Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access Is Released to Manufacturing

NEW YORK — Dec. 13, 2005 — Today, during a keynote address at Interop New York 2005, Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president in the Real-Time Collaboration Group at Microsoft Corp., announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Microsoft® Office Communicator Web Access. Communicator Web Access, a Web-based enterprise communications client based on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax, technologies for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, provides information workers with a new option for accessing their corporate instant messaging (IM) system and presence capabilities.

The new solution, with Live Communications Server 2005, will help people — for example, those working remotely or from locked-down computers or non-Windows® operating systems — stay in touch with key colleagues, partners and customers to handle time-sensitive requests and make business decisions more quickly. In addition, Communicator Web Access, with the Live Communications Server 2005 Public IM Connectivity offering, enables enterprise-grade connectivity to the MSN®, AOL and Yahoo! public IM services.

“Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 and Microsoft’s broader real-time collaboration solutions are focused on delivering a unified communications experience that breaks down the silos of communication and brings them together into an intuitive experience,” Pall said. “Extending the capabilities of Communicator to Web clients gives information workers — regardless of location or platform — the ability to immediately locate, contact and collaborate with colleagues in real time. This is another significant step toward ubiquitous access to rich presence information and a unified communications experience.”

Communicator Web Access has an easy-to-use, familiar interface that is based on the desktop version of the client, Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, and can easily be added into existing infrastructures, requiring minimal support from IT administrators. Once it is deployed, users need only open their Web browser, point it to a specified Web site address and enter their credentials to access Communicator Web Access.

“Communicator Web Access has been instrumental in spreading adoption of enterprise IM throughout our company, improving the speed and quality of collaboration across teams and, in turn, helping our employees make better decisions faster, regardless of location,” said Gary Ducharme, associate director of enterprise infrastructure at Bell Canada. “We have deployed Communicator Web Access to approximately 3,000 employees and have received very positive feedback on how similar the user interface is to the desktop version of Communicator that we had previously deployed to approximately 30,000 employees. Also, our employees are pleased with how easy the client is to use. We plan on deploying Communicator Web Access companywide the first of next year.”

Pricing and Availability

Communicator Web Access is available to download at no additional charge to customers who have licensed Live Communications Server 2005. Communicator Web Access can easily be integrated into existing deployments of Live Communications Server. Customers installing Live Communications Server 2005 for the first time can easily choose to include as part of their deployment or add it later. More information about Communicator Web Access, including how to download the client, can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/rtc.

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