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."

Comments

First MS joke

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Prepare for the blue screech of death when you pick up the phone!

Sorry...

Re:First MS joke

[Spetiam]

Joke away, but if MS does come through with these implementations... I'm sorry, then MS is on the ball, and no amount of bashing by the True Believers will change that.

Craching Cell Phones

[linsys]

Great now my cellphone, home phone and PC can all crash at once.. thanks Micrsofot for being the leader in innovation!!

Re:Craching Cell Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Always with the Microsoft bashing. You clearly don't see the major innovation here -- free 900 number calls.

is ms desperately seeking

[hsmith]

a true "core" product?

everyone else seems to be seeking out one specific segment of the market, is MS finally realizing specializing in everything means you specialize in nothing?

i think they are good and bad, but they seem to have lost the wind in their sails...

Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[TempusMagus]

Microsoft makes a PDF-like format, Microsoft takes over municipal water works, Microsoft creates new ice-cream cone. My god, can't Microsoft leave anything alone? This is what is going to kill MS; they are doing too many things and fighting too many wars on too many fronts in an effort to maintain market dominance. You would think large companies would ditch MS wholesale simply because MS may one day use the revenue to compete with them.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[spisska]

Otherwise, just look at what MS produces: mice, keyboard, office suites, video players, games, consoles, internet portals, TV content, etc etc etc... and none of these activities are failing.

Ummmm. Actually AFIK, the only divisions at MS that actually make a profit are Windows and Office (although I believe MSN recently had their first ever profitable quarter).

It's simply not correct to say that none of their activities are failing -- practically all of them are. It's just that they have so much cash from Windows and Office that they can afford to eat a loss on everything else they do.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[KarmaMB84]

Microsoft's Client, Information Worker and Server & Tools divisions are all profitable. This encompasses Windows XP, Windows 2003, Office, Exchange, SQL Server and probably just about every piece of software they produce. Their Home & Entertainment division has posted a one-time profitable quarter and their Business Solutions division is also posting losses. The Mobile and Embedded division is around the break-even point if not profitable already. I'm not sure where they hide their mouse and keyboard business at but I doubt they'd still be producing mice and keyboards if that segment didn't at least pay for itself in mindshare if not actual dollars. The "failing" divisions simply are not mature with a steady revenue stream yet.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[dev1t]

Has everyone lost their minds??? Every large compay in the world has it's hands in so many different pots it's amazing. UPS builds battle ships for god sake. Phillip Morris makes bread... The list is endless. If any corporation truely wants to succeed the need to diversify heavily. If microsoft or Linus Torvalds, for that matter, wants to build a better diaper I say go for it!!! Especially if it helps employ some people. On a side note there was once a flsh website that had an active matrix of people and the many MANY boards they sat on. It was very scarey seeing where some board members crossed conflicting companies. If anyone knows what it was let us all know.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

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.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[papaskunk]

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...??

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[ThisIsFred]

They apparently have a duty to fulfill. Remember, it isn't invented until Microsoft invents it. By the way, some of us have already been augmenting our pay-per-line telephone service with VoIP, and using other solutions, some open source. But, you won't find those things in Glossy PC Trademagazine (tm), because the developers don't have the cash to pay off the editors. However, every PHB and his cousin will know about MS VoIP, and I'm going to have an uphill battle explaining to them why we shouldn't toss our existing infrastructure for this.

Anyway, it doesn't make a difference whether or not MS enters the battle. What I want are PBX solutions vendors to get out of the 1980s.

Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone?

[dlelash]

http://www.theyrule.net/

It's a little out of date, but certainly gets the point across.

Microsoft cultivates more animus

[yagu]

I wonder how this is going to play with the Telco's. I worked a long time at one of the Telco's and we did much/most of our work on IBM mainframes and Unix servers. Then our high level management and Microsoft marketers got very cozy and all of a sudden many of our critical applications began shifting to the Windows 2000, SQLServer, IIS platform. This was all very much with heavy opposition from technical staff, but their input wasn't wanted. In the course of five to ten years I saw us (them?) become very heavily vested in Microsoft platforms (including the public facing web site (which was nothing but problematic rolling out on the MS platform)).

And now, Microsoft wants to enter the market of the telcos? I know everyone is jumping in on this, and I for one have little empathy/sympathy for the PHB's who've made their beds with Microsoft, but I wonder how much they like Microsoft now?

