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Microsoft Serious About VoIP
VoIPluvr writes "Microsoft, is quietly turning into a voice-over-IP powerhouse. It all started with the launch of its Microsoft Live Communication Server. Bill Gates says, 'Communicating in a better way has a huge impact for business,' and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone. Recently, Microsoft teamed up with VoIP companies like Sylantro to offer hosted IP-PBX services, and now is rumored to have bought Teleo, a small VoIP company based in San Francisco. Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is helping the company extend its reach into the fast growing VoIP business, thus putting it in direct competition with the likes of Cisco. Teleo, for instance could help the company compete more effectively with the likes of Yahoo and Skype."
You're talking Windows here, so your comment should read " EVERTHING you open or look at is logged into temp files or stored in user.reg files."
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Avaya built one of their switches based on Windows. They tried to sell it at the same price as their *nix switches. They lost money on it big time. What was interesting was that the switch had to have double the CPU and double the ram. Even with that, it still crashed and could not carry the same load. Finally, the support cost were enormous.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) which is coming out of 3GPP (GMS) and 3GPP2 (CDMA) will establish a solid footing for VoIP where it can match the quality of current PSTN.
IMS will allow Quality of Service (QOS) on the network, between carriers.
IMS will also support much more security than available now with VoIP. Especially between carriers.
IMS will allow roaming, because the network you are on will probably not give you QOS otherwise.
Best of all, IMS is based on SIP and other IETF standards. It will allow much more rapid development of multimedia applications for both wireless and wireline applications.
The downside is that while the standards are open, this will be a big player game. While there will be much more intelligence on the End User device compared to PSTN, the network will still maintain control. It has to for QOS. Peer-to-peer VoIP will never match the quality of PSTN. Ultimately the big carriers do not want to be commoditized dumb pipes
Truth be told, most people are not savvy enough for peer-to-peer and putting enough intelligence in our software is still a long-long way off. Especially if it's being developed by Microsoft.
Note: I work for a telecommunications equipment vendor. I am heavily into and biased for IMS.
Peace,
Vudu Child
If you had my real name, you'd use an alias too.
Sheesh! Insightful? How about "totally false"?
Three of the seven divisions are very profitable (Office, Client, and Server), MSN has been profitable for three of the last four quarters, and will be profitable for the fiscal year, Home and Entertainment was profitable for the first time in Q2 (which ended in December), but won't be steadily profitable for another few months yet, MED is break-even, and is spending money on marketing and growth rather than on turning a profit. The only division which is hurting in the business software division (Navision, Fargo, etc.), which is quite new.
Bear in mind that NT didn't make a profit for a decade -- now it makes between seven and ten billion dollars a year of profit, depending how you count it.
Then you don't know much, since you have absolutely no way to know how much each product line makes. But if you used just a little bit of logic, you'd probably realize that Microsoft is probably doing pretty good on those $130 bluetooth keyboards. Not to mention they have a virtual monopoly on split keyboards.
Microsoft is not stupid. When I was in college, one of my professors was the former VP of Worldwide Sales. His boss was Ballmer, and as much as I didn't like him or MS, he was one of the most intelligent professors I had in my four years at school. He required every product to turn a profit within a certain number of quarters, I think it was four. This is pretty typical in the business world (refer to the post about NT).
Do you really think a multibillion dollar company is stupid enough to sell everything at a loss except for its two cash cows? MS doesn't have any loss leaders; they consider themselves a premium provider.
Unless you have some facts to back up your argument...??
http://www.theyrule.net/
It's a little out of date, but certainly gets the point across.