Partner Momentum Grows for New Microsoft Office Live Communications Server

REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 17, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. has teamed with solution partners to build and deploy real-time communications solutions powered by Microsoft®
Office Live Communications Server 2003, which offers enterprise-grade instant messaging (IM) and presence as well as real-time communications capabilities — all on an extensible platform. Aliant Inc., HP, IPC Information Systems Inc. and Sybari Software Inc. are some of the companies using Live Communications Server to connect people, information and business processes that enable information workers to make better decisions faster. Live Communications Server provides a solid foundation for partners to build reliable and easy-to-deploy and manage solutions for IM, voice, video and data collaboration. Customers will be able to take advantage of encrypted and authenticated communications in the enterprise and with trusted partners as well as integrate presence information into line-of-business applications using industry-standard protocols.

In a recent research report, Vijay Bhagavath, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., said that although presence awareness began life as an IM feature, its true value is as nothing less than the “dial tone” for people, a way to tell who is available and how to reach them. The benefits of presence awareness run from the mundane — limiting the number of voice mail messages one receives — to the sublime — enabling an application that shows how best to reach the product specialist one needs while he or she is in the middle of an important sales presentation.*

Live Communications Server recently was released to manufacturing as a key component of the 2003 version of the Microsoft Office System, which signals a milestone for partners and customers alike.

“We’re excited to see momentum building for the recently released Microsoft Office Live Communications Server,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, general manager of the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. “We believe enterprise IM and presence will have a positive effect on the way information workers communicate by helping them make better decisions faster and will create great opportunities for partner and customer innovation.”

Aliant: Connecting the Right People at the Right Time

Aliant, Atlantic Canada’s largest telecommunications company and leading provider of dial-up and high-speed Internet, is deploying an IM alerting system in its tech support department to more effectively handle trouble tickets and improve customer satisfaction. Based on presence information from Live Communications Server, the solution integrates enterprise IM and SQL Server (TM) Notification Server to streamline the support process and deliver alerts to the right people at the right time.

“Live Communications Server gave us the right solution for our needs,” said Rick Strong, senior IT architect at Aliant. “Because we are a geographically dispersed company, Live Communications Server is an integral part of our collaboration strategy as we deploy presence awareness in our Office and line-of-business applications. To bring the virtual office concept into viable usage, we consider Live Communications Server a cornerstone of collaborative systems deployment now and in the future.”

Hewlett-Packard : Bringing Real-Time Communications to the Enterprise

“As the world’s leading integrator for Microsoft technologies, we know that customers are interested in integrating real-time communications capabilities in a secure and manageable fashion inside their infrastructures,” said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer, HP Consulting and Integration. “We believe Live Communications Server has a key role to play here, especially for customers who are deploying Windows Server (TM) 2003, and we look forward to working with customers to roll out and embed Live Communications Server into their infrastructures and applications over the coming months.”

IPC: Helping Traders Stay in Touch and Online

The financial services industry requires fast, secure and reliable communications to ensure timely decisions, meet compliance requirements and reduce downtime. IPC, which provides integrated multimedia communications for the financial trading community, understands these needs and is designing a presence-based enterprise voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solution that uses Live Communications Server to enhance the way traders communicate while saving money and providing business continuity. IPC’s solution helps financial services firms realize cost efficiencies and helps ensure continuous communications by providing a VoIP-based application that is easier to configure, quicker and more flexible to route, and less expensive to maintain.

“We chose Live Communications Server to help us build a solution that will efficiently and effectively connect institutional traders with their trading counterparts worldwide,” said Don Bell, senior vice president of Marketing and Corporate Development at IPC. “We also expect our customers to become more disaster-resilient by leveraging the capabilities of Live Communications Server and IPC’s IQMX native-IP trading desktop, allowing them to relocate and automatically set up communications in a backup location.”

Sybari: Real-Time Security Solution

Data security is one of the top concerns for IT professionals today. Sybari, which provides solutions to help protect messaging and collaboration environments from viruses and security threats, has developed a virus and message content scanning and document filtering solution for IM. Sybari’s application enhances Live Communications Server’s centralized security and message logging capabilities with policy enablement tools. This allows IT administrators to apply content and file filtering policies as well as time-tested anti-virus capabilities. With Live Communications Server, Sybari is able to offer its customers real-time virus and content scanning of IM conversations and file transfers.

“Sybari’s continued support of Microsoft and its platforms now extends to its new Live Communication Server, a highly anticipated, new, real-time communications platform for the enterprise,” said Tom Buoniello, vice president of product management for Sybari Software Inc. “In deploying Live Communication Server, users can depend on Microsoft’s superior technological communication advancements and Sybari’s notable protection of Microsoft platforms further enabling users to maintain the security and compliance policies they already have established for their e-mail environment.”

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 (TM) 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 2003, enhance the features and functionality of products in the Microsoft Office System.

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.

* Triple-S Augurs The Future of Live Communication , July 28, 2003

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