Microsoft joints Office with VOIP with Media-Streams.com

Microsoft joints Office with VOIP with Media-Streams.com

Microsoft Corp. has acquired Media-Streams.com AG, a 23-person company based in Zurich that developes business applications based on VOIP (or Voice Over Internet Protocol) technology. Microsoft has said that they plan to incorporate Media-Streams' technology into its corporate IM platform, Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS) and its Office System productivity tools. Media-Stream has already integrated it's VOIP product with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which makes it a natural for integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as well.

In my opinion, this move will help Microsoft move towards its goal of uniting all communications, such as email, IM, SMS, voice, and audio & Web conferencing platform. This was stated by Ed Wadbrook, director of VOIP strategies for Microsoft's Real Time Collaboration group. And the move comes right after Microsoft's acquition of VOIP startup Teleo Inc. this past summer. Microsoft is already incorporating Teleo's technology into its consumer IM service, MSN Messanger to compete with AOL and Google. And with eBay buying VOIP specialist Skype Technologies, there is no doubt that serious money is going into the whole VOIP area, and that it will become a defacto business solution as well as a consumer solution, intoegrated into line business applications in a variety of ways.

I expect that the whole area of VOIP will become a hot differencial competitive area in all major applications, and Microsoft want's to be the default provider for business applications.

Bruce McIntyre