Microsoft and Nortel unveil ICA roadmap

Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer and president and chief executive of Nortel Mike Zafirovski yesterday took centre stage to launch three joint solutions while detailing what users can expect to see over the coming years as part of their shared vision of unified communications.

The two companies forged the partnership, dubbed the Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA), back in July last year, but hadn't committed to exact product details or timeframes until now.

Commenting on the myriad of technical solutions businesses currently use to communicate, Ballmer noted that users often leave multiple messages in multiple places.

"It's a very liveable world," he said. "But that doesn't make it the best we can do."

Microsoft and Nortel said they plan to tackle this and benefit end users, IT departments and those developing business applications by launching three solutions this year, with a solid roadmap for the future.

A Unified Messaging Solution, a hybrid of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Nortel's Communication Server 1000, will be available from the second quarter of this year. It makes use of native session initiation protocol (SIP) interoperability, meaning installation and management is going to be less of a headache, according to the companies.

Later this year, in the fourth quarter, users will be able to get their hands' on a product that brings together Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 and features from Nortel's Multimedia Conferencing offering. The aim is to provide one, single client experience spanning voice, instant messaging (IM), presence and audio and video conferencing applications.

"I think it's great to have a lot of companies innovating in this area," said Ballmer.

"Today's videoconferencing solutions are very, very expensive. It's tough management to decide which conference rooms get a videoconferencing system. I think it might be nice to democratise videoconferencing.

"I always seem to wind up with a technician standing by every time I have a videoconference, even with our telecom partners. One might think we could also democratise it by making it simpler and easier to use. And I think that the combination of what we're doing in software and the work Nortel is doing will take us a long way down the path of democratising the category. And it's good to have other guys also trying to innovate, because, boy, this is a category that needs innovation."

The fourth quarter of this year will also see the launch of UC Integrated Branch, a single piece of hardware incorporating Microsoft and Nortel technologies to reduce costs and enhance quality of VoIP and unified communications in remote offices.

The companies also plan to beef up an existing offering by extending their unified desktop and soft phone for VoIP, email, IM and presence to the Nortel Communication Server 2100, a carrier-grade system capable of supporting up to 200,000 users.

To support the new offerings Nortel also announced 11 core implementation-oriented services.

To showcase the companies' new talents, Microsoft and Nortel have created 20 demonstration centres in Asia, Europe and the US, with plans to open another 80 by the end of July.

Since the ink dried on the joint alliance contract, Microsoft and Nortel claim that dozens of customers have bought into their vision, with hundreds more in the pipeline, including Royal Dutch Shell, whose group IT architect Johan Krebbers took to the stage to confirm that the company would be embracing ICA offerings to support its global business operations.

Ballmer said that the solutions would benefit "any company large enough to have an IT department," but also recognised that the alliance needs to make provisions for smaller companies too.

He also made a quip about the umbrella term used to describe the solutions the joint alliance will produce, suggesting he often jokes with his team that he doesn't like the name.

"They know I don't love it because it means everything and it means nothing and doesn't have a specific meaning to any one customer," said Ballmer.

"But the truth is this is not the hardest communications challenge we've ever had. If you do a demonstration people get it and say they want it. When you try to explain SOA or web services [for example], that's a little harder to explain unless you're talking to people who are really technical.

"You go out and do a demonstration, and people say, okay, I get it, I'd like something like that, that looks pretty good. You want to call that unified communications? Okay, we'll use that word from now on. But in this case I think the demo does help resonate with people quite strongly. Whether we do a demo or other guys do demos, the demos bring alive an important transformation that's going to happen."

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