ITWire

Microsoft is making a big push into the enterprise IP communications and collaboration space  and although most of the major players - Avaya, Mitel, Siemens etc - have announced collaborations with Microsoft to ensure interoperation of their technologies, Nortel has been a favoured partner for almost a year every sinec the two companies formed the Innovative Communications Alliance in July 2006.

In January 2007 the two companies announced a range of new joint products spawned by the alliance .

Now they have announced an expansion of the alliance from the enterprise to the service provider market, with a plan to offer "solutions that will enable service providers to deliver comprehensive unified communications services to small and medium business (SMBs) and enterprises."
The latest development follows Microsoft's announcement of its IP PBX product last month.
Their joint offerings wil enable carriers to host unified business communication and collaboration services including e-mail, instant messaging, VoIP, click-to-call, video conferencing and other multimedia services.

"With these hosted communications solutions offerings, service providers will be able to equip SMB and enterprise workers with advanced tools such as click-to-call, as well as traditional voice communications and in/outbound dialing from their Microsoft Office Communicator desktop client," the two companies say.