There's a really nice writeup in Telephony World.com today by  Don Panek that looks ahead at Microsoft and how they might parley Live Communications Server into CTI space, something MS has been talknig about getting into for years. Don's title, alluding the battle for mindshare between two 800 pound gorillas leads directly to a key point - "Microsoft will attack unified communications, the term it applies to converged realtime and asynchronous communications—including IM, e-mail and voice—from the application layer, while Cisco will do so from the network layer."

GORILLAS SET TO DO BATTLE ON VOIP FRONT - TelephonyWorld @ 10:14 pm PST
By Don Panek
TelephonyWorld Editor

I've been following Microsoft's slow and often silent race to get on board the VoIP and Telephony bandwagon for nearly 10 years now. While the giant has made many acquisitions in key areas, they've yet to make a significant play for any real VoIP space. That may be changing quickly with the recent introduction of a new "Unified Communication" solution targeted at Cisco.

The Voip & Telephony marketplace is slated at a $40B market and that is no small slice of the pie to Microsoft and Cisco is not the only player within Microsoft's sights. Other players in the PBX, Communication server, and VoIP software and service spaces are vulnerable.

Microsoft's play will be based on the newest version of their Live Communications Server (LCS). The upcoming LCS will offer on-premise presence and instant messaging (IM), as well as audio-, video- and Web conferencing. The current LCS does IM and on-premise presence, while Web conferencing is the province of Live Meeting, a hosted service underlying Microsoft’s current Live Meeting, which grew out of Microsoft’s acquisition three years ago of Placeware.