Microsoft Paves Way For Realtime Communications

The Redmond, Wash.-based company this fall plans to launch an upgraded LCS server, code-named Vienna, to be followed by a rewritten client, said sources close to the

company. Vienna promises better support of federation between remote servers. Currently, interoperability between dispersed LCS servers requires a special connector and the results are spotty, solution providers said.

The new Kiev client, rewritten completely in the C# language, will add support for Microsoft's nascent RingCam, sources said. RingCam, now a prototype, is an omnidirectional camera that shoots and broadcasts images of conference participants.

Longer term, plans call for a new server, code-named Istanbul, due in 2005. With that release, Microsoft plans to make good on promises to fully integrate LCS with Live Meeting and offer links to the upcoming Longhorn operating system, sources said.

Converging the Microsoft-centric LCS and Live Meeting will not be trivial. Microsoft got the technology with its acquisition of PlaceWare last year. PlaceWare thus far remains a hosted Web conferencing system, and its roots are in the distinctly non-Microsoft world of Java and Unix.

Solution providers are interested in these plans, but concede they're still a bit distant. "We see more interest now in hosted services [such as Live Meeting and WebEx] than in bringing Web conferencing in-house," said David Via, vice president of business development at Wolcott Systems Group, a Fairlawn, Ohio, collaboration specialist.

On the instant messaging front, most accounts now have too much rather than too little, Via said. Many corporate users run multiple accounts of consumer services from America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft without IT sanction, solution providers said.

The new LCS and what Microsoft promises will be secure instant messaging "should be a big deal, but I'm not sure it will be," said a mid-Atlantic VAR who requested anonymity. "Just as companies who were slow to adopt corporate e-mail years ago quickly found their people using outside services, they are now seeing their users on Yahoo or AOL instant messaging [services]," he said.

Companies should be concerned not only about potential file transfers of sensitive data, he said, but about employees taking their buddy lists with them when they leave. "It's an opportunity for recruitment, a potential breach of security," the VAR said.

Still, many who decry instant messaging as unsafe do not protect their corporate e-mail systems, Via said. Fretting about it now "is a little bit like shutting the barn door after the horses are out."

Microsoft would not comment on Vienna, Kiev or Istanbul plans.

PAULA ROONEY contributed to this story.