Microsoft Launches Business Software to Unify Voice, Email and Video

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Microsoft unveiled a suite of software products that will provide “unified communications” for businesses, combining voice calls, emails, instant messaging and videoconferencing in one application.

Digital Journal — Yesterday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates launched several software suites to help streamline “workplace communications and…reduce the cost of the average corporate voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) system by half,” according to the press release.

New products include: Office Communications Server 2007, which handles most of the communications routing; Office Communicator 2007, software for phone, IM and video communications that can apply to a PC, phone and Web browser; Office Live Meeting, which is the next-gen offering of videoconferencing; and Microsoft RoundTable, a $3,000 webcam that captures images 360 degrees around a boardroom table, for instance.

Gates was so enthusiastic about Microsoft’s new offerings, he spiced up his announcement with some hyperbole, saying:

This transformation to software-based communications is going to be as profound as the shift from typewriters to word processing software.

Microsoft is stressing ease of use with their plan for unified communications. Through software that detects a person’s availability, employees can best decide how to communicate with fellow workers or clients. The San Francisco Chronicle cites an example of how this could happen:

For example, workers will be able to pull up a contact list that will allow them to call people, send an instant message or start a videoconference using a PC-based phone and Web cam. Using the Office Communicator client, a user can click or drag people's names off the list and add them to a conversation. They will also be able to click on a person's name from a variety of software applications to begin a conversation.

In his speech, Gates used the example of the RoundTable webcam to highlight why businesses would be keen to take advantage of this technology. He said:

There are six different microphones here, and when I pull this top off, there's a camera that's got five different faces that can look 360 degrees around the room. And so you just take this, put it in a conference room. You connect it up to power, and the Ethernet, and then if you have our Office Communications software, it immediately hooks up. Then you can do calls where you're connecting up with people who are remote, and they can see everyone in the room. It automatically is like having somebody with a camera, who is a very good film director, because they understand when they ought to show the whole room, when they ought to zoom in on the speaker.

Microsoft’s announcement positions it in direct competition with Cisco, known as the market leader in business communications. But while Cisco has an edge in networking and hardware, Microsoft can stake some ground with its software suites. It’s no surprise Microsoft wants to advance its technology to win over businesses worldwide; the big question is how effective those new products will be in an already crowded marketplace.