Well I think the key point in this announcement is the one where they talk about ensuring these phones are compatible with microsoft environment. Several years ago a couple of vendors developed specific phone loads to work with microsoft's RTC. Of course this required a separate development effort which was clearly proprietary to Microsoft and expensive to maintain. So are these standards based SIP phones. If so I wonder why an announcement is needed. They should simply state the RFC 3261 phones work with OCS. Of course this is not the case. There will be hooks in these phones to exploit some compatibility microsoft's version of SIP which is PROPRIETARY. I think the main thrust of this announcement is buy cheap phones from Asia PAC since this makes up a significant component of any new system purchase.