Microsoft Finds Its 'Voice'
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Redmond has made its new enterprise voice communications server available to 2,500 companies under a private beta program. |
The product, which will be known as Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, brings with it the ability for companies to integrate VOIP (voice over IP) technology into their existing telephony infrastructure, Chris Cullin, director of product management in Microsoft's Unified Communications Group, told me.
This sever is also the successor to Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005, and forms part of Microsoft's unified communications portfolio.
Earlier this year Microsoft announced its unified communications vision and road map going forward, where executives talked about introducing voice technologies to its current lineup, developing new products and expanding the unified communications features its current products provide.
Communications Server 2007 users will be able to deploy enterprisewide presence; enable security-enhanced enterprise instant messaging; host on-premises audio, video and Web conferences; and deploy VOIP capabilities.
Voice features includes placing and receiving voice calls; advanced call routing; streamlined integration with the new unified messaging capabilities in Exchange Server 2007; multiparty conferencing; call holding, forwarding and transferring; as well as compliance capabilities--all of which work in conjunction with the existing telephony infrastructure.
The new voice server will also allow workers to instantly launch a phone call from a number of Office 2007 system applications, such as Word 2007, Outlook 2007 and Office Communicator.
Users will be able to click on a colleague's name to determine his or her availability and initiate a person-to-person or multiparty call.
While Cullin declined to give details of the road map for the product going forward or its pricing and packaging, he did say that it was on track to ship by the end of the second quarter of 2007.
"We are also breaking down the link between software and hardware, and the product will run on industry standard machines and on phones developed by our partners," he said.
Office Communications Server is also a platform for developers, giving them a set of APIs and open standards based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), as well as an applications development environment where people can build a line of business or vertical applications on top of the solution set, Cullin told me.
Office Communications Server 2007 is also integrated with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, which has a built-in auto-attendant for answering and routing inbound voice calls as well as unified messaging that unifies voice mail and e-mail in a single inbox.
Microsoft has also posted to its PressPass Web site the transcript of a question-and-answer session with Anoop Gupta, the corporate vice president of its Unified Communications Group, about this.
