Microsoft sniffing around VoIP

Microsoft may come fashionably late to a party, but it usually wants more than a few crumbs when it arrives. Among all the talk about the upcoming Vista operating system, you may have missed this week's word about the upcoming Office Communications Server. An update to its easily overlooked Live Communications Service, the OCS will include SIP-based VoIP functions. Telephony features are also being added to the desktop Office Communicator and Exchange 2007, which will allow people to phone in to an Exchange server to get their email. No reason at all, of course, that that phone couldn't be VoIP. The Exchange update is due later this year or early 2007; the rest of it is slated for 2007.

For more information about Microsoft and VoIP:
- read this article from ZDNet.