Microsoft Sets a Date for Unveiling UC Software
The first commercial release of Office Communications Server 2007 will be unveiled to the public on October 16, Microsoft announced this morning. Along with it will be the Office Communicator (OC) client - the company's professional grade on-screen messaging service - as well as the next edition of Live Meeting, whose conferencing features will be upgraded to support OC.
The move comes a day after Microsoft publicly made nice with Cisco, which is otherwise one of its principal competitors in the communications space.
Microsoft's aim is to make feasible an inexpensive business communications system complete with voice mail and voice-sensitive, automated answering. Like a typical VoIP system, it would replace the PBX; but unlike VoIP, it would rely not only on phones but on users' PCs to marshal traffic.
This is where Microsoft's OC plan comes in, giving customers the option of moving part or all of their voice consoles off of the physical desktop and onto the Windows desktop.
To that end, Microsoft needs to license its two-way voice codec technology to partner manufacturers in both the PC and communications industries. At a major VoIP conference in San Francisco this morning, Microsoft corporate vice president for UC Gurdeep Singh Pall announced his company is licensing the RT Audio Codec to Intel and Texas Instruments, as well as VoIP phone manufacturers Polycom and LG Nortel, and VoIP equipment manufacturers Audiocodes and Dialogic.
Bill Gates will be making the formal introduction himself, demonstrating that he hasn't been kicked all the way upstairs just yet.