We all just wanna be big rock stars ... Microsoft jamming with Gibson Les Paul

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft held their coming out party for the much anticipated Office Communications Server 2007. Gibson Guitar was one of their beta customers and they were prominently featured in a video - and with a live musician to kick off the show at the Bill Graham Civic Center today. The folks at Gibson even screen painted a custom guitar for the show complete with the Microsoft logo and UC branding - wonder who gets that guitar? Bill talked about the megatrends he sees: performance of hardware, digitization of the economy, broadband/mobility and of course software breakthroughs. He showed a chart with the first computer that caused him to drop out of school - the Altair computer kit. That was in 1977. There were about 1500 people in attendance and many of the sponsors were part of the "ecosystem." The press coming out in the news today claims the death of the PBX and communications as we know it. Bill and Jeff Raikes want the partners to come into the Microsoft fold and leave their worries behind. Bill was careful not to totally dismiss or make irrelevant these important communication partners. There is much to consider when looking at a total software solution for communications.There is still networking and quality of service considerations, after all OCS is still VOIP and real-time voice communications needs to be tuned for a network. Just like a twelve string guitar - voice + data. You have to have them perfectly in tune otherwise, you're not going to like what you hear.

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