Microsoft Getting VoIP

Everyone loves to hate Microsoft. I don’t. I’m a fan, shareholder and they sponsor KenRadio, but all that aside one has to look at what Microsoft is about. They make technology a consumer good.

While other companies look to gain a few points in the market or flourish in a sea of me toos but this is how we’re different, Microsoft looks at all that, waits for someone else to break the category (or a series of someone elses) and then in one swoop gets everyone up in arms over what they are doing.

Well now, they’ve finally loosened their lips (translation–the Evangelists at MSFT are allowed to go public) and their PR machine is warming up.

Ever since the release of Windows XP, SIP has been embedded inside the core of operating system. Almost two years ago Webley’s Alex Kurganov gave me a patch that hacked Windows Messenger and enable Webley to make and receive phone calls Windows Messenger, so for me, the knowledge that someday soon the giant from Redmond would be playing in the VoIP space was never an if. It was always about when.

In less than two weeks the VON happens in Boston. Microsoft is one of the event sponsors and a keynote. They’re not doing it to be nice. They are doing it to win. Having watched Microsoft closely for the last five and a half years in the streaming media space, I can’t help but see the handwriting on the wall. eWeeks VoIP doyan Ellen Muraskin has a viewpoint that’s worth looking at. At CES this year, the annual consumer electronics event of events, you can expect Bill Gates to talk about Voice. Why? Because he already did. Over a year ago at his 2003 Keynote he showed X-Box Live when he played against NBA star Shaquille O’Neil with Shaq on the line. Since then MSFT has gone on to be one the biggest customers of Level 3 for SIP traffic.

Last year MSFT had a beta trial going of their Live Communciations Server and another tool, which I think was called 3 degrees. They also bought Placeware, the conferencing system that competes with online conference services and displays PowerPoint.

What Microsoft wants to do is extend the desktop to include real time virtual collaboration beyond what they currently do within their Messenger clients. SIP provides them that playground and sandbox like world.

Let the Games Continue…