Tag: Collaboration

Office Communicator – the next collaboration tool from Microsoft

Office Communicator – the next collaboration tool from Microsoft: "Microsoft does seem to have an increasingly integrated strategy for collaboration. The high-level story is very sound and seems to be offering what the end user needs to work effectively in a collaborative environment. The software tools provide a comprehensive range of functions; indeed, many of the functions are actually duplicated in various products which makes life even more complex. Challenges arise when you need an integrated solution – the sheer number of products from different groups in Microsoft instantly complicates the picture hugely. These problems arise largely because of the way that Microsoft is organised into multiple groups around products rather than around the collaboration vision. While Microsoft will undoubtedly continue to play a leading role in the collaboration software world, it will suffer when compared with other players in this market, such as Oracle and IBM. Both of these organisations have simple coherent messages for the collaboration tools they deliver, even though the functionality is actually provided by multiple pieces of software underneath the covers in both cases."

Ovum analysis/opinion differs from those of Forrester and Gartner Group when it comes to Microsoft position compared to its main competitors. Nevertheless it is good to that more and more analists have recognised Microsoft’s solution for Communication & Collaboration …

Ran into this information through Shared Spaces

What’s Microsoft’s position in the world of Portals and Collaboration ?

There still is a lot of perception about Microsoft’s position in the field of Portal solutions and as a collaboration platform. Recently released research materials hopefully will help change this perception.

Gartner Group recently released the Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2005 which clearly shows Microsoft’s position in this field :

Microsoft moves into the Leaders quadrant for the first time. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 continues to improve, and the Office franchise continues to grow. A key part of the Microsoft Office System, Windows SharePoint Services, is being widely adopted, which has created a pull-through effect for SharePoint Portal Server. Microsoft had the highest growth rate of all the portal product vendors during the past year.

The report can be downloaded from the Microsoft website here.

Also Forrester has released some interesting research material on the market for collaboration solutions. Here’s what Forrester has to say :

Microsoft emerges as an early collaboration platform leader. Trends in messaging server and broader collaboration platform deployments favored Microsoft in 2004.
Microsoft has also begun to establish a lead as a collaboration platform provider to ISVs. PLM vendor UGS and collaboration software vendor CorasWorks built the current generation of their collaboration products (UGS Teamcenter Community and CorasWorks Workplace Suite, respectively) on top of Microsoft WSS. System integrator Capgemini developed a healthcare portal solution on top of WSS and SharePoint Portal Server. Additionally, vendors like Groove Networks and SAP support WSS as a document repository. These ISVs have chosen wisely; within two or three years, SharePoint will be virtually everywhere — it will be used, at least in experiments or pilot mode, by most organizations that have rolled out Windows Server 2003.

The report can be downloaded from the Microsoft website here.

It’s time to consider overhyped security threats

Some security threats, including those aimed at IP telephony and mobile devices,�are overblown,�two�Gartner analysts say,�and they caution that misplaced security concerns may distract from fighting real problems.

Lawrence Orans, principal analyst at Gartner, and John Pescatore, vice president and Gartner fellow, say�that while attacks on IP telephony and mobile devices may come eventually, current warnings about security problems are ahead of actual attacks.

Voice is no more insecure than e-mail, Orans said.Â�"Securing IP telephony is very similar to securing a data-only network," Orans said during a presentation this week at the Gartner IT Security Summit in Washington, D.C. "The fact that you could capture packets with e-mail isn’t being covered in the trade publications." ….

Read whole article at source : [Via InfoWorld: Top News]

Nortel readies Outlook multimedia plug-in

Computerworld | Nortel readies Outlook multimedia plug-in: "Nortel Networks reached out to enterprises with multimedia communications software on Monday, announcing a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook to let companies integrate voice and other forms of communication with the widely used e-mail client.

The plug-in, called the Multimedia Office Client, is designed to let employees use voice, video and text messaging through Outlook. It will even work with existing analog voice switches in enterprises or analog Centrex systems provided by carriers, said Chris Pallen, senior manager of voice and multimedia services at Nortel. Multimedia Office Client will be offered in parallel with the current Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) client, which is a Windows application with a Nortel user interface.

Nortel is introducing and demonstrating the software at the Supercomm trade show in Chicago, where Microsoft loomed large. The Redmond, Washington, software company announced alliances Monday with AT&T, Sylantro Systems and Amdocs that also were focused on VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and other communications capabilities.

The Multimedia Office Client works with Nortel’s MCS 5100 and 5200 platforms, which are used in enterprise and carrier networks, respectively, for providing IP multimedia communications. Those servers use SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) for the translation between existing analog voice switches and IP communications applications, Pallen said. "