by Adrian Berry
One of the biggest success stories of the Information Age is a company whose founder is reputed to have said at one point: "640K of RAM should be enough for anybody". Which proves that you can be totally wrong and still end up the richest man in the world. So when Microsoft decides to enter a new arena where they have little or no experience, it is not wise to dismiss their efforts out of hand.
For several years there has been an ongoing battle between the two giants of the corporate email world: IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Exchange. There are other products of course, but these are arguably the heavyweight contenders (no reference to code size intended). Recent trade pieces seem to have finally given the prize to Exchange, although that is not really the point. The point is that Microsoft has a product in place which serves email to literally millions of people every day. And this is not just in large organisations; Microsoft bundles Exchange server in with their Small Business Server product, which is aimed at companies with fewer than 75 employees.
Sometime next year (Q2 is being mentioned) the next version of this software is being released. So, yet more fancy email features. OK, they have spent a lot of time on better integration with their Outlook client, and improving security and SPAM handling. And something else:
"(Exchange) offers employees a single universal inbox to access all of their important communications--including voice mail, fax, and e-mail--while avoiding the cost and effort of maintaining separate systems" (Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 product overview).
Maybe you should read that again. Exchange is now a voicemail server - Microsoft has always had some rudimentary fax handling arrangements, but this is new. Not that we should not have seen it coming, it makes sense. You will be able to dial into your office's Exchange server and retrieve your voice mail - by talking to it. It has some fairly competent voice recognition routines, so you don't need to key in anything more than your PIN. Not only will it do voicemail, but it will also read you your email and check your calendar for you - and reschedule meetings for you if you need to.
OK, so now we have Nortel, Avaya and other voicemail companies looking over their shoulder. Although maybe not; a Nortel executive is on record as saying he isn't worried about this in the slightest; and Nortel have just signed an agreement with Microsoft so they will be part of the big revolution - just like Siemens, HP and Motorola who have similar agreements. But what else is Microsoft's Business Division getting into as part of their "Unified Communications" initiative?
On rare occasions Microsoft has in the past developed their own hardware; nothing spectacular, just a few commodity items such as a mouse, a keyboard and a joystick. These have usually been developed to help sell software - the mouse and the keyboard to promote Windows (remember, DOS didn't really need a mouse, or the 'Windows' key) and the joystick for Flight Simulator. This is an amusing contrast to an earlier IT giant on the East Coast who saw software simply as a means to sell more hardware.
So now, in order to promote the additional abilities of Microsoft's communication/collaboration server products to allow multiple users to collaborate in real time, Microsoft have developed a gadget they call the "RoundTable". It is effectively a videoconference terminal that provides both video and audio conferencing capabilities on a Microsoft Communications Server network. And since the protocols used are to industry standards, it can communicate with any other IP videoconference product in the world - and ISDN units through any bridge. This device has a panoramic camera to capture a 360-degree image, and intelligent microphone technology to automatically focus on the person speaking. And it provides the crucial audio and visual link for a full-fledged collaborative conference
where multimedia applications can be shared between all parties.
One small thing, though. This sort of conference is not going to be like a traditional videoconference. Instead of a large monitor or plasma displaying the far end of the call, each participant seems to be expected to view everyone else on their laptop screen. In the demonstration that Jeff Raikes gave on June 26 of this year, the far-end participants sitting in front of their laptops did a very good job of looking directly at the camera while talking - but I don't think this will happen in real life. The camera is much more likely to capture the top of someone's head as they peer intently at their laptop, trying to see the other participants who are doing the same.
So will it work? Yes, but not because the "user experience" is better than current practice. It will work simply because this is the next evolution of Microsoft's communication/collaboration software, and the cost benefit of implementing this form of conferencing (not to mention the voicemail) will outstrip any concerns over practicality. If Microsoft really want to make a big splash, they will incorporate a limited version of Communications Server as well as the voicemail features of Exchange Server in the Premium Edition of their next release of Small Business Server. At a minimum, Microsoft have planted themselves firmly in the IP conferencing server market, and have presented an endpoint device to make it work "out-of-the-box". You may have noticed some rather cryptic Cisco advertisements in the past proclaiming that Cisco could solve all of your videoconference problems. It turns out that they were missing the most visible (and to most users the most important) piece of the puzzle - the actual endpoint equipment. Networks are for the most part invisible to your end users - if you claim that you will provide someone with the best
videoconferencing experience that money can buy, they expect you to do more than just hand them a phone. Microsoft have at least done something more than provide the server and gateway software. The rather diminutive loudspeakers in the Roundtable will not be able to compete with a properly installed sound system, but they will make some noise; your laptop screen may not be a 42" LCD screen, but it does show an image.
My guess is that the mere existence of this technology in the next few years will put a significant dent in the traditional videoconferencing market. This is a technology that an IT department can understand, and it comes from a familiar supplier who knows how to talk to them. And what Nortel intends their agreement to produce makes sense - provide opportunities for their current distribution chain (the interconnect companies) to become the installation source for this new collaborative effort. This would not be a bad idea for any audio-visual companies intent on selling conferencing solutions - make sure your technical staff are knowledgeable and better yet trained (MCSE) on Microsoft's Unified Communications product lines.
What about the manufacturers? ISDN videoconferencing, although a very stable, mature and reliable concept, is waning. Future directions are all IP. The entry of Microsoft into this arena may put significant pressure on established markets for conference bridges, as VoIP is now doing to PBXs - you don't need proprietary hardware when other manufacturers are providing software solutions. But providing an endpoint with more features and better performance that the RoundTable is quite possible - Microsoft did not kill the market for mice, keyboards or joysticks by any means.
And then there is the high road. The RoundTable will not do for certain markets where eye-contact during a meeting is an absolute must. There is a small outfit in the USA which has created a system with the camera behind a piece of two-way mirror glass, so that when the participant is looking at the image in the mirror, s/he is also looking directly into the camera. And Polycom has produced the same effect (and taken it several steps further) with the new RPX series of conferencing solutions. The really smart solutions provider will find a way to leverage the new capabilities of Microsoft's Unified Communications products and enhance the functionality with the products from his videoconference codec supplier(s), so that the customer gets the best of both worlds.
Roll on Camelot.