Re:Microsoft cultivates more animus

[linsys]

Well unless they really stabalize their operating system or decide NOT to use it and use something basied on Unix like the GSX9000 then they will never be able to compete with the core VoIP market.. I have a few friends who work for one of the largest telecos in the U.S on their VoIP hardware and he tells me their switches handle millions of phone calls every second.. I don't know any MS software that can do the same..

Now as far as them marketing and profiting off of a desktop application which integrates with VoIP I could easily see... I could see them integrating it with Windows Media player... Radio, TV, Movies, Make A Phone call... just like X-Lite or other VoIP softphones all you need is a VoIP provider, speaker and mic..

I could also see their "Live Communications Server" product becoming a widely used VoIP platform for small to mid sized businesses of 10-20 people..

Hopefully people see the benefit of applications like Asterisk which are highly scalable and much more cost effective then MS based solutions.

Microsoft is a control freak.

[Goalie_Ca]

It seems to me like any new sector or industry comes along and people start making money microsoft goes AAHHH we don't control that! So they buy a bunch of companies and produce some buggy vaporware and spend a bunch of money. Is it possible for them to be happy with that they got or at least not branch out so much and focus on goods they can produce and produce them well.

Re:one thing to say

[linsys]

I agree with you for the most part.. however if you start implementing VoIP PBX solutions for your customers and it crashed regularly yes, you are gonna make a bit of cash off your customer, but it's also going to make you look like a CRAPPY consultant..

I believe in a mix of Unix, Linux and MS solutions for my customers.. I don't look so bad when PCs crash, but when their mail server or web server is down because IIS got doss attacked it makes me look horible(or probably would, I NEVER would implement an IIS Solution...).

I have implemented many asterisk solutions for customers who are very happy with the realiability, price, and quality of the product.. I would hate to get calls from customers all the time saying they can't call out becasue of SpyWare.

What's up with the commas?

[Anonymous Coward]

The submitter, VoIPluvr, must be using the Yale comma style and not the more popular Harvard style.

MSFT a networking company?

[HockeyPuck]

So letsee... in order to go from traditional PBX to VOIP you could either a) deploy a brand new separate IP network to directly replace your PBX or B) Upgrade your existing IP network including all of your ethernet switches so that they support PoE (Power over Ethernet).

You may need to implement QOS (you don't want some FTP transfer blocking time sensitive voice traffic.

You may need to redesign your core routers, backbone etc for this increase in traffic.

Also, if the CallManager (the computer that sets up the connection between the two telephones) goes down, you're not making phone calls. Do you really want to trust this to Windows? Yes, I realize that Cisco's CallManager runs on Windows, but rumor has it they are making a linux version.

So the question remains, with all the changes to your network that are required I doubt this will go far.. unless of course MSFT buys Juniper, Nortel...

MS applied for a recent VIOP patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Method for outputting a crashdump as a series of audio tones.

Hey bill, now hear this..

[Halvy]

bill: hey steve, can you hear me now!!

steve bummer: what WHAT!!!

bill: GOOOOOOODDDD...

"This phonecall best recieved with VoIP Explorer"

[G4from128k]

I wonder when that little pop-up will start appearing on computer screens during incoming VoIP calls. I can think of a million ways MS could embrace-and-extend VoIP to add features that only work/ "work best" with MS software. Makers of VoIP add-ons will then test their widgets with MS only and not support "non-standard" operating systems.

Re:802.16 + well supported VoIP = end of cellular

[toddbu]

I understand your enthusiam, but after using VoIP services for nearly a year in our business we switched back to copper. No matter what we did to improve the situation, the call quality never really measured up to that of even a cell phone. IP was never really meant to route real-time traffic, and it definitely shows. QoS can help, but with more and more real-time traffic being driven onto the Internet (video, streaming audio) then my fear is that the QoS indicator is just meaningless. After all, how many apps are willing to tag their content as "unimportant"? Maybe some file transfer stuff, but that's usually a small portion of the traffic.

I'd love to see something like VoIP take off. It just seems like IP is the wrong protocol to do the job.

Define "Serious"

[Nova Express]

By "Serious," I take it to mean "Microsoft will launch a VOIP service with much fanfare, will quickly grab 20-30% of the market, will then let the division languish through incompetence and lack of direction, and 10 years from now the service will still be hanging around without making a profit."

See also:

Hotmail
WebTV
X-Box
MSN
MSNBC
Etc.

Re:I'm confused

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Now they also want to marry it to my cell phone and my desk phone?

Already done.

Re:802.16 + well supported VoIP = end of cellular

[Anonymous Coward]

That third link is a redirect to Tubgirl, way to mod that up to Interesting mods...

Re:MICROSOFT is SPYING on you!!!

[toddbu]

EVERTHING you open or look at is logged into tmp files or stored in user.dat files.

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."

Too late

[WindBourne]

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.

ObCellphone

[dangitman]

and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone

Damnit! Don't they get it? I just want a simple phone that works, not lots of gadets. How am I supposed to fit my PC, my cellphone and my desk phone in a shirt pocket?

Besides, I find this whole thing unnatural and sick. We should pass a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the marrying of objects. Just because Bill Gates has a sexual fetish for devices, doesn't mean I want it shoved in my face. Respect the sanctity of human marriage!

Why?

[Comatose51]

he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone, Why? Has anyone thought of that? Integration is nice but sometimes it's pointless and harmful. For example, my Motorola v600 is Java powered. That's great except sometimes I can punch things in faster than it can handle. The battery life is poor. My older StarTac was perfect for me. No java or camera but it go the job done right. I never had to reboot a cellphone until I got this new one. Oh, let's not forget how the battery life is kind of mediocre. Let me count the number of times I've taken advantage of the Java and camera features: 5. Those 5 times, I could have done without them anyways. MS needs to take a lesson fron Apple and even *nix. Do one thing and do it well. Then make all those things play together well. God I wish Apply made cellphones.

Re:Why?

[arbitraryaardvark]

he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone
Unfortunately, he can't do that in washington state, where by law marriage is only between a man and a woman.

+1 stupid

cross-platform solutions?

[dalutong]

Skype seems to be the only product making cross-platform solutions.

as for video -- it doesn't seem like ANYONE is looking for cross-platform compatibility. iChat doesn't work with netmeeting or gnomemeeting (and the tiny AIM video screen sucks). video4skype only works in windows (though it is great in windows.)

i use linux, but i have recently had to reinstall (dual-boot) windows so I can use AIM's video chat with my girlfriend (who uses iChat.) It's the only solution that easily works through odd connections (firewalls,etc.) And, unfortunately, xmeeting just doesn't work that easily for the non tech savvy (like her.)

why hasn't there been movement to make cross-platform video solutions?

Nothing to worry about

[eno2001]

Where I work, we have a saying. "There are only two things that need to be up and running 24x7 without a hitch. Ever: phone and e-mail". Until Microsoft can provide an OS with this kind of reliability that doesn't cost the farm (like Windows Data Center on Unisys) they will not be chosen as a serious contender for carrier grade mail or phone. How many large ISPs out there use Exchange for mail? None. An for people like me... I want carrier grade quality in everything even for my own home use. That's why I use *nix for anything serious.

Asterisk?

[Sharkeys-Day]

Avaya also has a windows-based eIVR product, which they will sell you for a minimum $50k plus custom programming rates of $20k-$50k if you actually want to run anything on it. (Custom programmed in VBScript, and they won't bother to test it with any database other than Sql Server.)

Or you could spend $5k on hardware, install Linux, Asterisk PBX software, spend an afternoon hacking, and have the same thing.

Lots of people mention Skype and similar services. But I want to know how the new MS offering will stack up against Asterisk?

I prefer different systems

[Bender Unit 22]

Microsoft have tied all their systems nicely together. I don't know much about Microsoft products but once or twice every year I see problems that brings down every Microsoft based problems.

Whenever we need different MS systems to talk to each other, they pretty much needs to be on the same network or at least have so many open network ports between them that firewalling them in different security zones becomes useless.

I'd prefer different systems with clearly defined boundries, communicating trough standard protocols instead. Moving everything to a big consolidated MS monster, might have helped bring down some of the expenses of having different systems. But I have yet to see it bring better stability.

I see some signs of people not any longer want everything to be tied in to a MS system after have had problems with one vendor to rule them all.

but sadly the management in a lot of places does not understand why they don't get the stability they had on the mainframe after moving it all to MS.

Look at 3GPP VoIP standard called IMS

[Vudu Child]

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

Re:802.16 + well supported VoIP = end of cellular

[homesteader]

What type of call processing system were you running? Separate VLAN's for data and voice? I've rolled out Cisco phone systems in some pretty dodgy network scenarios, and voice quality has never really been an issue.