Here's a typical scenario: You want to talk to someone, but you don't want to interrupt her, or worse, get into a voice-mail-swapping death spiral. So you send an "are you around?" instant message. You get a "yes" and pick up the phone, but on the call you're talking about a spreadsheet your colleague doesn't have, so you e-mail the attachment, which she opens in Excel. Wouldn't we be better off if this all took less time and fewer programs?

"You could say, 'Hey, it's a very livable world,' but that doesn't make it the best that we can do," says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who, along with Nortel Networks CEO Mike Zafirovski, last week laid out what's arguably the industry's most feature-rich product road map yet for unified communications.

Windows over IP--the promise of meshing Microsoft software and business IP networks--may indeed offer the best of both worlds, but even Ballmer's endless optimism can't hide the challenges. The companies' road map stretches a painfully long four years, complicated by plumbing nightmares, competitors the stature of Cisco Systems and Avaya, and even questions about the definition of unified communications.

There's integrated voice and video calling, the ability to embed click-to-call in applications, the ability to embed presence--the "are you there?" phenomenon--into any app that contains the names of colleagues. Any or all of the above are variously included in defining unified communications. Cisco muddies the water more by calling every voice-over-IP customer a unified communications customer.

Whatever the lexicon, demand is building. Todd Schofield, CTO at International SOS, which provides emergency medical air transportation, says the ability to immediately see presence information could accelerate conversations with doctors and increase productivity. In addition to presence, companies are interested in escalating calls from IM to voice to video and conferencing, and in features that let phone numbers follow users across devices, says Burton Group analyst Mike Gotta.

"When you show this to customers, they say, 'I want that, I get it,'" Ballmer says. An InformationWeek survey last year of 320 business technology professionals found that 54% of companies using or planning to use VoIP want access to integrated voice, video, data sharing, and conferencing.

PRODUCTS ON THE WAY

Microsoft and Nortel showed the first fruits from their 6-month-old alliance, including three new products, 11 services, and that four-year road map.

One product planned for release by the end of the year is the UC Integrated Branch, which will deliver VoIP calling and unified communications from a single device that includes data routing and switching, a media gateway, a presence server, codecs, an IP PBX, and Microsoft's Office Communications Server. That one device takes the place of about seven needed to support communications in a typical branch office, says Nortel's Zafirovski. Later this year, the companies promise a product called Converged Office for Nortel's enterprise-class IP PBX that supports up to 200,000 users. That will give Microsoft's collaboration software contact center functions, interactive voice response, Web integration, telephony presence, and click-to-call, and do so without the middleware layer needed today.