Tuesday, 1 March 2005

Microsoft: Messenger Out, Istanbul In?

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is set to publicly unveil a new series of real-time collaboration (RTC) products on March 8. According to betanews, Insiders speculate that Gates will announce the completed Istanbul messaging client, which complements Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 and serves as the replacement for Windows Messenger. In its simplest terms, Istanbul binds together individual channels of communications such as IM, video and Web conferencing, in addition to PBX and PSTN phone systems into a single client. This is done so that the product can appeal to a broad range of enterprise customers and encourage the convergence of RTC elements into Office.