Microsoft To Launch Office Live Meeting; Key Competitors Unfazed

The launch of Office Live Meeting will be separate from the Office System 2003 launch on Oct. 21 because it is a service--not a product--and is on a separate development cycle, said one Microsoft spokesman.

The Microsoft service, formerly known as PlaceWare Conference Center, features a new Windows-like client and limited integration with the company's forthcoming Office 2003, including the ability to schedule live meeting seminars and meetings using Microsoft Outlook, the company said.

It will enable meetings with between two and 2,500 participants and allow co-workers and partners to exchange ideas, share information, mark up files and collaborate with whiteboards, Microsoft said. The service--like others such as WebEx--offers several benefits, including reduced business-travel costs and shortened sales cycles, the company said.

Analysts said the ability for executives and other employees to connect and meet instantly, on a realtime basis, will improve overall business decision-making.

The debut of the Office Live Meeting service follows Microsoft's acquisition of PlaceWare in January. It will compete against other offerings in the market from WebEx, Raindance and Lotus. Microsoft recently decided to position Live Meeting, as well as its forthcoming Office Live Communications Server, as part of Office System 2003.

However, competitors--namely WebEx and Lotus--said they aren't too worried about being squashed by Microsoft in the Web conferencing space.

WebEx maintains that seamless integration with Office is still a ways off. And Lotus, for its part, points out that Microsoft's offering is a hosted-only offering and that its own Lotus Web conferencing server gives companies more flexibility to set up their conferencing capabilities in-house.

A spokesman for WebEx cited a recent report issued by Pacific Growth Equities, which said that WebEx investors were once concerned that Microsoft's collaboration products would displace WebEx.

However, the investment firm said those worries are subsiding because it now believes that full integration of Live Meeting service into Office won't take place during 2003 or 2004.

One solution provider, who asked not to be named, agreed that integration is a long ways off. "It is weak. They have a path for further integration, but meeting provisioning and integration into Office is kind of low," said the source, referring to Live Meeting integration with the forthcoming Office 2003.

According to a report issued by Frost and Sullivan earlier this summer, WebEx Communications' leads with almost 65 percent of total market share. The report said that the Microsoft-owned PlaceWare Conference Center owns less than 20 percent of the market today (see chart).

One analyst said Microsoft's plans with PlaceWare look good on paper, but it remains to be seen how the Redmond, Wash., software giant will perform in the services arena.

"We conferencing is a service, and I know many people who don't use the words 'Microsoft' and 'service' in the same sentence favorably," said Andy Nilssen, a senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, a Brookline, Mass., research firm that tracks realtime collaboration software. "It'll all boil down to Microsoft's implementation. The links and user interface will be there, but how will they do on the back end? PlaceWare and WebEx are both world-class service providers. But Microsoft has a lot to prove in this area."

Nilssen said WebEx has two advantages over Microsoft. First, the San Jose, Calif.-based service provider is the entrenched proven player, with market recognition and a strong brand, he said. Secondly, WebEx has both horizontal applications and powerful specialized service applications, he said.

And it is not sitting still. On Wednesday, WebEx said it tapped system integrator Computer Technology Services (CTS) to extend WebEx meeting and training services to U.S. government agencies.

Microsoft solution providers said the integration of Live Meeting with other Office System 2003 components, particularly Office, Sharepoint and Live Communications Server, will, over time, give it an advantage over stand-alone third-party offerings.

But in the near term, that gap is an opportunity for solution providers, which can make money integrating Live Meeting with Office and a variety of other Microsoft platforms by building XML Web services using the .Net framework.

They said Microsoft's entry into the market lends more credibility to the technology and will likely benefit existing players such as WebEx out of the gate, but note the threat is real.

"Microsoft has added Live Meeting services to its arsenal of collaborative products, and it's a great opportunity for partners and clients to merge Microsoft Office System 2003 components to make the enterprises more agile and communicate more effectively. [It] allows information to be shared and distributed and can reduce travel expenses," said Ken Winell, president of Econium, Totowa, N.J., which is both a Microsoft and WebEx solution provider.

"Microsoft won't crush WebEx, since the WebEx community is stable and relatively happy. However, the easier the integration with business applications, and the easier it is to do meeting provisioning via Web services, will make the Microsoft platform attractive and, combined with Office System 2003 tools such as Sharepoint, makes a compelling argument in Microsoft's favor."