Office Live Meeting update looms

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 06 June 2007 03:37

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 will provide a simplified user interface and additional communications capabilities when it ships this northern autumn.

The new version of the web conferencing system is intended to suit a range of purposes from ad-hoc collaboration and formal meetings to large-scale training sessions and communication events, Microsoft officials explained.

Participants will be able to use normal or VoIP phones, while presenters will gain the opportunity to deliver Flash, video and audio files.

When used for training sessions, Office Live Meeting 2007 will provide more advanced testing and grading facilities, while high quality recording capabilities mean people unable to join the meeting or session will be able to play it back later or the recordings can be used for archival purposes.

The software will support Microsoft's forthcoming RoundTable camera, which gives remote participants a 360-degree view around a physical conference table. A built-in array of six microphones detects who is speaking, and the software uses that information to spotlight that person. RoundTable is said to be suitable for combining groups of people in two locations, or to allow  one or more people to join a meeting remotely. Microsoft previously predicted RoundTable would sell for less than $US3000.

"The 2007 release of Office Live Meeting is a prime example of Microsoft's software–plus-services in action," said Kim Akers, general manager of Microsoft's unified communications group. "It's important for us to offer our customers choice and flexibility between software that is hosted, such as the next release of Live Meeting, or software that is deployed and managed on-premise, such as the conferencing capabilities in Office Communications Server 2007."

Office Communications Server 2007 will incorporate the same conferencing technologies as Office Live Meeting 2007.

The price of Office Live Meeting 2007 has yet to be announced.