If you're like me, voice technology, quality, QoE, VoIP and the like don't generally make you think of Microsoft. They want us to think of them, but frankly we don't. But Microsoft is always on the hunt for new markets to dominate, and we all know they're working to make a serious play in unified communications.

Here's a report from Psytechnics the looks at the Quality of Experience. Perhaps more importantly, the report may dispel some longstanding preconceptions about softphones.

Psytechnics Unveils Unique Performance Report on Microsoft’s Voice Communications Technology
Leader in Voice Quality Assessment Solutions conducts Microsoft VoIP product evaluation

Boston, MA, March 6, 2007 — Psytechnics, the global leader in voice, video and multimedia Quality of Experience (QoE) solutions, today announced the results from a voice quality performance evaluation of a pre-release of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 desktop Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution. The study also included a comparison of the Microsoft solution to a leading IP phone from a market leader in IP telephony. Results show that calls made with the Microsoft software deliver superior voice quality to the single-purpose IP phone. These findings show that the quality of Microsoft’s offering is high enough to allow companies to integrate voice communications with PCs, which could eliminate the need to purchase expensive IP phones.

“Users have been cautious about PC desktop telephony, but our tests show that concerns about speech quality have now been addressed by software,” said Mike Hollier, CTO at Psytechnics. “This evaluation emphasizes the positive transformation that software-based VoIP solutions will have on unified communications and telephony in the future. The familiar PC can now outperform the IP phone.”

By using a single user identity across all modes of communication, companies can confidently transition to unified voice, conferencing, IM, presence, and collaboration without additional risk of reduced quality. As desktop communication continues to evolve with the incorporation of VoIP, businesses will benefit by the extension of existing telephony infrastructures.

For the evaluation, Psytechnics used speech over simulated IP network conditions to evaluate end-to-end performance, using both subjective experiments and objective measurements. Both the PC VoIP solution and the IP phone were evaluated by both real end-users (subjective) and by Psytechnics’ Quality of Experience software (objective). Both the objective and subjective evaluations identified Microsoft’s PC VoIP solution as superior in speech quality.

The full VoIP Microsoft benchmarking report can be found online at http://www.psytechnics.com/downloads/VoIP_benchmarking_report.pdf

About Psytechnics
Psytechnics is the global leader in VoIP, mobile video and IPTV Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment solutions to NextGen voice, video and multi-media service providers and enterprises. Psytechnics’ product provides real-time, per-session measurement of end user experience for rapid detection and resolution of service affecting issues. Psytechnics patented technology is at the heart of 6 ITU-T standards and is validated using extensive subjective testing including from its own state-of-the-art multi-media subjective test facility. Psytechnics QoE products are deployed world-wide in IP, mobile and Next Generation networks, enabling: quality differentiated services, quality based SLAs, intelligent interconnect selection and directed maintenance. Headquartered in Ipswich, UK, with US offices in Boston. For more information, please visit www.psytechnics.com