Tandberg and Nortel team for telepresence: what about Microsoft?

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 22 March 2008 11:23

Opinion and Analysis

Fredrik Halvorsen, CEO of Tandberg said the integration with Nortel unified communications was possible "because our Tandberg video systems are built on open standards." The two promise that, with their joint solution, "reservations are Web-based, conferences are pre-connected, including external parties [and] meetings can be recorded and replayed on-demand from desktop, laptop and mobile devices."

Nortel however has a strong unified communications relationship with Microsoft, the Innovative Communications Alliance, formed in January 2006. At an announcement six months later, the CEOs of Microsoft and Nortel - Mike Zafirovski and Steve Ballmer - fleshed out their joint plan for the global enterprise unified communications market, saying they would "dramatically improve business communications by breaking down the barriers between voice, e-mail, instant messaging, multimedia conferencing and other forms of communication," which begs the question: when and if will telepresence be part of the mix?

Given the benefits being claimed of telepresence it is hard to see Microsoft standing by while the market grows and  rivals like Cisco achieve significant growth. And, interestingly this week also, Tandberg and Microsoft announced a video relationship, but not in the telepresence arena.

Tandberg is already a Microsoft Gold Partner and the two announce, also at VoiceCon, a development initiative to deliver the first high-definition webcam camera for integration with Microsoft's unified communications platform. Tandberg had earlier announced interoperability of its video systems with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and had licensed the Microsoft RT Video codec and Microsoft RT Audio codec.

Halvorsen said: "We believe that Microsoft has a strong position in the unified communications market and we are making ongoing investments in Microsoft Office Communication Server development to ensure that we are well placed to realize the benefits."

Tandberg will deliver the camera in conjunction with Microsoft's intended support of high-definition video in its next release of Microsoft Office Communications Server. The new camera will be available during the first half of 2009. It seems very likely that the relationship will move beyond this.