VoiceCon: Microsoft Boosts Unified Communications With Videoconferencing Links

Microsoft said videoconferencing systems from Polycom and Tandberg will now operate with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007.

At this week's VoiceCon conference in Orlando,Fla., Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft's corporate VP for unified communications, delivered an update on customer and partner adoption of its unified communications platform. He said Microsoft now has partnerships with videoconferencing vendors that supply more than 73% of worldwide business conference systems, according to a market research survey conducted by Frost and Sullivan.

Videoconference applications have been enjoying triple digit business growth, Pall said. More than 350 companies and 55 resellers in 17 countries have deployed the system's 360-degree videoconferencing phones in the last six months, he said.

Joe Sigrist, senior VP and general manager of video solutions at Polycom, said in a statement: "Offering interoperability with Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 will allow customers to use Polycom visual communications as an extension of the Microsoft applications they already use to communicate with others, and will help make visual communications easier to manage in a Microsoft unified communications network."

Unified communications is a major topic at VoiceCon, and other networking vendors announced partnerships to expand the capabilities off their systems. NEC Unified Solutions, for example, announced that it will team up with Ipcelerate Inc. to deliver advanced unified communications applications.

Ipcelerate's Network IP Applications Framework VoIP products will be combined with NEC's line of IP terminals in the new partnership. "Using Ipcelerate's comprehensive applications framework, our developers will create advanced applications that are standard offerings on our IP terminals," said Jay Krauser, general manager product management for NEC Unified Solutions, in a statement.

The companies will collaborate to bring their applications to the market as part of NEC's Univerge360 effort to unify business communications.