As you will be reading over the next few days,  we have made a number of announcements in the last few hours around our Unified Communications vision and where we will be going over the next few years.  A recording will be available here for the next two weeks.

Our 'Unified Communications' platform covers Exchange,  Office Live Communication Server,  Office Communicator and Livemeeting.  Today’s announcement details a roadmap of where we will be going in the next 12 months,  here are a few of the announcements.

• Office Communications Server 2007
  • On premise web conferencing
  • Support for remote call control 'out of the box'
  • Voice platform included 'in the box' to enable phone to phone,  phone to pc and pc to phone calls
  • A rename from 'Live Communication Server' to 'Communication Server'
• Office Communicator 2007
  • With multi part video/audio support
  • Better support for audio/video collaboration without the need for VPN
• Office Communicator Phone Experience
  • A desktop IP phone with a colour interface with the look and feel of Communicator,  see you Communicator contacts in your phone
  • Nortel & Polycom are at least
• USB Communicator Phones
  • For those without a desk phone,  we will be making available a USB phone for users to plug into their PCs to make phone calls
• Roundtable
  • Video conferencing device using multiple cameras and multiple microphones
  • Displays a panoramic view of attendees in a meeting by stiching video images together
• Exchange 2007
  • Unified Messaging
• Exchange Hosted Services
  • Hosted Exchange & Instant Messaging

As you can see,  we have a lot of cool and useful technology coming out over the 12 months.  We on the verge of experiencing something new,  something exciting and most of all something years from now we will wonder how we lived without ... a new world of Communication!