Source: www.voip-news.com

Response Point customers can now take advantage of a strategic alliance between Response Point-manufacturer Microsoft and Bandwidth.com. Bandwidth offers SIP-based phone lines.

“Bandwidth.com’s advanced network capabilities and ubiquitous U.S. coverage will greatly expand the IP service options available to Response Point customers,” said Xuedong Huang, general manager of Microsoft Response Point. “Bandwidth.com’s exceptional quality standards, focus on small businesses and ability to deliver a complete IP-based solution will benefit our Response Point customers from coast to coast.”

The companies plan to layout more details at the SMB Nation 2008 conference in Seattle that begins on Oct. 3.

“Bandwidth.com plans a nationwide roll out to train Microsoft’s small-business specialists, On-Line retailers and other value added Microsoft resellers on the simplicity of connecting Response Point to Bandwidth’s bundled voice service portfolio this fall,” said Jeff Uphues, VP of Sales, Partner Services of Bandwidth.com.

Source: www.voip-news.com

The new Packet8/Microsoft Response Point small business phone solution was awarded Best In Show at Technology Marketing Corporation’s INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West 2008, for Best SMB Solution.

To read more about the solution, click here.

“The presence of outstanding companies like 8×8, Inc. with their award winning solutions help to validate ITEXPO’s status as the leading forum for the VoIP and IP communications industry,” said TMC President and Conference Chairman, Rich Tehrani. “Service providers, enterprise buyers, developers, and resellers come to ITEXPO, because they know they’ll find solutions, from innovative companies like 8×8 that can help their businesses today.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

From TMC:

NetIQ Corporation, an Attachmate business, has introduced a comprehensive Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lifecycle management forMicrosoft ( News - Alert) Office Communications Server 2007. With this module, NetIQ now provides event monitoring, service performance and availability reporting for all VoIP platforms.

Thoughts on this?

Makes me wonder if Microsoft will move to create it’s own lifecycle management tool for VoIP. Or even launch a VoIP application for the Office suite.

Source: www.voip-news.com

The 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is being held in Houston, Texas, from July 7 to 10. Among the participants will be AltiGen(R) Communications, Inc.

“Our partnership with Microsoft is key to our mission to improve our customers’ businesses by delivering world class integrated IP business communications solutions that are feature rich, easy to use and affordable,” said Mike Plumer, AltiGen’s vice president of sales. “AltiGen and Microsoft Unified Communications applications are complementary: Microsoft offers IM, presence, and video/voice conferencing; AltiGen offers voice, call center technologies, audio conferencing, and VoIP telephones. We continue to expand our offerings and plan to introduce our new Max Communications Server at the conference.”

Source: gigaom.com

Source: www.voip-news.com

Milk, butter, eggs . . . VoIP?

Costco.com, the online division of the warehouse club, has begun selling Microsoft Response Point. Well, not exactly. Actually, it’s carrying Syspine Digital Operator Phone System, which has Response Point software.

“A small-business owner does a little of everything — CEO, accountant and IT trouble-shooter — all before lunch,” said Richard Sprague, senior director, Response Point at Microsoft Corp. “Costco.com’s easy online purchase process, combined with Response Point’s easy setup and intuitive magic blue button for voice dialing, gives the small-business owner another easy way to gain a powerful communications tool to help grow his or her business.”

According to Microsoft:

The Syspine Digital Operator Phone System with Response Point features a powerful voice-recognition system that can be linked with a company’s internal phone directory, as well as an individual’s Microsoft Office Outlook address book. Syspine includes a base unit appliance with a four phone-line analog telephone adapter, four desktop phones and Response Point phone system software. Businesses can add up to 50 individual Syspine IP310 business phones to create a complete, integrated small-business phone system with no additional licensing fees.

“The Syspine Digital Operator Phone System has been a real hit with small businesses, and this new relationship with Costco.com will offer prospective users yet another easy purchase method,” said Mike Yang, Vice President of Quanta Computer, Inc. “We are very pleased and fortunate to be associated with such a respected and reputable company like Costco.”

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

According to this report, the consumer version of Microsoft Messenger 4 Mac is hardly worth downloading.

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

The AT&T Experience Store in San Antonio just went live today with the Microsoft Surface™  retail application  giving customers the ability to explore their mobile worlds using touch and device recognition technology.

During the pilot phase, Surface will highlight eight AT&T phones, including: Samsung BlackJack II, LG Shine, BlackBerry Curve 8310, Samsung a737, Sony Ericsson w580i Sony Ericsson z750, Pantech Duo, Motorola v3xx. You can compare phone features, prices and more head to head on the Surface screen.

More photos and video shortly…..

Microsoft Surface,the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft, is a 30-inch table-like display that gives you the opportunity to interact with devices and content in a way that feels familiar — by using touch, gestures, and placement of devices the display. In essence, it’s a surface come to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more.

Learn more at www.surface.com.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk

Microsoft is shouting its way into the VoIP market by extending its small business phone systems to support voice recognition.

The ability to run VoIP is being introduced to its Response Point systems through a service pack, which was announced this week but won’t be brought in until the summer.

Response Point is a combination of hardware from PBX vendors Aastra, D-Link and Quanta and software from Microsoft. It’s most likely to appeal to small businesses who lack telephony expertise.

Microsoft thinks it’s neat because users can transfer calls to their colleagues using voice recognition.

The theory is, if employees are too thick/technophobic/lazy, they don’t need to worry about pressing buttons on a phone in order to transfer a call to a colleague. Instead they just say the name of the individual, and the system pops the call through.

Whether there is the demand for cushy tools like this is another thing. Most employees can at least use a phone even if it takes them half the morning to find the list of extensions from the hard drive.

What might be slightly more useful is that the service pack will allow incoming calls to be routed to the right employee or group of employees - or even to voicemail - depending on their caller ID, helping to make things a little more efficient.

Why it’s taken this long for Microsoft to VoIP-enable the kit we don’t know, but Redmond is keen to expand beyond its traditional desktop battleground and start playing the PBX vendors at their own game.

With comms going more and more IP, it’ll be doing a great deal of that over the coming months. ®

Source: www.voip-news.com

Microsoft announced a high-def camera for videoconferencing at VoiceCon in Orlando this week. The $300 camera is being developed with Tandberg. The camera will be used with telepresence technology - something that can make it appear as though people in different locations are in the same room.

“We are committed to investing in innovation that will extend access of high-definition video communications to the individual user at the desktop,” said Fredrik Halvorsen, CEO of TANDBERG. “This ground-breaking initiative reinforces our strong relationship with Microsoft and our commitment to unified communications.”

The video system will be interoperable with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

“We believe that Microsoft has a strong position in the unified communications market,” added Halvorsen, “and we are making ongoing investments in Microsoft Office Communication Server development to ensure that we are well placed to realize the benefits.”

Source: gigaom.com