Microsoft shows off unified communications suite

Microsoft has used the VoiceCon show in Florida to show off the latest version of its unified communications suite, codenamed Communications Server ‘14’.

The platform, which the company said will be available in the second half of the year, handles all voice telephony calls via VoIP rather than a PBX and allows users to embed the communications software into applications to allow collaborative working.

“Three years ago at VoiceCon, we shared our vision to transform business communications from discrete technology silos to a unified communications platform built in software,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group in a blog posting.

“Today, that vision has been realised, and we see the predictions we made then coming true. The industry is adopting a software-centric approach.”

He predicted that three years from now more than half of all calls will involve more than just voice traffic and over one billion people would use unified communications and more than three quarters of new business applications would have communications technology embedded.

Microsoft already has more than a dozen partners signed up and committed to developiing products for the platform he said.

“Very early in my career I witnessed how the launch of Windows 3.0 in 1990 became a tipping point in mainframe to PC based computing transformation,” he continued.

“I believe ‘14’ will be a similar event in the transformation of business communications.”