Echoes of Microsoft's Latest UC Play

Microsoft thinks its new "Echoes" platform that will eventually do away the need for phone numbers, according to the blog-o-speculation. 

TMCnet is reporting the buzz is heating up on the idea to integrate the functions of mobile phones and email into a single system that enables people to contact to one another based on name rather than email or phone number.

Echoes is supposedly a services platform for telecom carriers that combines Microsoft Live Messenger along with syncing of people's address books and presence.  The first phase roll out this summer would be a platform to sync contacts from Messenger with a user's mobile phone address book. Users would basically get an overlay/map of Messenger users to phone numbers and be able to SMS text or voice call to synched contacts without having to type a number or email address.

There are other solutions that already have this sort of functionality going, so Microsoft isn't bringing anything new to the party other than tying in Microsoft products.

For more:
- TMCnet reports blogosphere echoes of Microsoft Echoes

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