From Telephone Strategy News, February 2006

Microsoft forms Unified Communications Group

Merging the Exchange and Real-Time Collaboration groups

On January 30, Microsoft announced it is forming a Unified Communications Group (UCG) by merging the Exchange and Real-Time Collaboration Groups. Microsoft has previously announced that the next version of Exchange—its server for e-mail, calendars, and unified messaging—will include a unified communication application that supports voice access using Microsoft speech recognition, including a voice-enabled call-by-name function. Microsoft released Microsoft Exchange “12” Beta 1 on December 14 with the feature (TSN, January 2006, p. 1). (Microsoft expects the final release to be generally available in late 2006 or early 2007.) The Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) Group is now in UCG, according to Clint Patterson, director of product management, MSS. Patterson said that the MSS effort is going well, and Microsoft discussed some customers using MSS in call center applications (p. 6). (PC speech recognition will be bundled in the next release of the Windows operating system, but that activity is not part of the Unified Communications Group.)

MSS 2007–the next version of Microsoft’s IVR platform–is scheduled to be released to manufacturing in the last half of 2006. Kevin Shaughnessy, senior product manager, speech server marketing, said that the recently acquired adaptive technology from Unveil (TSN, November 2005, p. 1) would be incorporated in the next release. (The Unveil technical group is working in Microsoft’s Waltham, Massachusetts, office.)

E-mail, instant messaging, VoIP, and audio/video/Web conferencing are converging, and the new group makes it easier for Microsoft to deliver an integrated communications experience. UCG resides in Microsoft’s Business Division, which includes desktop applications, servers, software services and solutions, led by division president Jeff Raikes. UCG will be led by Anoop Gupta, currently corporate vice president of the RTC group, with the title Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit.

Gupta summarized the motivation and goals for the group:

Unified Communications is about breaking down today’s silo’ed communications experiences and instead providing rich communication capabilities that allow people, teams, organizations to communicate simply and effectively while integrating seamlessly with business applications and processes. It will enable the millions of information workers using our products to communicate seamlessly across different communication modes and devices, while at the same time reducing the cost and complexity of our customers’ communications infrastructure, providing compelling business value to our customers. The formation of the UCG further represents Microsoft’s commitment to rapidly deliver on this vision for our business customers and for our partner ecosystem.