Microsoft scores face time through BT conferencing deal

U.K. telecommunications company BT Group PLC Monday officially began selling Microsoft’s Web conferencing service, Office Live Meeting, coupled with its audio conferencing services.

U.K. telecommunications company BT Group PLC Monday officially began selling Microsoft’s Web conferencing service, Office Live Meeting, coupled with its audio conferencing services.

The move had been expected, particularly after BT quietly began promoting Live Meeting on its Web site last month as its primary Web conferencing service over services from WebEx Communications. BT will continue to offer the WebEx services, though Live Meeting will be its “leading offering” for Web conferencing, a BT spokesman said.

Additionally, BT has been deploying Live Meeting internally for “most of the past fiscal year” as part of an internal pilot program, the spokesman said. According to BT, the company has saved over than 6.2 million miles of business travel in 2003 alone through the use of Live Meeting.

Microsoft has been aggressively chasing market-leader WebEx since it acquired its Live Meeting product through the purchase of PlaceWare last year. BT and WedEx announced its joint conferencing services just last February. At the time, WebEx, which already had deals with other European telecommunications companies, including France Telecom SA and TeliaSonera AB, said the BT deal was its largest European partnership to date.

Microsoft has partnerships with MCI and InterCall (a division of West Corp.) in the U.S. to resell its Live Meeting product. Though the BT version of Live Meeting will only be available in the U.K. and the U.S., the deal marks an important step in Microsoft’s plans to tackle the European market, according to Microsoft spokeswoman, Mui Luck. “We are focusing right now on our partnerships with BT and MCI, but in the future, we will be doing quite a lot with the major telcos,” she said.

BT said that its Live Meeting offering will provide users a “one-click” method for Web conferencing that is reliable and scalable, as well as being a cheaper alternative to time consuming and expensive business travel.

The service is priced on a per-minute, named-user or per-seat basis. The list price for Live Meeting is £0.22 (41 cents) per minute, though volume discounts are available, the BT spokesman said.

BT and Microsoft declined to outline the financial details of the agreement but said its partnership will continue to evolve. In June, the two companies launched a suite of broadband-based business tools under the banner BT Broadband Office Complete, and have future plans that include integrated audio and Web conferencing, they said.