Microsoft launching unified communication platform

Microsoft is touting a Forrester study, which it funded and provided the customer contacts, that found an ROI of 500 percent over three years due to deploying Office Communications Server 2007. As you would expect from usage of collaborative software and services, such as Live Meeting (below) the study found gains in productivity, lower travel and telephony costs, quicker turnaround for projects and shortened sales cycles.

Microsoft also announced numerous partners who are hooking into the platform.

In an "executive email," Gates wrote:

All of these products are important steps toward achieving our long-term vision for streamlined, integrated communications that will enable people to be more productive, more creative, and to stay in touch more easily without being limited by the device they have at hand or the network they are connected to.

It would be hard to overstate the magnitude of the changes that are coming. Standardized, software-powered communications technologies will be the catalyst for the convergence of voice, video, text, applications, information, and transactions, making it possible to create a seamless communications continuum that extends across people’s work and home lives. This will provide the foundation for new products, services, and capabilities that will change the world in profound and often unexpected ways.

In addition the company is introducing Microsoft RoundTable, a conferencing phone with a 360-degree camera (at left) for capturing panoramic views. More to come from the event and from Microsoft maven Mary Jo Foley.