Microsoft warms up voice software plans

Microsoft is executing a broad plan to provide customers with software interfaces to traditional voice and VoIP services that will let them make and manage calls from desktops, mobile devices or Web-based services.

More pieces of the company's strategy fell into place last week when Microsoft acquired VoIP software and services vendor Teleo to upgrade voice services on MSN. Also, an expansion of its partnership with Nortel gives Microsoft another vendor to help integrate traditional phone service with its real-time communications platform, specifically its Office Communicator 2005 client and corresponding Office Live Communications Server 2005.

"What they want to do ultimately is own the interface," says Irwin Lazar, an analyst with Burton Group. "They want to provide that client on the desktop, the mobile phone, the softphone regardless of the back-end [voice] system."

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Microsoft is executing a broad plan to provide customers with software interfaces to traditional voice and VoIP services that will let them make and manage calls from desktops, mobile devices or Web-based services.

More pieces of the company's strategy fell into place last week when Microsoft acquired VoIP software and services vendor Teleo to upgrade voice services on MSN. Also, an expansion of its partnership with Nortel gives Microsoft another vendor to help integrate traditional phone service with its real-time communications platform, specifically its Office Communicator 2005 client and corresponding Office Live Communications Server 2005.

"What they want to do ultimately is own the interface," says Irwin Lazar, an analyst with Burton Group. "They want to provide that client on the desktop, the mobile phone, the softphone regardless of the back-end [voice] system."

Microsoft also is positioning its infrastructure software to support voice. For example, it will use Active Directory as the repository for identity and attribute information, including phone numbers, and a future version of Exchange as a unified message store for voice mail.

In addition, a mobile version of Office Communicator, expected in beta in the coming months, will extend the client's VoIP and call-control features to mobile devices.

Lazar says it appears Microsoft is less concerned with the back end where it hopes to leave classic telephony companies such as Cisco, Nortel, Siemens and others to provide infrastructure, while edging those vendors out of the client-side interface arena.

The biggest challenge Microsoft faces is execution of its plan, Lazar says. And competitors agree.

"Certainly Microsoft is going to be a big force in collaboration applications and we are working with them in that area," says Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer. "But in terms of real-time voice and video-based collaboration, where you have to deal with all the issues associated with a pleasant and easy experience with voice and with video, we think that takes a systems company, not just a software company, to do it right."

Microsoft's traditional competitors also aren't standing still. IBM/Lotus teamed earlier this month with Avaya to integrate voice software and "click-to-call" features with e-mail, Web conferencing and instant messaging software on the Notes/Domino and Sametime platforms. The partnership will provide similar features Microsoft is gaining from Nortel and earlier partnerships this year with Siemens, Alcatel and Mitel.

"With regards to voice, we are not talking just about VoIP, we are talking about call control and all the things you can do with a desktop phone today," says Peter Pawlak, an analyst with independent research firm Directions on Microsoft. "What can you do with an interface that is basically a digital keypad? With a software interface, you can do a ton of things:You can display the caller ID and see if it pops up anyone in your contact list. You can take the call to voice mail with a right click. You can forward it to someone else, you can take the call by clicking on the answer button. You can say I want to conference in someone and you can look them up in your Outlook address book and hit conference and it sends a signal to the switch to ring somebody's extension. Basically your PC becomes your interface to the PBX functions."