I’ve been asked several times in the last few days what my opinion is of Microsoft’s “Istanbul” announcement earlier this week. Having read a whole bunch of press and analyst coverage (thanks to Adam, PBOK, Peter, Michael, etc. for good links), here are some thoughts.
Read more: [Via Ed Brill]
My view on this is that this is not about a feature to feature comparison between companies’ solutions; it’s about the Real Time Collaboration (RTC) vision. Microsoft clearly makes a big move in RTC by adding full softphone capability into the RTC solution. On top of that Istanbul really integrates with the Office System applications through ‘Presence Integration’.
RTC technology will have a greater impact on how we collaborate than we experience today. In Europe the take up is not yet that fast as in the US, but rapidly growing. Istanbul will set the standard of what this is really about; combining every form of Real Time Communication into one solution.
