I have been harping on this week about Application Services and Asterisk and it’s world destiny. However Microsoft is under no allusion that the future of telephony, indeed communications is Applications such as Exchange and the Office Eco System. I would go as far to say that they have a certain amount of blasé about voice itself, but rather it belongs at a technology inside a Suite of Applications and Servers that integrate well together.
Live Communications Server 2005 helps you improve business efficiencies and increase productivity by sharing ideas and information immediately. This unified communications (UC) platform offers enterprise-grade solutions by integrating with the Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Windows Server System products and services.
Further more the future of telephony is not telephony but Application Servers that deliver voice as a technology that underlies more comprehensive functionality such as the unifed messaging, unified communications, event alerting and notification and quality assurance and compliance systems among other. Let me clarify some of the above. Unified Communications is the integration of a multiplicity of communications channels to deliver a consistent and unified view of your communications from IM, Email, Fax, Voice to Video. The Microsoft Suite does make a compelling vision for those who use Microsoft Exchange (more important than Office) tools (of which at last count was 34% of those who buy mailboxes). IBM indeed has their own vision for Lotus Notes/Domino and its integration with Cisco, Nortel et al. Event Alerting and Notification on the other hand is the ability to deliver timely actionable information to constituents through email, SMS, voice, phone, Cell Phone or what ever. Quality Assurance and Compliance are tools that manage and maintain interactions within communication systems such as contact centers, help desks, trading floors, security group, responder systems etc. Slowly but surely the market is transitioning towards the concept of Application Dial Tone and businesses seek to integrate their communications activities with their business processes in a more comprehensive fashion.
