Microsoft’s Unified Communications Strategy
Microsoft is expanding their line of business as they simutaneously convince corporations that they are a one-stop shop for sophisticated communications technology.
At an event in San Francisco on Monday, Microsoft is expected to show it’s planned products lines that link communications from e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing and traditional phone calls.
What is the vision behind it?
An employee receives an email, the person has the choice of setting up a conference call right within the email with all the recipients, recipients receive the message in their email, phones or mobile devices and may choose to accept or reject the invite.
The vision called Unified Communications, also seeks to connect people while sitting at a computer, driving home or on a business trip.
One of the major technologies in Microsoft’s plan is Live Communications Server 2005 which has already been in the market this year (I just installed and configured the technology a week ago). By mid-2007 an upgrade to LCS 2005 is expected as well as technologies like SharePoint 2007 is bound to be released which shall play a major role in it’s plan.
These technologies rely on broadband Internet access and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP); in lieu of this, Microsoft has partnered with Motorola Inc. to provide the hardware for the offerings.
It will be interesting to see how the market shall embrace this Unified Communications concept of Microsoft especially when Instant Messaging is free which I doubt will come as a freebie in Microsoft’s comprehensive licensing policies.
The target market of Microsoft could be the high sector where money is second to security which may be compromised from free downloads.
SharePoint 2007 integrates Live Messenger into it’s browser as well as Outlook which means Unified Communications shall run on top of SharePoint 2007.
This is another of Microsoft’s effort to advance collaboration in the workplace as well as our daily lives.
[tags]SharePoint 2007, Live Messenger, Live Communications Server[/tags]









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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 » Microsoft’s Massive Reorg continues said,
June 28, 2006 @ 11:17 pm
Review by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 » Microsoft’s Massive Reorg continues, June 28, 2006
[...] The head of Microsoft’s unified communications effort will be headed by Chris Capossela who currently heads product marketing for Office. [...]
[...] The head of Microsoft’s unified communications effort will be headed by Chris Capossela who currently heads product marketing for Office. [...]