Microsoft To Buy PlaceWare

The privately held company's technology will find a home in Microsoft's Information Worker Unit, Microsoft said. The goal is to create easy-to-use online realtime conferencing.

Terms of the deal, expected to close next quarter, were not released.

Mountain View, Calif.-based PlaceWare competes with companies such as WebEx in Web conferencing.

In addition, Microsoft launched a new RealTime Collaboration Group to be headed by Anoop Gupta, a veteran of Microsoft Research, the company said.

Gupta will report to Jeff Raikes, group vice president of productivity and business services at Microsoft. Raikes has taken up the information worker charge, seeking to reinvigorate Office sales. His group is also responsible for SharePoint Portal Server and an upcoming Digital Rights Management (DRM) server code-named Tungsten.

Realtime collaboration has been on shifting sands at Microsoft. The company had planned to root its realtime functions in Exchange Server but last year changed its tune. The functions will now be based in Windows 2003 Server and are expected to be unveiled some time after that operating system's scheduled ship date in April.

Meanwhile, IBM's Lotus Software group has already shipped several releases of its Sametime secure instant-messaging package for business use.

A WebEx spokeswoman said Microsoft has been focused on responding to IBM's Lotus Sametime server software, and PlaceWare's server software allows Microsoft to better compete against that.