Microsoft Announces Extended Support for Office Live Communications Server 2005

Microsoft Corp. has announced a new round of industry support for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 as a hub for unified communications solutions. The platform provides capabilities to allow people, teams and organizations to communicate while integrating seamlessly with business applications and processes.

The software giant is working with telephony companies to enable further integration between business desktop phones and the collaboration environment on the PC, allowing customers to more effectively communicate in real time. Microsoft is working with Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens to enable Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based interoperability between voice communications solutions and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile, the PC and Windows Mobile unified communications clients for Live Communications Server.

The solutions will enable business customers to launch and answer private branch exchange (PBX) and Internet protocol-PBX (IP-PBX) phone calls and view phone presence state from within Office Communicator. They also allow customers to seamlessly switch between instant messaging and voice sessions.

Microsoft’s interoperability with Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, NEC, Mitel, Nortel and Siemens is based on the industry-standard SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). SIP is a signaling protocol for Voice over IP (VoIP), telephony, conferencing, presence, events notification and instant messaging.

The companies are using the SIP and SIMPLE protocols to enable the federation of telephony, presence information and instant messaging (IM) that can be encrypted and authenticated. SIP and SIMPLE provide a rich set of solutions for computer and telephone interaction.