Sametime vs Office Communicator
Ed Brill has an interesting post indicating that Microsoft and IBM are on the same track with respect to integrating an IP Soft Phone and the Instant Messaging and presence client. I am looking forward to it!
IBM is teaming with Avaya to help make businesses more agile, responsive, and productive through the seamless integration of audio and collaboration tools. This integration will introduce “click-to-call” capabilities, enabling businesses using IBM(R) Lotus Notes(R) and Domino(R) and IBM Lotus(R) Sametime(R) to instantly place a telephone call to an instant messaging or email contact while remaining in their inbox or instant messaging client. By selecting multiple names, users will be able to “click-to-conference” for faster decision making and problem solving. IBM will also be integrating audio conferencing provided by Avaya Meeting Exchange with Lotus’ Web conferencing solutions, giving Web conference participants a visual indication of who is speaking and the ability to dial out to new participants, mute lines and control volume, among other capabilities.
As I understand it IBM are releasing an API for integration some time soon, and this announcement is of one partner who is implementing that API, but I may be wrong.
