Microsoft: On the Road to 'Istanbul'

Microsoft Corp. unveiled its next generation of collaboration tools, Live Communications Server 2005, at Fall VON today. With a client code-named “Istanbul,” the software behemoth will support instant messaging and presence, along with PC-based multimedia and other IP-based capabilities for enterprises like Microsoft Live Meeting, a Web conferencing tool, and VoIP.

Now in beta release and scheduled for release next year, the client will replace Windows Messenger.

The goal is a true personal communications experience on the desktop that encompasses voice, data, video and presence, according to Anoop Gupta, vice president of the Real-Time Collaboration Business Group at Microsoft. Istanbul will allow users to determine call control based on presence (for instance, send all calls to voice mail if the subscriber is in a meeting), engage click-to-talk collaboration from a buddy list and access richer availability data, such as the ability to see if someone is available on cell phone or office phone.

Microsoft is encouraging integration and interoperability to help refine the product, and third-party development already is underway. BroadSoft will integrate the server with the BroadWorks platform, which supports next-generation hosted voice communications. Integrating the two solutions allows enterprises and service providers to offer "presence-enabling" voice calls. Users will be able to launch secure multimedia services from within any Windows application. For example, an employee can select a user from an IM list or within Active Directory and initiate a conference call. Participants automatically will be contacted at their preferred end point (cell, office, home) depending on their "presence" on the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server.

RADVISION, which already powers desktop video in a Microsoft Live Communications Server environment, announced it has ported the viaIP multimedia conferencing technology to a software-only architecture to capitalize on the new Live Communications client and to scale to thousands of users. It’s part of a software-only multimedia communications middleware platform, iVIEW, for general availability in the first quarter of 2005. The iVIEW unified suite supports point-to-point and multimedia conference calls from the desktop and the boardroom, bridging the communications network and the end users’ voice/video devices and applications and masking the complexity involved in the system.

Jasomi Networks announced PeerPoint Version 3.3, which addresses the evolving needs of Microsoft Live Communications Server customers with complex corporate
networks and extranets.

PeerPoint 3.3 includes a number of new features designed to help customers with large networks balance the needs of their network security departments with the draw towards live communications. For example, the company says it includes improved encryption transcoding support to provide a variety of cross-border  encryption policies for both call media and signaling information. Improved call-logging capabilities provide customers with regulatory requirements to log call information with the tools necessary for compliance. PeerPoint also improves variable opacity options, allowing administrators to control how various aspects of SIP messages are allowed or denied passage across a network boundary.

It also allows users to push control over encryption, call-logging and transport capabilities onto the Live Communications Server client application, allowing corporate policies to be enforced from endpoint to endpoint.

“We've found that as companies begin to deploy Live Communications Server 2003 and examine Live Communications Server 2005, they recognize the need to have the VoIP network conform to the pre-existing corporate security standards, or else face serious deployment delays,” says Alan Hawrylyshen, CTO at Jasomi Networks. “Our ongoing partnership with Microsoft continues to reap benefits for customers facing these challenges.”

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines