Microsoft Teams Up With Japanese VoIP Carrier

paritosh wrote to mention an Ars article about the joining up of Microsoft and Softbank to provide enterprise-level VoIP, IM, email, Internet, and groupware to the Japanese market. They are already discussing bringing it to the U.S. if it succeeds there. From the article: "With Softbank BB supplying most of the VoIP infrastructure, Microsoft's primary focus in this agreement will be providing hosted versions of its server products. Some of the products mentioned in the agreement include Exchange 2003, Office Live Communications Server 2005 and SharePoint. I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability, which can act as a segue into the larger areas of the VoIP market in North America."

Comments

messenger?

[zyte]

I'd be suprised if they put messenger in considering that communicator is basicly messenger only cooler for a corporate environment. If they really want PC-POTS I'd bet they stick it into communicator instead of putting in a whole other messenger service.

Re:messenger?

[Nehmo]

Messenger 8 will be able, or is currently able, in beta, to do VoIP to PTSN (or PC-POTS if you prefer) through MCI at 2.3 cents per minute for US destination calls. The service is similar to Skype-out or Whatever-out. But you can already make that type of call for free, for example, and there are other examples, with VoipBuster

MS and VoIP?

[grasshoppa]

Yeah, sorry, no. MS doesn't exactly have a winning track record when it comes to reliability, and VoIP is not something you want to be flaky. People just won't stand for it.

On top of the fact there are tons of internet based voip players out there that give people more options than they might ever need. Further, voip over the internet is too flaky for business use. All of these factors hurt anything MS may try in this field, and they aren't equipped to do it right.

Re:MS and VoIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sorry, no. MS doesn't exactly have a winning track record when it comes to reliability, and VoIP is not something you want to be flaky. People just won't stand for it.

On top of the fact there are tons of internet based voip players out there that give people more options than they might ever need. Further, voip over the internet is too flaky for business use. All of these factors hurt anything MS may try in this field, and they aren't equipped to do it right.

Grasshopper. How has this hurt Microsoft before? How has an unreliable product put into a market that already has many alternative reliable products ever stopped Microsoft?

Re:MS and VoIP?

[grasshoppa]

How has this hurt Microsoft before? How has an unreliable product put into a market that already has many alternative reliable products ever stopped Microsoft?

It's really no different than MS getting into the toaster market. There is a level of expectation people have for appliances, and they freak out when an appliance starts acting up. Add in to the mix that those same people who have a certain level of expectations in their phone systems are business types, and you have to tread carefully.

I know. I do voip stuff ( with asterisk. ask for it by name ), and normal, rational people get very weird when something acts up in a phone system. Even if it's something that doesn't actually mean anything ( like the tones don't echo, or it takes longer to connect a call than they are used to. ). Businesses depend on their phone systems more so than their computers, and with the advent of computers in the work place, the phones are kind of seen as the last bastion of technology that "Just Works", making them that much more precious.

I refuse to setup someone's business using voip over the internet, given how flaky it can be. If that's truly what MS wants to try, more power to them, but they will fail hard. Further, it will damage their already shaky rep.

Re:MS and VoIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft counters any attack on their reputation with the same strategy: make a TV ad showing how computers and Microsoft products actually makes children smarter and *love* to learn. It appears that it has been a fairly effective strategy so far. If you doubt it, go out on the street and ask people who invented the Internet. Discard the Al Gore reponses (and I certainly hope that out on the street does not mean on the street at MIT).

I think you miss an important thing about how Microsoft markets their products. You take one successful product and bind it to another. Then you take control of the new market by leveraging the old one. Making your product incompatible with other products helps prevent users from bouncing around. Now make TV ads showing how children learn faster with MS voip. And it makes them happier, and stronger too!

Remember that people use MS products because they have no choice!

Re:MS and VoIP?

[grasshoppa]

I think you miss an important thing about how Microsoft markets their products

Doesn't matter how they market their product. VoIP is not something they can half ass and bind to an established and successful product ( say, outlook ). People won't stand for flaky telephones in a business. It could have the best PHB-esse ever written. It could make you believe that it really can solve world hunger and lower your ROI in a single bound. But if it's flaky, people will not stand for it.

MS has never taken on a task as demanding in quality as VoIP before. Ever. And given their past behavior, they will fail in this.

Re:MS and VoIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for this time, they're not outright buying the company providing the technology. They're partnering, which means the Japanese company here could maintain its company culture. Maybe.

Re:MS and VoIP?

[grasshoppa]

Except for this time, they're not outright buying the company providing the technology. They're partnering, which means the Japanese company here could maintain its company culture. Maybe.

Which means exactly Jack and Shit. This is more a problem with how the internet works in relation to how MS works than anything else. Nothing else really matters.

Re:MS and VoIP?

[deaddrunk]

Cue Microsoft shill coming on to deny that people have no choice; that people wouldn't buy Microsoft if they didn't want to; that we're both commies etc ad nauseum

Are they starting to try to compete with Asterisk?

[IntelliAdmin]

It looks like a small step in the direction for Microsoft to start trying to compete in this space. They have a long road ahead of them.

so they can listen

[Evilhomer2300]

This is all a ploy to launch a VOIP so they can listen in on our conversations, and blow up the computers of those not running windows. Careful, they may copy our voices and turn them into speaking bots ALA Microsoft Sam narrator voice.

VoIP 'inovation' MS style?

[AHuxley]

When will ppl learn. Your phone system is not the desktop.
The idea of voice over ip is to reuse 'ip' to send voice, not send more cash back to M$.

M$ takes an existing product and extends it.
After dumbing down and corporatizing up what are we left with?
A new generation of beta grade voip software at enterprise rates - no saving for you.

And for 20 year ppl line up and ask for more?
Do you really want to dial 911 and get Clippy telling you about a great new deal?

Re:VoIP 'inovation' MS style?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, lets give the telcos control over voip, how about ipo's of some companies that you never heard of? Honestly speaking, there aren't really many options here, if you ask me i would reather have ms do voip than sbc or att or time warner. opensource would be nice only if it was stable, keep in mind that oss doesn't mean security or stability or reliability for that matter, it just means transparency. Would you feel safer with apple's iPhone (i am guessing you would)? This is a secret, but apple is as bad as any other software company out there. So what would make you feel safer? How about if the NSA provided you with voip service? I think that MS needs to enter the phone market and hopefully push the entire market ahead, give you more options. Than again i bet you were waiting to bring out that clippy joke for a while now along with the $ in the MS name, you coo'.

I say as many companies should enter voip as possible, and i say that free market should dictate the prices that they charge. This is good news for voip, hopefully this will put pots into the grave. Than again if you're a lable whore, than apple's iPhone with a $50 premium monthly would be the option for you methinks :).

All companies look for one thing, profit, if you want a rosy picture of the business world buy adbusters, wear a Che Guevara tee with your designer jeans and your ipod, you rebel you.

Re:VoIP 'inovation' MS style?

[DavidD_CA]

I dunno. I think if MS can integrate VoIP into Exchange/SBS and make it native to the OS, then great things will come out of it.

If you think about it, there's no reason why the telephone shouldn't be considered part of a communications network like email, IM, and faxing. With remote features that Exchange offers, I think it would be pretty cool to have all of that seamlessly work together.

But yes, Clippy would be annoying. Of course, he hasn't been around (by default) for the last two versions of Office. Maybe they'll bring him back just for you. :)

POTS?

[nick_davison]

I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability

Personal Computer - to - Piece Of Total Sh!te?

A new feature under Messanger? I thought Windows had had that as a default part of the install for years?

Microsoft + Japanese VOIP = LOL

[timecop]

Haha, okay, I'll bite this obvious troll.

Anyone who knows anythign about Japanese VOIP will tell you immediately what a total piece of shit it is. First of all, Softbank is NOT a "VOIP Carrier". There are no VOIP carriers in Japan other than NTT. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesnt know the situation. What happens is you have NTT reselling lines to smaller companies. More on this later.

The real failure with Japanese VOIP (other than per-minute charges for voip calls!) is the whole new "050" prefix where all voip shit goes to. Yes, you can get a new voip number, but it will be some random 10-digit 050 prefix number taht you'll have to tell everyone. Number portability? forget it.

There's the new overpriced hikari denwa service which lets you (finally) have a landline phone # tied to voip but it requires a) expensive and unavailable in 99% of Japan NTT-flets connection, b) still bills 8yen/3 minutes for all calls (and increases with distance)... What the fuck are they thinking?

