March 9, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – MCI and Microsoft today announced a partnership to converge MCI’s networking with Redmond’s software. The telecom giant’s MCI Net Conferencing product will be powered by Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
In May 2004, Microsoft and MCI established a relationship as preferred communication and collaboration partners. The two companies are working jointly to create products based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), including presence-based VoIP applications, shared communications and secure instant messaging solutions that will enable business customers to collaborate and communicate in real time.
As a leading provider of SIP-based services, MCI worked with Microsoft to co-author the standard conferencing extensions to the SIP protocol. SIP is
designed to set up multimedia sessions including voice traffic over the Internet. Because it is a web-based solution, SIP allows for easy integration
of voice with other multimedia web services.
"Industry-leading companies, such as MCI, have played a significant role in the development of rich communication solutions that address the diverse
business needs of information workers," said Taylor Collyer, senior director of Product Management, Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. "We look forward to continuing to work with MCI to deliver real-time
collaboration tools that help customers make better, more informed business decisions, faster."
MCI was one of the earliest testers of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, starting with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, and continues to be an early adopter of the solution with its recent trial of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1. The company plans on rolling out Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 company-wide later this year.
