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Skype for Business Blog
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New CCE version due later in November

Paul Cannon's avatar
Paul Cannon
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 01, 2017

In mid-November we plan to release Cloud Connector Edition, version 2.1. Our primary goal for this release focused on improving the ability to cloud manage CCE via the Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

 

Tenant administrators care about monitoring the state of several indicators when managing CCE:

  • Key services to insure the solution is green and available
  • Hardware utilization for the virtual machines
  • Key statistics such in-bound and out bound calls to allow for fine tuning of resources

And since we are supporting the Operations Management Suite, a template will be available to ease configuration.

 

With our announcements at Ignite, customers have asked many questions about our future for both CCE as well as the future for voice and Teams.

 

First, it is important to know we have recently released a Skype to Teams roadmap to help everyone understand our plans for the Skype for Business Online transition to Microsoft Teams. We recommend that any Office 365 customer considering the voice workload should be reviewing this document.

We will continue to support CCE for Skype for Business Online hybrid voice users and will provide a fully supported transition path to Teams. As part of Office 365 communication services, we plan to enable a simpler hybrid PSTN connection model for calling in Microsoft Teams. To help accelerate delivering this new connection model, we have decided to not add support for CCE coexistence with on-premises Skype for Business. We understand this decision does impact customer planning, but we believe this is the right approach for the long-term vision we have for voice and calling features in Microsoft Teams.

 

For customers that were considering using CCE coexistence, Microsoft recommends considering alternate approaches to enable existing on-premises Skype for Business for Hybrid PSTN and begin migrating users to Office365:

 

  1. Split Domain Hybrid PSTN. also referred to as OPCH (On-Premises Configuration Hybrid) which includes modifying your current Skype for Business 2015 deployment configuration to support on-premises homed users and online homed users.
  2. 3rd Party Solution. For those customers who want to avoid modifying their main deployment, they can acquire an OPCH specific appliance from our one of our partners.

We will be providing more information on the new Hybrid PSTN deployment model for Teams and the opportunity to sign up to try it out in a Technical Preview in early 2018.

 

 

Published Nov 01, 2017
Version 1.0
  • Hi Dennis,

    This is indeed fully supported and within AudioCodes documentation referred to as a Branch Pool Appliance (BPA). This provides a local standard edition pool with (optional) Edge server quickly deployed with our CloudBond 365 installation wizzard. In addition to this there's User Management Pack 365 (UMP365) installed on every CloudBond 365 to simplify (local) administration of all Skype for Business users (in Online and on-premises Pools) through a single pane of glass.

  • Ella Wright's avatar
    Ella Wright
    Copper Contributor

    Will there be any additional features included in the CCE 2.1 release besides monitoring you mentioned above?

  • Dennis Bensch's avatar
    Dennis Bensch
    Brass Contributor

    Hi, before a few weeks I met MS consultants, we discussed this situation, that CCE co-existence will not be available. They recommend us an appliance from Audiocodes, CloudBond. My question is, if we already have a hybrid scenario, like a full server topology on-premise, can we set up CloudBond in a second site (sub site) to hold the media stream for Skype4B online in this site, instead of take it over the central site's EDGE? 

  • Rui Carvalho's avatar
    Rui Carvalho
    Copper Contributor

    Hi Paul. How about Media ByPass with OPCH to Online users? Media Bypass works perfectly to onprem users, but when the user is online, even if he is connected on internal network, it doesn't. I consider that if a user has already Skype Server deployed, provide telephony to cloud through this infrastructure is the best option, but when I have a distributed network with many gateways, media bypass is very important. Could I use the same steps to configure media bypass to online users? I know that the service "hybridconfig" in CCE is different from Skype Server, but I think it is essential that media bypass works for online users in the scenario SFBO x SFBS. Could you explain it better?

  • Hi Paul

    can we use onPrem Hybrid then in a Multi Forest Environment instead of CCE?

    Kind Regards

    Matthias

     

  • Ran Inbar's avatar
    Ran Inbar
    Copper Contributor

    few comments

     

    when a customer has Hybrid voice (SfB server & SfB online , users can be online and onprem)

    when deploying the CloudBond 365 as an OPCH appliance at the remote site -- the user make local calls to the PSTN , the users is an online user :

    • if the user is located in the office -- the media will stay local
    • if the user is located in the same geo , and works from home : the media will go via the local branch OPCH appliance edge server

    when we deploy the CloudBond 365 , it will join the exist SfB topology , and the user forest