Then there's like 1000 "ISPs" selling "IP-Phone" services, but all they are doing is reselling NTT garbage. SO you take already expensive NTT rate, add on some extra shit by each ISP, and you got a total failure in the works.

Its actually cheaper to buy voip line from a u.s. company (vonage, broadvoice, etc) because there are no flat-rate long distance plans offered by jap voip - with broadvoice you can even have flat-rate calls INSiDE JAPAN (to landline, not mobile numbers) - for like $30 a month.

What does microsoft have to do with this? Probably nothing, but I thought a good rant on the current situation of Jap voip would be appropriate for this article.

Obligatory

[cciRRus]

All your VoIP networks are belong to us.

The Way Of The Damned

[Anonymous Coward]

A brief introduction to the art of Japanese business.

1. Express an interest in a new product.
2. Buy new product and see how it works.
3. Make a better one.
4. Own the world.

This time next year, we may look back on this and smile.

I made the VOIP jump @home long ago

[rodgster]

I went to vonage. features are nice (best for me is simulring that and plug it in anywhere and "your phone number" works.). just have to do some packet prioritization on a symmetrical connection and there are very few problems.

The best is that I can cut the land line and not have to give SBC a red cent. But, I'd go back to SBC before I'd go to MS. Actually I'd rather setup my own can and string phone network before I'd give money to either.

Microsoft Teams Up With Japanese VoIP Carrier

[mormop]

"Microsoft Teams Up With Japanese VoIP Carrier"

The natural result of which should be "Japanese VoIP Carrier sues Microsoft in embrace and extend case"

Deal with someone with Microsoft's history and you'd better be sure your contract's tighter than a shark's arse at 40 fathoms.

As a customer of Softbank BB...

[afroken]

I'd like to know what Microsoft will bring to the table. I have been using Softbank's broadband service for over two years now, quite happily calling people at awful times due to the time changes between Japan and America. What does this change for me?

I'm imagining that the Microsoft logo will now appear on my bills. I should hope they don't mess with anything else. Not that I'd know, what with the billing statement being in backwards-Matrix characters.

Just for a moment

[TractorBarry]

>I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability

Hells teeth... I read that as "considering its new PC-to BOTS capability" Now I know Windows machines are partial to being Zombified but that would be ridiculous !

Perfect role for the state -- ideally

[Swift2001]

This is one area where I wish our congress critters would enforce standards so that the consumer can use this technology, not limited by platform or brand. I've had it with all the competing text messengers, and that's why I use them very little. You can never tell if Joe is online or on another messenger service. They're not interoperable. Without making any corrupt bargains with any specific players, why can't the government do as they did during the railroad buildout: we specified an American gauge. (Interesting story behind the gauges internationally, which left European railroads incompatible for commercial and military reasons, but one of the U.S.'s economic advantages was the vast distances we could go on the same gauge of tracks, no change of trains necessary.) Messenger programs should be forced to provide open APIs, and then they could compete on cost, or on the quality of their voice or video codecs, routing tricks and the like. Phone wires have standard voltages, etc., so that any phone can plug into the switches and communicate anywhere. The new VoIP communication should be the same. If the US continues this business of "letting the market decide," we will fall progressively further behind technologically. We must make standards for progess. What we have instead is crony capitalism, where the big companies do as they wish, and they're protected from real competition. There's an interesting item at the end of the year: CD sales are off seven or eight percent again in the U.S. But they're holding steady in Britain, where the rate of broadband adoption is higher than the US. How could that be, if the "piracy" excuse is true? It's not true. The difference is, Britain did not pass the idiotic Telecommunications Act, which has centralized our radio delivery of music so much that it is only unlistenable payola-driven junk. They're losing the ability to make hits on the radio! This is what happens under monopoly.

Microsoft and World Domination

[bladest0rm]

Guy using M$ VoIP: Well, if you keep having those problems, why don't you try switching to...
-line cuts off-
MS guy: WERE YOU TRYING TO TELL SOMEONE TO SWITCH TO LINUX?
Guy: No! I swear!
-guy slumps dead as MS agents fire a bullet into the back of his head-