Microsoft looks to offer easy VoIP integration

Microsoft has agreed with a dozen companies to work within its guidelines to make VoIP and unified communications easy to add to in-office private branch exchange (PBX) telephone systems.

According to the Seattle-based tech giant, this means that companies will not have to "rip and replace" an existing system from many suppliers if they want to use all the features of the up-coming Office Communicator 2007.

The networking companies who have agreed to make their products inter-operable with the software include Alcatel-Lucent, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Ericsson, Mitel Networks, NEC and Nortel Networks among others.

Speaking at a Las Vegas conference, Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate VP of the unified communications group at Microsoft, said: "This broad industry support will give business the assurance that Microsoft's unified communications software will work with the applications and networks they have today."

According to Microsoft, the new agreement on specification will mean that around nine out of ten of existing PBX systems will be interoperable with Office Communicator and Office Communications Server.

This follows the company's announcement last week that it had worked with nine manufacturers to create certified VoIP handsets that work with the new Office software.