Microsoft RTC Chief Talks Collaboration Plans

Gurdeep Singh Pall, the Microsoft corporate vice president in charge of real-time collaboration, introduced the company's Office Communicator Web Access client Tuesday at Interop. He sat down with CRN Industry Editor Barb Darrow Tuesday in New York after his keynote.

CRN: Can you talk about VAR and integrator opportunities with the newly shipping Office Communicator Web Access client?

Pall: One of the things customers were really asking for was ability to integrate presence and IM into their apps, a lot of which are written in multi-tier architectures where you have portals, and mostly accessed through the browser. Communicator Web Access is built on AJAX [and that means] you can actually take AJAX controls and embed them into your portals and into your apps, which we think is incredibly powerful. That's a big opportunity. Integrators are doing a lot of the work in building, maintaining and updating these apps.

CRN: And, you can tie in non-Windows apps. Is this the first time you can do that?

Pall: RIM, for example, announced they're doing a client which should be out shortly. Some other partners building clients for other platforms particularly on the mobile side but in terms of clients running on so many desktops and workstation platforms, this is the first time. eDial built a client. [eDial] was acquired by Alcatel, based out of Boston but not sure it supports all the browsers the way we do

CRN: so Office Communicator Web Access extends Live Communication Server [LCS] to the world?

Pall: Yes, customers want the kiosk scenarios where no app installed and the other is for Macs and some engineering workstations running CAD tools, Unix-oriented tools.

CRN: But there is no VoIP support?

Pall: No. It's a thin client. It has presence but too hard to get VoIP on all those platforms.

CRN: Can you talk about the roadmap? The plan was to converge Live Communications Server and Live Meeting architecture over time [into a single architecture code-named Kiev.] Can you update that timeframe?

Pall: I can't discuss timeframes but it's something we're actively working.

CRN: I assume that the game plan is to continue to field both hosted and on-premise conferencing as you do now with LCS and Live Meeting. Can you talk about how much of your business now is hosted and how much is product?

Pall: Today LCS is an on-premise product and Live Meeting is a service. We don't have on premise Live Meeting or hosted LCS.

CRN: Right, But I mean in terms of dollars, how much do you earn via LCS vs. Live Meeting?

Pall: We don't break that out actually.

CRN: Well you've been in the software-as-service market in conferencing now since you bought Placeware [Live Meeting] two years ago

Pall: We absolutely are. in that market and intend to continue with it. This is very important part of Microsoft's future and will make sure we have strong offering

CRN: Are you working with CTO Ray Ozzie on this push?

Pall: Absolutely.

CRN: Microsoft has a wide variety of real time stuff, some overlapping between MSN and your group. Can you parse that out?

Pall: MSN is focused on consumers, when I say consumers, the scenarios are buddies and friends and friends of friends. Exchanging pictures, personal information between families or individuals. It's collaboration but on the consumer side

We're focused on information workers. Work related. Anything that has to do with info workers and IT managers things like groups, organizations, security compliance. All of these things are critical of information workers

CRN: There is some overlap in technologies though?

Pall: We share some technologies, some of our audio /video technology and we work very closely together. In the federation work we've done

CRN: How does Microsoft Research's Conference XP fit into what you're doing?

Microsoft research has a lot of projects exploring different collaboration metaphors. We work closely with them and we take a lot of technology and innovation and make sure that comes out as part of the product roadmap.

CRN: Doesn't Conference XP compete with what you already have?

Pall: It's not a product it's an exploration of some good metaphors. Some things we like there and will incorporate and some things we won't.

CRN: Webex [Communications' CEO Subrah] Iyar characterizes Microsoft's move to software-as-a-service as a big hedging of bets. [He says] Microsoft can't go whole hog into Software-as-a-service conferencing or collaboration because it has to protect its base of licensed client and server software. Can you comment on that?

Pall: I don't think we're trying to go after Subrah. We really focus on bringing value to info workers and enterprises. I guess I don&'t' totally understand the point about protecting our turf. Services are just another opportunity

CRN: His point was partly that the reason Windows Live and Office Live are being carefully positioned for consumers and very small businesses, is to lessen cannibalization of Microsoft's own Windows and Office product sales into larger organizations.

Pall: You talk to customers as much as I do and I don't know how many customers are saying 'I want to take all they've got and put it into the service realm.' Especially the large enterprises. The segments where it is interesting and valuable—consumers and small businesses-- that's where we focus. Small businesses don't have an IT staff. That's the main area. If enterprises are interested in it, certainly we have the assets to bring to bear

CRN: Are most current Live Meeting customers, I guess I would have thought bigger businesses?

