inbabble.com

Using IP telephony, businesses can connect phones, emails, instant messaging, presence, conferencing, and mobile communications. Now, with Bill Gates proclaiming, “The phone is going to be the PC, the PC is going to be the phone”, Microsoft is offering it’s own unified communications program based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007.

True IP telephony is different from the services provided by Skype and Vonage. Like IPTV, IP telephony does not rely on the Internet but on dedicated data networks. In the case of IP telephony this is usually a private corporate data network.

The leaders in serving the IP telephony market include Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Siemens and Mitel, all of whom make hardware. But Microsoft’s Jeff Raikes claims that by using Microsoft software instead of competitors’ hardware, a corporation could cut their phone expenses in half over three years. He predicts that in the next three years, 100 million people will be able to make phone calls using Microsoft Office.

It is also important to note that Microsoft and Nortel formed a strategic alliance last year to further develop software based telephony solutions.

The public beta program of the new software features fifteen devices from nine manufacturers - ASUSTek Computer Inc., GN, LG-Nortel Co. Ltd., NEC Corp., Plantronics Inc., Polycom Inc. (see image actual UC telephone based on a Microsoft reference design), SAMSUNG, Tatung Co. and ViTELiX. They include internet protocol (IP) phones, USB phones, wired and wireless headsets, conferencing phones, LCD monitors and laptops. Microsoft certifies that they are all interoperable with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007.

Often IP telephony devices such as handsets and headsets have been locked into compatibility with a particular vendor’s network equipment. Apparently Microsoft wants to encourage IP telephony to be locked into compatibility with their software.