Microsoft gets into telephony

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 12 December 2006 15:13

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft has taken its first real step into enterprise telephone systems, with the addition of voice functionality to Office Communications Server 2007. Today it is partnering with the major players in this space, tomorrow it could be competing with them head-to-head.

The new voice server,  distributed in beta to 2,500 IT professionals, will, according to Microsoft, "allow workers to instantly launch a phone call from 2007 Microsoft Office applications, such as Office Word 2007, Office Outlook 2007 or Office Communicator, by simply clicking on a colleague's name to determine his or her availability and initiate a person-to-person or multiparty call."

So far the product has been designed to interwork with IP PBXs from the likes of Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, NEC etc but already Microsoft is suggesting that enterprise will be able to do away with desk phones, which account for a significant portion of revenue in IP telephony systems sales. "Customers will also able to leverage the softphone capabilities of Office Communicator to make and receive phone calls from their PCs, eliminating the need to purchase expensive IP-compatible phones."

Many IP PBXs are already, essentially applications running under Windows. As voice and data communications become more 'converged' and messaging more 'unified' the idea of having quite separate systems for voice, email and instant messaging which have to interwork to provide users with a  truly converged communications experience will make less and less sense.

From the description given in Microsoft's announcement, Communications Server 2007 already sounds very much like an IP PBX. Some of the capabilities available in the private beta are: "placing and receiving voice calls; advanced call routing...multiparty conferencing; call holding, forwarding and transferring; and compliance capabilities." Microsoft adds that these are all possible "while working in concert with existing telephony infrastructure,"  but this begs the question of why that existing infrastructure is necessary.

And furthermore, Office Communications Server 2007 can be deployed with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, which "complements the voice capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007 with a built-in auto-attendant for answering and routing inbound voice calls as well as unified messaging that unifies voice mail and e-mail in a single inbox."

Microsoft's catch-line is that it is "the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential." And the phone system is after all one of the most fundamental and important components of that.