LCS does quite a lot of telephony integration already, but most customers today are using it more for IM and presence, said Neil Laver, head of Microsoft’s Real-Time Collaboration Group in the UK.
The next version, called LCS 2007 and scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of next year, will offer a lot more, enabling integration with multiple modes of telephony, Laver said.
The product in its current form, for instance, still lacks sophistication in integrating with a PSTN gateway, which would include the ability to find people, carry out conference calls and park them, he said by way of example.
For the time being, Microsoft continues to sell Media-Streams’ E-Phone product, but once integration with LCS is complete and version 2007 is launched, it will likely be retired.
We’re continuing with existing deals below a certain threshold, but for the bigger stuff that takes longer to decide on anyway, it makes more sense to go to a new platform, Laver said.
Before LCS 2007, Microsoft will launch a version of its Communicator client software for mobile phones in the first quarter of 2006. Earlier this month it launched a Web Access version, whereby there is no software downloaded to the end device and presence information is accessed entirely online.
Aside from devices running Windows Mobile 5.0, Laver said Canadian developer Research In Motion Ltd has the developer tools, we’ve opened the API, for them to develop a Communicator client for a BlackBerry device. That product is also due out imminently.
Also in the Real-Time Collaboration suite of offerings, Laver said Microsoft will next year launch an on-premises alternative to the hosted model by which it delivers its LiveMeeting technology today.
We’ll also be doing tighter integration with voice and video on that platform during the year, while the Office development team is working to improve integration with their applications, such as spreadsheets, for instance, he said.
The last major release of LCS was version 2005, launched at the end of 2004. Unlike the original product, version 2003, which has a subsequent Service Pack release to add Web IM connectivity to the corporate IM of the initial release, Laver does not expect there to be any Service Packs for version 2005.
The main reason for the long gap before LCS 2007, aside from the work to integrate the Media-Streams technology, is the need to stay in sync with the next major release of the Office suite, version 11.
The logic here is a compelling one: with some 400 million Office users worldwide, Microsoft positions LCS as its natural progression, taking office productivity into collaboration, and so tight integration with Office apps is clearly a competitive advantage the Redmond, Washington-based ISV seeks to exploit.
The competition to LCS comes from both service provider WebEx and software vendors like IBM (with the Sametime product), Cisco (with MeetingPlace), Nortel (with Multimedia Communication Server) and EMC (with eRoom).
While Microsoft comes at collaboration from what Laver called a PC software-based background, the majority of the other players are from the phone-based angle. Again, the prospect of collaboration from within Office is invoked by this remark.
We think people want to do collaboration from where they already spend all their time anyway, he said.
Laver claimed that a number of big corporations had sounded Microsoft out about a migration from Sametime to LCS in recent months. He acknowledged, however, that a barrier to such moves is often the sheer number of custom apps this sort of company has in operation on Lotus Notes (which is the basis of Sametime).
However, we have a number of technologies and tactical teams we can deploy in support of customers wanting to make the move, he went on, in other words, we’ll invest in the app rewrite to enable such a migration.
