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Microsoft Readies VoIP for Office

Acquisition of Swiss company provides technology for more Live Office enhancements.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

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Microsoft is acquiring a Swiss software company that specializes in voice-over-IP applications with a view to adding such a function to its Office products, the company has acknowledged.

The world's largest software maker will acquire media-streams.com, a Zurich-based company, for an undisclosed amount, a Microsoft representative said Thursday. The technology Microsoft gains as a result of the deal will help it add VoIP to the Office Live platform, which already supports real-time communications via channels such as instant messaging.

Recent Forays

VoIP is a hot area of the IT industry at present, as can be seen by eBay's $2.6 billion acquisition of Skype Technologies in October. Its image has been changing from something that consumers use to make cheap, low-quality voice calls via their PCs, to a more stable technology suitable for professional applications such as business.

Microsoft took some big steps into the VoIP space in March this year when it launched a new IM client, Office Communicator 2005, and added enhancements to its Live Communications Server 2005 and Live Meeting Web conferencing service.

"VoIP is exploding," Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, said at the San Francisco event. "We want to enable the software richness on the PC to connect out to traditional PBXes."

Partnering for Voice

The company followed the March show with a string of deals. In June it formed tie-ups with AT&T, Amdocs, and Sylantro Systems to work on various VoIP systems and then in August it acquired Teleo, a developer of services and technology that allow users to make and receive voice phone calls on their PCs via the Internet. A month later Microsoft said it planned to work with Qwest Communications to provide VoIP services to small and midsize businesses.

As a result of the latest deal, Media-streams.com will become part of Microsoft's real time collaboration business group, which is led by Microsoft Corporate Vice President Anoop Gupta.

Microsoft will continue to offer media-streams.com's software on a standalone basis and existing customers should see no immediate impact from the acquisition, the management of the Swiss company said in a letter to customers, a copy of which was posted on its Web site.

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