Province
The battle is on for unified communications, the new trend in office technology that promises to erase the boundaries between the computer and the telephone.
Equipment and software vendors are pushing to convince companies that the future of the workplace is getting voice messages in an e-mail program and listening to e-mails on a cellphone.
And now that Microsoft Corp. has broken into the telephone market, the economics of office communications are expected to change.
Microsoft has launched its Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, marking its end as a pure-play IT vendor.
The grand dream of unified communications is to eradicate dead time in a world where a one-hour delay in replying is considered poor business etiquette. That means that your computer will know whether you’re at your desk and forward your e-mails and office calls to your mobile.
It means you can pull up your address book and see if one of your contacts is at his or her desk. And if so, you can send her or him an instant message, or e-mail a file, or even start a conference call over the Internet.
And all this without having to rip out cables and install huge back-end systems. It all works through software lying atop the Internet.
“The IT and telecom worlds used to be well-defined, distinct markets,” said Lawrence Surtees of research firm IDC Canada.
“This convergence is grounds for greater competition for established players on both sides.”
© The Vancouver Province 2007