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| UPDATED: 2006-06-26 |
 Microsoft Dialing Up Voice Strategy 
By: David Utter 2006-06-26 Unified communications will be at the heart of Microsoft's efforts to maintain its Office dominance and drive demand for its server products.  Microsoft (MSFT) discussed its enterprise communication strategy at a weekend event in San Francisco. Executives talked about its plans to create a single identity for people across various methods of communication, and make ways to communicate part of the applications they use.
They haven't left anything out of the equation: email, instant messaging, mobile and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, and audio, video and webconferencing all have a place in Microsoft's vision of a more productive work place. Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes spoke at the event of integrating voice with Microsoft's existing communication services. Part of that strategy will see its forthcoming Exchange Server 2007 add this unified functionality, allowing users to have a single inbox to collect email, voice mail, and faxes. The company also wants to take on firms like networking giant Cisco (CSCO) in providing session initiation protocol (SIP)-based VoIP services. Microsoft plans to bundle presence-based VoIP, conferencing options, and instant messaging support in Office Communications Server 2007. Microsoft also announced a new software client, Office Communicator 2007, to work with the Communications Server. Among the various features will be interoperability with instant messaging systems on MSN, AOL, and Yahoo. The various products have been scheduled for release dates ranging from late 2006 for Speech Server and possibly Exchange 2007, to the second quarter of 2007 for Communications Server and the new client. Ideally a successful launch will entice Microsoft's enterprise users to pick up new licenses for the server hardware while prompting a round of profitable upgrades to the next version of Office. Spurring that revenue stream as it finally makes the Vista operating system available in the marketplace has to be seen by Redmond as an important step in sparking life into its moribund stock price. --- Tags: Microsoft, Cisco Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Yahoo! My Web |  Furl
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View All Articles by David Utter About the Author: David Utter is a staff writer for InternetFinancialNews and WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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