VoiceCon 2009: Microsoft's big words, sliding commitment?

While Microsoft Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall took swipes at Cisco, PBX vendors, and "business as usual," in his April 1 keynote at VoiceCon, some attendees wondered about the company's commitment relative to past years at the show.

Microsoft had initially committed to have a presence on the VoiceCon exhibit floor as it had in previous shows, but purportedly made a last minute change and opted for a block of briefing rooms in the hotel, away from the convention center. Attendees Fierce spoke with wondered why Microsoft had opted out of more open demonstrations of OCS 2007 R2 and other UC products.

Observers of Pall's keynote noted that for all the Cisco-bashing and talk of being stuck in a "3 by 4 keypad" world presented, Microsoft was still behind the curve when it came to providing answers for a fully-functional PBX replacement in two key areas - E-911 and survivability/reliability. Both issues are supposedly going to be addressed in mid-2010 with the "Wave 16" release of OCS.

On the other hand, people seem to perk up with Pall's comparison between a stock desktop IP phone and a netbook computer. Both devices cost around the same -- $300 to $350 - but the netbook computer is capable of providing much more functionality at the same price, including web browsing, office editing and rudimentary video conferencing.

For more:
- NoJitter ponders Microsoft's holes in OCS. Blog.
- Our VoiceCon BoT coverage includes comments directly from Microsoft's keynote.

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