Meeting with VoIP VARs, Response Point Program Manager John Frederickson said Microsoft doesn’t currently plan to release future versions of Response Point. It will, however, continue to maintain the product and evaluate specific feature requests.  The [...]]]>

ChannelWeb reports that Microsoft is wishy-washy about what will to happen with it’s Response Point SMB VoIP system.

Meeting with VoIP VARs, Response Point Program Manager John Frederickson said Microsoft doesn’t currently plan to release future versions of Response Point. It will, however, continue to maintain the product and evaluate specific feature requests.  The company will also continue supporting OEMs and selling Response Point 1.0 Service Pack 2.

So, you want to buy a dead/legacy-ed out product because…?

Back in May, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people working on Response Point and hasn’t said diddly about plans to develop/release a 2.0 version.  Things don’t look good as the Response Point GM has been moved over to Microsoft’s search group and there’s a “small” engineering team still around to maintain the product, but Response Point is “funded” and has a marketing budget through June 30, 2010.

An email from Microsoft to ChannelWeb said the company didn’t “announce anything” at the meeting and expects to have more details to share on future development at the end of this calendar year.

Some VARs love Response Point, but they are discomforted that Microsoft has basically frozen the product.  Other players in the IP PBX game would like to see Response Point just Go Away – the Digium people seem to be especially catty when it comes to the SMB PBX.

Whispers of Response Point’s demise started out from an anonymous post on a blog tracking Microsoft [...]]]>

When the axe came down at Microsoft last week, the Response Point small business phone team took a hit. How fatal it is to the business and new product releases is up for debate amongst the peanut gallery.

Whispers of Response Point’s demise started out from an anonymous post on a blog tracking Microsoft layoffs saying that the entire Response Point team had been “canned.”  Microsoft begs to differ and ZDNet quotes a company spokesperson saying—

• Microsoft continues to support Response Point version 1.0. and current OEMs, service providers and resellers that are selling it. Customers will continue to be supported through their OEMs.
• Microsoft will continue to promote the product online and spotlight compatible 3rd party services and add-on products.
• The Response Point team has not been moved to another division and
• The team is evaluating the strategy for the next version of the product and will continue to investigate the opportunity in the small business market.

Response Point has been kicking around since October 2007 and the IP PBX is targeted at SMBs with one to 50 phones.  SP2 — the latest release — included support for basic call queuing, better SIP trunking, and, VPN support, an automated night receptionist scheduler, and URL/HTML customization for web 2.0/mash-up style creations.

Around IT Expo in February, the Response Point “team” numbered a lean-mean 35 members. No indications on how many people got the axe last week or how many remain.

Shoutout to Bill Miller for the Tweet
Sources: Microsoft Response Point blog and ZDNet’s blog.