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A discussion of the Web Conferencing Server must necessarily include a discussion of the interactions between the components: conferencing client, Focus, Focus Factory, Conferencing Server, and Conferencing Server Factory. Definitions of the conferencing components are as follows:

• Conferencing Client. A SIP endpoint capable of joining and participating in a conference.
  
  
• Scheduling Client. A SIP endpoint that is responsible for scheduling the conference. For example, the Conferencing Add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client is a scheduling client for scheduled conferences and Office Communicator can be a scheduling client for ad-hoc conferences.
  
  
• Focus. A Focus is a SIP endpoint that represents a conference. It is responsible for managing the state of the conference, enforcing security, managing roles and privileges and providing conference state updates to the clients. A Focus instance runs on a Front End Server.
  
  
• Focus Factory. An entity that creates, modifies, or deletes a conference in the conferencing database. Clients use SIP SERVICE messages to send C3P commands to and receive C3P commands from the Focus Factory.
  
  
• Conferencing Server. An entity responsible for a specific media types. This can also be referred to as an MCU. Examples include: Audio/Video, Web Conferencing (data collaboration), IM Conferencing Server, and Telephony Conferencing Server. The Web Conferencing Server enables data collaboration among multiple participants. Conferencing data collaboration features can include application sharing, white boarding, chat, polling, question and answer, Web sharing, multimedia content, file transfer, and PowerPoint support.
  
  
• Conferencing Server Factory. An entity responsible for allocating a conferencing server to a conference for a specific media type.
  
  

In the Office Communications Server architecture, all conference control commands are sent by clients to the focus, which then relays these commands to the appropriate conferencing servers after verifying that the client that sent the request has the privileges to perform that operation. Media is then exchanged directly between a client and the conferencing servers.

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