The Hindu Business Line : Microsoft launches Web conferencing service

MICROSOFT India has launched MS Office Live Meeting 2005 and Ms Office Live Communication Server, its Web conferencing and enterprise instant messaging server.

Microsoft's real-time communication offerings, as these technologies are called, will enable corporates reduce communication costs and improve productivity and efficiency by enabling workers, and corporate partners to talk, collaborate and conduct Web-conferences easily, said Mr Ranjivjit Singh, Director, Business and Marketing operations, Microsoft India.

For instance, an employee can initiate a live meeting session from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project and MS Office Communicator, 2005. Remote workers can schedule a meeting offline, through the Live Meeting Add-in for Outlook. The Live Meeting allows participants to be called directly to join a meeting and allows presenters to mute, unmute, and disconnect participants from MCI, BT and InterCall audioconferencing systems, according to Mr Singh.

"Internet Audio Broadcast lets users stream audio over the Internet using VOIP, so meeting participants need only the speakers on their PC to participate.''

It is suitable for virtually any meeting scenario, be it a sales event with thousands of global participants or a small collaborative meeting between workers on different floors of the same building, Mr Singh said. The service is to be made available to customers through various Microsoft licensing models, he said.

The company plans to launch the MS Starter, the stripped down version of Windows XP software, in India with local language capabilities by the middle of the year. Through OEMs at first and later through local assemblers, the company expects to sell its no-frills starter edition in Hindi first and later in other languages, according to the company.

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