Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Wednesday 17 January 2007, 12:37 PM
Microsoft, Nortel line up today with Unified Alliance
Microsoft will today launch a partnership with Nortel to develop unified communications.
The two companies are waiting until late this afternoon to announce a joint development effort which will be called the Innovative Communications Alliance.
Unified comms, in case you've avoided the buzzword for the last 18 months, means bringing together desktop and PBX functionality to make it easier for users to make voice and video calls at their desk, and switch between such calls.
The two companies have worked together for some time, integrating Nortel's Multimedia Communications Server with Microsoft Live Communications Server, spawning such applications as click-to-call and presence.
Microsoft has so far not exclusively done this with Nortel; indeed it has a significant relationship with Cisco concerning the integration of Call Manager, as well as tie-ups with all the other major PBX vendors.
So it will be interesting to see whether there is a change in strategy towards favouring Nortel when the Alliance is launched this afternoon.
The companies are keeping schtum on the detail until then, but we do know that both chief executives - Ballmer and Zafirovski - are involved, so it should be significant. See our news pages for the full story as it happens.
The two companies are waiting until late this afternoon to announce a joint development effort which will be called the Innovative Communications Alliance.
Unified comms, in case you've avoided the buzzword for the last 18 months, means bringing together desktop and PBX functionality to make it easier for users to make voice and video calls at their desk, and switch between such calls.
The two companies have worked together for some time, integrating Nortel's Multimedia Communications Server with Microsoft Live Communications Server, spawning such applications as click-to-call and presence.
Microsoft has so far not exclusively done this with Nortel; indeed it has a significant relationship with Cisco concerning the integration of Call Manager, as well as tie-ups with all the other major PBX vendors.
So it will be interesting to see whether there is a change in strategy towards favouring Nortel when the Alliance is launched this afternoon.
The companies are keeping schtum on the detail until then, but we do know that both chief executives - Ballmer and Zafirovski - are involved, so it should be significant. See our news pages for the full story as it happens.
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