Microsoft VOIP (here is my contradiction to open source)
Microsoft, at least for the time being, is the wheel that keeps technology moving. To back up the argument is pretty easy. We all know that Microsoft is on over 95 percent of desktops worldwide. You can also say that IE, Outlook, and the Office Suite is pretty dominant as well.
With that being said I will name a few popular VOIP players. I will not mention Class 5, Class 4 or PBX’s because they have to adhere to the open source standard of SIP. So I will mention yahoo, aim, Skype, MSN and Jajah. Soft phone techology is growing rapidly. Last week from the Dominican Republic I was on a 6 hour phone to the states which cost me nothing using Skype.
If Microsoft chose to implement a softphone within the Windows OS, purely open source. It would dominate the market out of the gate.
Unified messaging is the name of the game as well as convergence with outlook. Many PBX’s with the help of developed software can achieve this, but what sells is if i can go home and it works as well. This is the strategy that Microsoft seems to be going for and this would deploy nicely with built in softphone functionality.
The downfall of open source is too many options. Which is also why I like open source. The downfall to Microsoft is not enough options, which in most cases is why I like Microsoft. To be able to communicate with others without having to worry about interoperability issues or whether grandma is using an MicroLite softphone client or not.
-Derek
July 28th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Professor, can I ask you why Grandma using a Microlite softphone is something you would be worrying about. Tell me what she, or her softphone, has to do with what you are using. Thanks in advance for letting me ask stupid questions.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am
It was a comment that was supposed to resemble support and interoperability. I used grandma because that is always a person in people lives that they have to give tech support to. Now the reason why it matters is because the soft clients on the market are not totally RFC spec. Basic features yes, but special features such as sms differ. So why should I have to worry about what client my grandma is using when I would know right off the bat that she is using Microsoft’s soft phone.
I feel yucky when I say that.