Pall: They're actually all over the map. But in the sense that it's not an IT-wide option. We see that in a few areas, but usually not IT-wide. Usually sold to departments and decision makers and sales. It' where it becomes a horizontal tool where everyone can use that's where the on-premise solution is good

CRN: Webex has something called Webex Office and partners want to know how you'll respond.

Pall: My understanding is that's their offering of Intranets technology but I probably should not comment on that since I'm not sure.

CRN: In terms of your mobile strategy, would Microsoft ever actually become an MVNO [Mobile Virtual Network Operator.] Would Microsoft get in the business of selling wireless capacity?

Pall: I'm certainly not the right person to comment on that.

CRN: What ramifications do you see in the field over the [Research In Motion] RIM suit? Large integrators say their customers are getting spooked.

Pall: Again I'm not the expert on that side of the business, but what RIM did was really demonstrate there's a strong need for communications-on-the-go, text communications. And since RIM, many companies and some Microsoft solutions are really compelling. I suspect this category is established, whether one player is there or not, it will go on.

CRN: The question for Microsoft is always how much of this RTC stuff will be separate and how much will flow into the piping of Vista or Longhorn operating system over time?

Pall: There's an evolution, as solutions come out [they are] much more integrated around the scenario then the platform will start emerging and provider interfaces with apps on the top and providers on the bottom then sort of a middleware platform. I suspect many components will be built that way in the future. Now we'll focus on making sure the right scenarios can be enabled.

At the same time we're mindful of platforms. This whole Ajax thing we did in Communicator Web Access was to make sure whenever there's an interesting opportunity for integration that we have a platform for the customer.

CRN: Everyone has their eye on Google; everyone expects them to come out with calendaring and other things that will start coming into your realm. How much do you worry about Google? Which competitors do you worry about?

Pall: I know Google has promised a lot, some things are in perpetual beta. But they are in a different segment at this time at least. IBM is probably the most traditional competitor we have. I can see over time as convergence happens, some others. Oracle is aspiring in the collaboration space, folks like Webex in point solutions, Jabber in IM. Players like that are there.

CRN: IBM had Sametime [enterprise instant messaging] out early but it seems not to be a big emphasis now.

Pall: It' s hard to speculate why IBM is doing with Sametime, I know there was realignment from Lotus to Workplace and whatever happened to Sametime in the middle. I don't know what they're doing frankly.

CRN: How about developer support for mobile app developers? What is your team doing for them vs. the Visual Studio people? Probably the windows and embedded devices group is best for that

Pall: I know we have a good story there, lots and lots of apps being written.

CRN: Today in your keynote you talked about how phone sets have not changed much and telephony has to be less rigid going forward. But the issue there, is people are used to their phones-- unlike PCs—working like a utility. You don't have to reboot your phone. Is there fear out there that with convergence we might get weaker, rather than stronger, performance in telephony? If you talk to customers or their integrators who are thinking of updating their PBXes in the next year, what do you tell them?

Pall: I would say they need to develop a broad perspective on what the future of collaboration is. The way VoIP has been looked at is packetizing voice and putting it over an IP network. But the end user experience, the management experience doesn't change. In fact in some cases it's more expensive [than before]. We think it's totally wrong to look at their communications infrastrucuter VoIP in that limited sense.

They really need to step back and appreciate the broader picture and then make the decision to make great productivity enhancements. That's the main message. If you look at a lot VoIP stuff today, it's same old, same old. Phone numbers to same devices, does the same thing they've always done, but over IP, that's the only difference.

CRN: You guys bought a VoIP Player, MediaStream, can you talk about what's going on there?

Pall: We have this unified communications vision, with many modalities and we had made progress on the integrated messaging and video side. We wanted to make sure from the audio perspective, the voice piece, that we had the right assets in place to populate our unified communication vision. MediaStream has great SIP-based distributed architecture which is very much in line with how we think about this. It can accelerate our delivery of unified communication.

CRN: Has Microsoft made other, similar investments?

Pall: MSN has made some buys like Teleo, but looking at it from consumer side

CRN: In converged world, are people worried that phones will not be as reliable. How do you allay that concern?

Pall: People carry whatever solution they need. If you take your voice on the laptop, that would be part of your work. Obviously if you're walking around with a laptop, that's not way to get your phone calls. But if you're deskbound and you wedge a phone under your chin and type into your laptop it would be so much more beneficial to use voice recognition…adding voice to your laptop [in that scenario.]

Someone can be talking to you, 'Hey wait, let me generate this into a web document' to share.. Using the right tool for the right job is what it's about as opposed to using the wrong tool always which is separate desk phones. That's where the mobile phone is important. We believe between the PC and the mobile phone you have the right communication tools you need. One gives you the richness and all the modalities and video and the other gives you mobility which is really important.