wireless device, Orca, touting its mobility capabilities and enhanced features such as subject field display. What Microsoft fails to point out, however, is that the Orca phone has no keypad-that’s right, you can’t make calls from the device. Phone calls can only be made from the Office Communicator client on the PC. Orca is a mobile wireless device, but only for calls placed within arm’s length of the user’s PC.
