Microsoft software to incorporate AT&T IP services

CHICAGO--Targeting large businesses, Microsoft and AT&T are co-developing messaging, word-processing and other technologies that more tightly incorporate new Internet applications such as telephony, the two companies said Monday.

The pact sets the stage for the most substantial collaboration yet between the two companies. Financial details of the five-year development deal were not released.

Taken in a larger context, AT&T is essentially opening up its global Internet Protocol network so the estimated 6.5 million developers using Microsoft software can more easily use the network to their advantage, AT&T Vice President Eric Shepcaro said in an interview here during Supercomm 2005, a major telephone trade show.

"We're changing the rules of the game," Shepcaro said.

One of the first goals of the pact is for Microsoft to incorporate AT&T's Internet telephony services into Microsoft's hosted services for businesses. In an interview, Shepcaro said to expect products to begin filtering out to the market by next year.

The deal also seeks to help solve the problem telephone companies have with the thin profit margins on the sales of enterprise-data IP services, such as Internet protocol virtual private networks. The remedy, experts say, is fairly straightforward but not necessarily easy to implement: The phone companies need to develop and sell more add-on IP VPN products and services to boost their returns.

To some extent, the pact between the two companies was predictable because they are serving complementary sectors of the same market. Microsoft's software dominates the information technology that businesses purchase, while AT&T, which has retreated from the home-phone market, is now focusing mostly on its abundant enterprise customers.

Musical Chairs!

Is it that AT&T and Microsoft up to playing musical chairs! (It was AT&T that was apprently developed the UNIX Operating System Code which later changed hands by various companies and we eventually saw the emergence of the "Linux" phenomenon and the on-going SCO-IBM saga with regards to use of software code developed by IBM and now used in the growing Open-Source Linux Operating System marketplace) AT&T has previously sunset an "Ecosystem for Services Providers Program" itself had embarked upon and presently is in agreement with IBM to deliver "Integrated, Internet-ready Collaboration Solution for Small and Medium-sized Organizations"; see link: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/jmae62dkjf?OpenDocument&Site=default The question is - with Microsoft's notoriety for locking data in its proprietary systems... one should wonder what judgement informs AT&T and Microsoft with regards to their plans to co-developing messaging, word-processing and other technologies that more tightly incorporate new Internet applications. Will businesses be willing to buy in to this strategy as against the adoption of an open-source policy!

;-)