Office Communications Server offers a Standard Edition and an Enterprise Edition:
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Standard Edition is designed for use in small or medium-sized organizations. Standard Edition is also recommended for organizations that do not require the performance, scalability, and high availability that Enterprise Edition provides.
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Enterprise Edition is designed for large-scale deployments that are typical of large organizations. In an Enterprise Edition deployment, multiple Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition servers are deployed as a pool behind a load balancer. Servers in the pool share a central Microsoft SQL Server database that stores user data.
Office Communications Server Standard Edition Server Roles
In Office Communications Server Standard Edition, the following components run on a single physical computer:
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Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
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Front End Server, which houses instant messaging, presence, telephony conferencing servers, and all essential user services.
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Web Conferencing Server, which enables on-premise conferencing.
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A/V (Audio/Video) Conferencing Server, which enables users to share audio and video streams.
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Web Components Server, which enables users to do the following:
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Access meeting presentations and other content from Web conferences.
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Download Address Book Server files, which provide the Microsoft Office Communicator client with global address list information.
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Expand distribution groups in order to communicate with individual members.