Make Way for Microsoft

For all of the solution providers who've said they're taking a wait-and-see approach to Microsoft's impending unified communications blitz, the wait is almost over. Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for its march into the voice market for some time now, throwing out tantalizing tidbits along the way, including a wide-ranging partnership with Nortel Networks in July 2006 to develop integrated VoIP products as well as the release of the public beta of its Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 in March.

While solution providers at large have heard the rhetoric and seen hints of what's to come, they've been waiting to get their hands on Microsoft's new technology so they can appraise for themselves just how big an impact it will have on the VoIP space.

Now, for Microsoft and its solution providers, it's nearly go time.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Oct. 16 is set to unveil some of the long-awaited building blocks of its unified communications plans. At a launch event in San Francisco, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Business Division President Jeff Raikes are set to showcase several products, including OCS 2007, which promises to bring VoIP, presence, instant messaging and conferencing together; the Office Communicator 2007 unified communications client; Office Live Meeting 2007 hosted conferencing; and the RoundTable videoconferencing system.

Also on hand at the San Francisco launch event will be a bevy of hardware, software and channel partners that will be working with Microsoft as part of its unified communications ecosystem.

"Our ecosystem is very important and significant because it's a competitive differentiator for us," said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the unified communications group at Microsoft. "We're saying that we're not going to be selling you phones and selling you software and selling you applications and selling you gateways. We're saying we're going to focus on the software platform and create a great opportunity around our software."

Microsoft has already disclosed hardware partnerships with players such as ASUS, 3Com, NEC, LG-Nortel, Samsung and Vitelix around OCS 2007.

Solution providers are a big piece of the strategy as well, and Microsoft has already invested significantly to connect its various partner communities together, said Pall.

"For the first time, communications is going to become part of the same platform that the rest of the enterprise runs on, which means that these communications partners, especially channel partners coming from a PBX background, can now start participating in a much bigger pie," said Pall.

The prospects truly open up once channel partners start marrying voice and communications with other applications such as Active Directory and Exchange.

"The fundamental opportunity here is to get the channel partners out of the silo or the communications stack that they're locked into and really have them participate in the much broader communication and collaboration opportunity, the content activity, the workflow and business process integration opportunity," Pall said. "All of those things suddenly become possible for these partners, going with this approach."

Microsoft has a cadre of solution providers trained and ready to hit the ground running come launch time, he added.

"We've gone through the recruiting efforts, the training efforts; we've been on it for a year," Pall said.

Next: Unified Communications