News

Microsoft Starts Talking Up UC Tools Strategy

Microsoft has talked a ton about why Unified Communications can be a big value to users.

Microsoft has talked a ton about why Unified Communications -- the melding of telephony (landline and cell), e-mail, and perhaps most importantly, "presence" -- can be a big value to users.

Now it's starting to get down to brass tacks around tool deliverables, building a developer portal on MSDN and an API roadmap.

The centerpiece of this whole UC effort is Office Communications Server.

New tooling deliverables include such downloadable goodies as a Communications Server 2007 SDK, Speech Server documentation, Live Meeting 2007 API Reference Guide, Unified Communications AJAX SDK and more.

The company prefaced this news with a corporate Q&A with Kirt Debique, general manager for Microsoft's Office Communications Platform & Solutions Group.

Until now, Debique has been circumspect about tooling plans; but early this year, he did talk a bit about the UC tools strategy. But there was no concrete news on packaging, availability and so on, which he said would have to wait until the Professional Developers Conference planned for the fall.

PDC got nuked, but apparently it's time for Microsoft to talk. This is an area where the company faces prodigious competition from sometimes-partner-sometimes-rival Cisco, which leads the league in networking hardware, and from IBM. Big Blue is basing its UC push on Sametime, the trailblazer in enterprise-ready instant messaging and presence.

About the Author

Barbara Darrow is Industry Editor for Redmond Developer News, Redmond magazine and Redmond Channel Partner. She has covered technology and business issues for 20 years.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Full Stack Hands-On Development with .NET

    In the fast-paced realm of modern software development, proficiency across a full stack of technologies is not just beneficial, it's essential. Microsoft has an entire stack of open source development components in its .NET platform (formerly known as .NET Core) that can be used to build an end-to-end set of applications.

  • .NET-Centric Uno Platform Debuts 'Single Project' for 9 Targets

    "We've reduced the complexity of project files and eliminated the need for explicit NuGet package references, separate project libraries, or 'shared' projects."

  • Creating Reactive Applications in .NET

    In modern applications, data is being retrieved in asynchronous, real-time streams, as traditional pull requests where the clients asks for data from the server are becoming a thing of the past.

  • AI for GitHub Collaboration? Maybe Not So Much

    No doubt GitHub Copilot has been a boon for developers, but AI might not be the best tool for collaboration, according to developers weighing in on a recent social media post from the GitHub team.

  • Visual Studio 2022 Getting VS Code 'Command Palette' Equivalent

    As any Visual Studio Code user knows, the editor's command palette is a powerful tool for getting things done quickly, without having to navigate through menus and dialogs. Now, we learn how an equivalent is coming for Microsoft's flagship Visual Studio IDE, invoked by the same familiar Ctrl+Shift+P keyboard shortcut.

Most   Popular

Subscribe on YouTube