Next Microsoft enterprise instant messaging/VOIP server: Think 2009

It has been quiet on the Office Communications Server (OCS) front since Microsoft released OCS 2007 last year.

(OCS is Microsoft’s all-in-one enterprise instant-messaging/VOIP/audio-video conferencing server. Office Communicator is the client software piece that goes with OCS.)

But during his July 9 keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, CEO Steve Ballmer shed a bit of light on what's in the OCS pipeline. Ballmer told attendees that Microsoft is readying a new release of OCS that will hit "later this year."

Did Ballmer mean later this calendar year? Later this fiscal year (which goes from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009)? I asked an Office spokesperson and got the usual response whenever ship dates on Windows or Office products are involved: "We don't have any dates to publicly announce at this time."

After a little more sleuthing, I found some (cached) links referring to Office Communications Server 2009 with a tentative May 2009 due date (something Microsoft allegedly floated at a Unified Communications Strategy Conference in May 2008). So I guess Ballmer was thinking fiscal years, rather than calendar.

Update: One reader noted that Ballmer simply might have been referring to the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 refresh release that's been mentioned on a few blogs. Among the rumored new features in R2: new telephony and routing support; SIP over UDP; and easier Asterisk phone integration.

Anyone seen/touched an OCS 2009 test build yet? Any word on features -- beyond "some compelling voice features"?