AT&T and Microsoft announce they are building a “strategic alliance” for the future. The program “revolutionizes” the next generation of IP communication. The press release for this big announcement was a bit lengthy but overall, this could be an extremely competitive offering in light of many other teams and mergers seen lately. The first big goal will be VoIPing the two companies.
VoIP has become all the rage for Internet communication and many feel it’s the future of communication. It stands to reason AT&T would have their fingers in it somewhere even if there are working on a merger with SBC. It’s like Ma Bell and Pa Bill are teaming up but Ma Bell doesn’t exist anymore sort of.
Anyway, AT&T has IP access in 149 countries which means now there will be 149 more countries Microsoft has access to via its Microsoft Connected Services Framework (MCSF). The two companies also plan to roll out “a broad array of network-enabled right-time communications services”.
“AT&T is recognized worldwide as a technology innovator, and the strategic alliance we’re announcing today will extend its leadership,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We’re delighted to be partnering with AT&T to develop advanced, software-powered communications services that will create great new opportunities for its customers.”
“Today’s announcement is yet another milestone for AT&T’s strategy to deliver next-generation services atop our application-aware IP network. These services will enable enterprises to implement integrated collaboration, messaging, VoIP and conferencing services without the capital investment that locks them into solutions that are not future-proofed,” said Dave Dorman, chairman and CEO of AT&T. “It moves to a new industry level AT&T’s intent to deliver to businesses worldwide the promised vision of converged IP-driven services via the world’s leading global network. As global commerce increasingly relies on the networked enterprise to move business forward, its significance can’t be overstated.”
What can the two companies gain from all this? Microsoft doesn’t do anything without being able to make money and this will be no different. They will be able to integrate the AT&T VoIP and other communications into all their programs. So now, you’ll have IM and VoIP access in Access, Word, or any of the Office programs. The practical application will be giving the PowerPoint presentation long distance. You send your client the presentation and then they load it on their notebook. With VoIP, you give the presentation and talk through it all on the notebook. It will cut down on the hardware you don’t need the phone anymore. Certainly there will be other applications but this is just one example.
AT&T is tougher to figure out but perhaps the biggest lesson they could pick from this is interoperability. AT&T has come up with a lot of solutions for a lot of customers over the years and their work is brilliant but many of those solutions don’t have the interoperability that Microsoft integrates into all their projects. They could build a program to run your microwave and it will be based in Windows. AT&T would do well learning from this. Also, how this will play into the merger with SBC should be interesting to watch.
All in all, this merger will probably help and maybe give AT&T some new in-roads into the ever-burgeoning Internet communications market and it will see Microsoft have access to perhaps more markets then they’ve ever had before.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
