Official turn up is slated for June 1, 2011 and will enable Microsoft Lync users to “seamlessly” interop with Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC) contact center solution.   Customer service agents will get extra tools to improve service [...]]]>

Earlier this month, Zeacom (www.zeacom.com) announced that its contact center solution will interoperate with Microsoft Lync 2010. 

Official turn up is slated for June 1, 2011 and will enable Microsoft Lync users to “seamlessly” interop with Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC) contact center solution.   Customer service agents will get extra tools to improve service quality and efficiency by combining traditional contact center capabilities with presence-driven unified communications.

ZCC is in use with 3500 customers around the world and is “in demand” internationally in key vertical markets including financial services, local government and housing, transportation and utilities. 

The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad [...]]]>

Polycom (www.polycom.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have declared their love, er a “global strategic agreement” for developing and marketing “integrated,” standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions.

The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” and beyond, including lots of new Polycom CX series endpoints featuring HD voice and video, new room-based video systems designed for direct integration with MCS “14” and additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions.

The biggest hoot out of this announcement is seeing a quote from Microsoft Corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall, the go-to guy when it comes to Microsoft’s telephony products. Two years ago at VoiceCon Orlando, he poo-poo’ed the traditional desktop handset, waiving around a cheap $300 netbook and saying one didn’t need all that dedicated hardware.

Today, Pall is singing the praises of one of the biggest phone guys in the business. “Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a roadmap that will deliver interoperable UC solutions with choice and innovation in video conferencing and customer devices that will help transform enterprise communication,” Pall said in a press release.

It’s a VERY different tune from “We don’t need no stinkin’ desktop phones.” Now Microsoft is the new BFF with the best desktop phone and videoconferencing company. Guess they figured out they can’t do everything standalone, especially when it comes to telepresence. Either that or the Acer netbook died…

When Microsoft products are integrated with Alteva’s hosted VoIP service, customers will get voice-enable Outlook calendars and email, phone presence, and business continuity, among [...]]]>

Alteva (www.altevatel.com) has announced a partnership with Microsoft and Broadsoft, interconnecting its hosted voice and messaging services with Microsoft’s products, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications Suite (OCS).

When Microsoft products are integrated with Alteva’s hosted VoIP service, customers will get voice-enable Outlook calendars and email, phone presence, and business continuity, among other features.

Alteva has a web store where SMBs with less than 25 users can buy on line.  Pricing ranges from a “UC Complete bundle” including an HD voice-enabled solution for $38 per user per month) down to a “Desktop Communications Basic” bundle for $15 per user per month.  Customers can also buy a la carte to purchase Exchange email, OCS, or Alteva’s hosted VoIP service.

Microsoft will be directing potential customers to Alteva through it’s UC website.

Net-net, Sprint subscribers can speak their text messages and email, with Talk to Text available immediately for all Blackberry devices [...]]]>

Coming out of CTIA, Yap (www.yapinc.com) has announced that its automated, cloud-based speech recognition service has been selected by Microsoft for its speech-to-text capabilities in its Talk to Text mobile application developed for Sprint.

Net-net, Sprint subscribers can speak their text messages and email, with Talk to Text available immediately for all Blackberry devices running on the Sprint network. Using Talk to Text, Sprint users can drastically reduce keystrokes and time needed to compose an email or a text messaging.

Yap brags that its speech cloud provides fully automated and highly accurate speech recognition via simple web services interface, enabling Microsoft to quickly integrate Yap’s speech recognition into its Talk to Text app with just a few lines of code.

Customers can upgrade AudioCodes gateways to support SBA features and, in addition, the same gateways [...]]]>

Yes Virginia, more Microsoft OCS (Office Communications Server) “14” news. AudioCodes (www.audiocodes.com) has announced Survivable Branch Appliances for OCS “14.” AudioCodes Mediant 100 and Mediant 2000 multi-service business gateways are now field-upgradable to support Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) functionality.

Customers can upgrade AudioCodes gateways to support SBA features and, in addition, the same gateways also support the connection to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

SBA functionality is a Big Deal for enterprise customers and one of two features – the other being E911 support – on the “Must have” list for many corporate buyers.

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.

Back in 2006, Nortel and Microsoft rolled [...]]]>

Nortel’s asset fire sale “could possibly gut” its 3 year UC partnership with Microsoft, Network World says. Uh, yah think?   Given that HP and Microsoft swore to be friends and jointly invest up to $180 million at InterOp last month, I’d say both companies are in splitsville.

Back in 2006, Nortel and Microsoft rolled out a four year plan called the Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA), designed to jointly develop and sell UC and VoIP technology to enterprise customers.  Nortel brought the phone knowledge, some middleware, and its installed base while Microsoft brought Office Communications Server (OCS) and its brand name.

Sale of Nortel’s various assets and divisions could leave the ICA partnership without Nortel’s IP PBX platform, engineers working with Nortel on joint products, and – probably the biggest loss – Nortel Global Services, the consulting arm for ICA.

Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski predicted the partnership would generate $1 billion in revenue, but by 2008 Nortel was reporting a $3.4 million loss on the effort.

Avaya may pick up Nortel’s UC business for $500 million, one of Canada’s papers is reporting. If this takes place, Avaya would overlap with its UC own products AND Microsoft has a UC partnership with Avaya, leaving everyone guessing as to what redundancies would be chopped.

If Nortel Global Services goes out the door in the next wave of asset divestment, so does support for Microsoft’s UC try-it program for customers.

(Of course, this doeth beg the question why Microsoft isn’t putting down some cash to pick up some assets on the cheap, but it might be too busy with Bing to care…)

Besides, Microsoft and HP are already cozy with their own four year (hmm, where’d that come from?) “strategic global initiative” to deliver an end-to-end UC and collaboration solution, with the two companies earmarking up to $180 million in “product development, professional services, as well as joint sales and marketing, to help organizations lower costs and improve productivity.”

Further down the HP press release, there’s a lot of nice bullet points about how HP will have a dedicated team of service professionals (like they had with Nortel), as well as work with communication service providers for hosting solutions for SMBs (Like they did with Nortel).