Today at VoiceCon Orlando 2008, Microsoft Corp. announced broad availability of its conferencing solutions and continued customer and partner adoption of its unified communications platform. Partners are embracing the platform to provide interoperable conferencing solutions, and today Polycom Inc. announced that it will make its videoconferencing systems work with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. Microsoft also outlined continued customer adoption of its unified communications solutions and demonstrated some new technologies, such as low-cost high-definition videoconferencing.

 As of today, Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 now work with conferencing systems from Polycom and TANDBERG — which constitute more than 60 percent of worldwide existing business conferencing systems. This openness means customers can get more value from existing conferencing systems while still benefiting from Microsoft unified communications software for instant messaging, presence and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).

Customers are also embracing Microsoft’s innovative, low-cost videoconferencing solution, Microsoft RoundTable. In the last six months, more than 350 companies have deployed the 360-degree videoconferencing phone, and 55 resellers have taken it into 17 countries.

“Office Communications Server and RoundTable allow us to improve collaboration and communication while traveling less; we know that has a positive impact on the planet, and that’s important to us,” said Robert Fort, vice president of information technology and CIO at Virgin Entertainment Group. “With an entry point of $3,000 per device and simple plug-and-play operation, we can widely deploy devices to make conferencing available to everyone.”.......Full Story At Source

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