REDMOND, Wash., July 24, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. today announced its Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit is adding
“Live”
to its product names, communicating the value of the solutions for customers — live communication across and between global companies.
“Our customers told us they could better understand and relate to ‘Live’ and associated it with the potential to do more things while connecting with other people,”
said Dustin Grosse, senior director of marketing for the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit at Microsoft.
“The new name reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to help businesses realize their potential by achieving optimal efficiency, productivity and agility.”
Microsoft®
Office Live Meeting 2003, formerly PlaceWare Conference Center, and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, formerly Microsoft Office Real-Time Communications Server 2003, are distinct yet complementary offerings, so it is fitting that they share a consistent naming convention. Live Meeting also will be part of the Office brand, clearly identifying it as a member of the company’s highly anticipated Microsoft Office System of programs, servers and services to be released later this year.
Live Meeting will continue to deliver its current expansive feature set, reliability and scalability. Future versions will offer customers increased functionality and capabilities.
“The real-time collaboration industry’s outlook for growth is strong. Companies are looking for efficient, effective and easy-to-use applications that can improve productivity and simplify the way people collaborate and communicate,”
said Paul Ritter, program manager for Collaboration and Content Management at The Yankee Group.
Live Communications Server provides presence-awareness, instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications capabilities all on an extensible platform. For example, with Microsoft Office SharePoint (TM) Portal Server 2003, users can see whether portal members are online and available for an IM chat. Live Meeting will allow information workers to see SharePoint Portals via application sharing.
Microsoft Office Live Meeting
Live Meeting enables businesses to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. A multimedia platform and application service for Web-based communication and collaboration, Live Meeting is a natural fit in the Microsoft Office System, which is designed to better connect people, information and business processes across an organization to transform information for business impact. It will be the first fully hosted collaboration service for the Microsoft Office System. Live Meeting is built on a scalable browser-based architecture.
Microsoft Office Live Communications Server
Live Communications Server is a manageable and extensible IM server that enables people to communicate in real time across enterprises in a manageable and more secure way than is possible with consumer-oriented services. An extensible platform as well as an IM solution, the Live Communications Server will allow developers to build real-time communications capabilities into their own applications.
Live Communications Server will be available in the third quarter of 2003. Licensing and pricing have not yet been determined.
About the Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office System is an easy way to help more people use information to positively impact their business. Through a system of familiar and easy-to-use programs, servers and services, users can connect people and organizations to information, business processes and each other — helping ensure that they derive the most value out of information. The Microsoft Office System consists of the 2003 editions of Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Office Project and Project Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2003, Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003, Microsoft Office InfoPath (TM) 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote (TM) 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 and Microsoft Office Visio® 2003. Enabling technologies, such as Microsoft Windows®
SharePoint Services and Microsoft Windows Server (TM) 2003, enhance the features and functionality of products in the Microsoft Office System.
About PlaceWare Inc.
PlaceWare Inc., a Microsoft company, is a leader in real-time,
“carrier class,”
multimedia platform and application services for Web-based communication and collaboration both inside and outside corporate firewalls. Enterprise customers prefer PlaceWare Web conferencing because of its scalable browser-based architecture, which is based on technology developed and tested at Xerox PARC. The company offers strong performance for all types of Web-based communications, from large-scale meetings with up to thousands of attendees to small collaborative meetings, presentations and e-learning sessions.
Founded in 1996, PlaceWare Inc. has already attracted more than 3,500 leading organizations that see Web conferencing as a natural evolution in helping their businesses compete more effectively in the global marketplace. PlaceWare helps companies host thousands of simultaneous Web meetings simply using Web browsers and telephones. For more information about PlaceWare, visit http://www.placeware.com/ or call (888) 526-6170 to reach the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, SharePoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, OneNote, Visio, Windows and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
PlaceWare Inc. and the PlaceWare logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of PlaceWare Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
PlaceWare Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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