TechEd 2010: Microsoft Communications Server ‘14’ takes the stage

Fun stuff!

Gurdeep’s demo inside Bob Muglia’s keynote went well today, as did his breakout session later in the day. That includes some funny joking between Jamie with the whiteboard giving directions to Gurdeep on where he needed to be later in the day for his other sessions. And the High definition video was stunning on a 40 foot screen! For a broader rundown of features checkout https://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/new-features.aspx.

It’s great to see the product out there now, and even better for our folks around the company that have wanted to show it more openly to their customers. Microsoft Communications ‘14’ really delivers on that promise of a more connected experience for people that want to stay plugged in to what’s going on, even when they are not there. The new collab experience is great. Having PowerPoint, the RoundTable view, and IM all in one view is great.

The developer story is also super powerful. What you can do today with communications in applications, or even building your own communications application like the call scenario demoed is pretty amazing. All on one platform.

It’s also great to hear the reaction from ITPros and developers here at the conference and the interest in communications. Being able to bring communications into the productivity fold has been something that we have been working on for a while and ‘14’ delivers there, with the expert search integration into SharePoint, the deep Outlook integration, and the Word, Powerpoint, and Excel integration. It’s also great that we can deliver on a full telephony experience as well. Between that, the great collab experience, and it being built right into the apps people use every day will really obsolete other forms of communications out there.

Finally, being able to talk about our Windows Live audio and video federation, connecting our Communications Server users with the hundreds of millions of Windows Live Messenger users with full audio and high definition video is great.

One big thing is for sure, communications has now landed squarely in the lap of the corporate ITPro and developer. I hope they are ready for it.

It’s a fun show so far. Really looking forward to the rest.

Yancey Smith

Director, Product Management

Bookmark: https://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/cs14home.aspx