February 13, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – AT&T (http://www.att.com) and Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) are building on their “global strategic alliance” to offer “Live Meeting”, a hosted webconference service for business. The service enables users to “communicate and collaborate in real time with a personal computer, an Internet connection and a telephone”.
The service represents the newest offering in AT&T’s “Collaboration Portfolio” and utilizes Microsoft Connected Services Framework - a server-based solution for building and managing complex services using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web-services interfaces.
“The introduction of AT&T Live Meeting is a milestone in our global alliance with Microsoft,” explained AT&T’s Vice President-Product Management, Mr. Shawn Conroy. “It provides an additional choice for our customers in web-conferencing options and allows users to communicate in a media-rich, real-time manner while strengthening their collaboration and productivity.”
AT&T Live Meeting collaboration capabilities include “real time broadcast” of visuals such as presentations and commonly used document types to remote participants combined with AT&T’s traditional and VoIP audioconferencing services. In conjunction with AT&T Live Meeting, users can access Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Microsoft Office Project, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office Visio.
“The launch of the new AT&T Live Meeting service marks a key step forward in our alliance to drive new converged IP-based services to businesses,” explained Microsoft’s General Manager for the Communications Sector, Michael O’Hara. “Our relationship is focused on providing greater value to our customers. Microsoft Connected Services Framework is central to that strategy, because it allows communications companies such as AT&T to bring together a range of services — including Microsoft Office Live Meeting — in new combinations that address target audiences and user requirements. We’re excited to bring this new service to market with AT&T and look forward to working together to deliver new offerings on Connected Services Framework in the future.”
