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Never saw this one coming...

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Parlano Joins Microsoft UCG Family - Yes I said I thought this would be coming, and low and behold it did. It makes perfect sense for Microsoft, it gives them a huge foot in the door at many financial institutions, many that are running Parlano alongside Sametime, with no integration. The licensing is interesting Microsoft is including it with the standard OCS license, this may make Sametime customers reluctant to pay to get similar features from Sametime Advanced when that is available if Microsoft is giving a "proven" product away for free. It's going to be an exciting couple of years watching this space mature further. Obviously Parlano is also now, whereas the IBM Persistent Chat for Sametime is in the future. If you are in the need for persistent chat now and proven in the market for a few years, then I can still recommend Instant TeamSessions from my old company.

In many ways it's nice to have been involved in this market early on and seeing many of the predictions myself and others made many years ago come out pretty much as we predicted. Although MS has taken longer to start grabbing marketshare than I predicted, and I'm pleased to say Sametime is still here, which I had serious doubts about just 2-3 years ago.

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - Where have you seen them say that they'd be including this in their existing CAL? From the OCS Blog it looks like they haven't yet announced anything about pricing or packaging.

Gravatar Image2 - @1 In that blog entry it says:

"In the interim, customers will get group chat functionality with the Standard OCS client access license. Current MindAlign customers, many of whom use LCS 2005 today, will continue to receive product support and a simplified migration path to unified communications."

Gravatar Image3 - @1 Also in press release
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/aug07/08-29ParlanoPR.mspx

"After the deal closes, Microsoft will add the group chat functionality to Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, and plans to offer group chat as part of the standard client access license for Office Communications Server 2007 Software Assurance customers. Current Parlano customers, many of whom already use Microsoft unified communications software, will have increased access to the breadth of Microsoft unified communications software."

Gravatar Image4 - Thanks. I took that "group chat functionality" to be basic multi-way chat, not full Parlano-based functionality. From what they say in the press release, it does look more like they want to bring this in (although I find it interesting that they term this "group chat" and not something like "full Mindalign capabilities"), but I still would be surprised that they would just fold it in to the existing license price. Will be interesting to see where this all goes.

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